It appears the systemisation of the building industry is now complete; its organisational systems, processes, and physical components derived of the flows and distributions of a global/local economy. The architectural construct is negotiated through this systemisation, together with historical ideologies of construction, tectonics and assembly. Within this negotiation the fundamental relationships of altering societal values may find their closest expression.

This book uses the approach of the seminal work The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch, by showing the importance of talking to people and gauging their shared mental images of places. That work transformed the way many design professionals and social scientists dealt with form. It complemented the “art” approach to design, in which users would be expected to move their chair to satisfy a designer?s ego, with a social science approach that tried to gauge user reactions. This book brings attention to using the same approach for interiors, and to do so for school buildings. The book discusses the findings for fifteen schools of design. The systematic user evaluations of the aesthetics, function and technology reveal strengths to encourage in future designs, and weaknesses to avoid. Some of the findings on the design and process extend to all kinds of buildings on campus and elsewhere. Thus, although the book offers specific guidelines for future schools of design, it also offers guidelines with broader application to interiors for educational buildings and other building types, such as how to plan offices and gathering places to build community. This book should make readers more aware of problems in architectural interiors and of ways to make interiors work better for the building occupants.

http://www.fairchildbooks.com/book.cms?bookId=193

“This is a book that students of architecture will want to keep in the studio and in their backpacks. It is also a book they may want to keep out of view of their professors, for it expresses in clear and simple language things that tend to be murky and abstruse in the classroom. These 101 concise lessons in design, drawing, the creative process, and presentation–from the basics of “How to Draw a Line” to the complexities of color theory–provide a much-needed primer in architectural literacy, making concrete what too often is left nebulous or open-ended in the architecture curriculum. Each lesson utilizes a two-page format, with a brief explanation and an illustration that can range from diagrammatic to whimsical. The lesson on “How to Draw a Line” is illustrated by examples of good and bad lines; a lesson on the dangers of awkward floor level changes shows the television actor Dick Van Dyke in the midst of a pratfall; a discussion of the proportional differences between traditional and modern buildings features a drawing of a building split neatly in half between the two. Written by an architect and instructor who remembers well the fog of his own student days, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School provides valuable guideposts for navigating the design studio and other classes in the architecture curriculum. Architecture graduates–from young designers to experienced practitioners–will turn to the book as well, for inspiration and a guide back to basics when solving a complex design problem.” ~ Amazon.com

//we aim to challenge individuals :
lectures and students alike, in their (opinions, ways of thinking, views)
and produce some new ideas about : how we build,
how we organise ourselves in the planet.//
In 2008/2009 a group of practitioners and theoreticians,
will work together / work apart, to create a discourse.//
Organised with teams of practitioners and theoreticians -
the design studio.
The design studio is the SITE for all learning -
all matters will be taught through the design studio.

This presentation by Grainne Hassett is based on the idea of the undergraduate education (1st 3 years of the course).

Davis Lewis bio has just been added.

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