Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Research in Education
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Empathy-Based Learning Experience in Architectural Education
Gamze Atay, Altay Çolak
ABSTRACT:
In the discipline of architecture, empathy is utilized to comprehend the needs, lifestyles, emotional, and physical requirements of users. Through empathy, prioritizing user experiences in the design process, spaces are rendered more functional, comfortable, and meaningful. There exist numerous teaching methods experimented with students in the literature for pedagogical purposes. Architectural design is a process that entails subjective approaches. These subjective approaches uniquely identify and define each architect, shaping their aesthetic sensibilities. From this standpoint, it is believed that understanding how design ideas form through competent architects in the literature, and the relationship between this formation and form, will contribute to the design processes of architecture students. In this context, it was envisaged that students could develop their design process through a sense of empathy, and within the scope of the “Architectural Design II” course, a study titled “Thinking like Him/Her” was conducted. In this study, students conducted readings on their chosen architect and were expected to generate solutions to the design problem (residential design) by thinking like the selected architect. As a result, it was observed that students successfully integrated a professional architect’s approach, methodology, and aesthetics into the architectural design process by exploring them through empathy.
keywords: architectural design; design process; reading; teaching method; user