Author(s): Michael Hughes, Emily McGlogn & Bruce Wrightsman
The processes and productions common to academic design-build programs have been well documented in books and popular media over the past twenty-five years. Through these texts we have come to know the paradigm in terms of the focus on full-scale making, collaborative learning and community engagement exemplified by the work at Yale Building Studio, Rural Studio and Studio 804. A review of the current literature on 鈥榙esign-build鈥 education reveals a bounty of images of students doing construction along with photos of the often-beautiful outcomes dominate the published material.1 The inspiring photos of students at work combined with the often-beautiful outcomes overshadow the more banal minutia associated with learning to juggle the multiple, simultaneous variables (client engagement, accounting, code compliance, contracts, human resources) and complexities that define the architect鈥檚 practice and enrich the student鈥檚 experience beyond mere vocational construction training. As Dan Rockhill notes, 鈥淪tudents are most empowered by having experienced the intertwined relationship between designing and building, between the mind and the hand鈥. 2 However, given the novice status of students participating in design-build the burdens of organization, logistics and project management typically fall to the design-build faculty member in charge who are simultaneously teaching a course. The fixation with building culminating in the celebratory ribbon cutting masks knowledge essential to the develop卢ment of design-build as a legitimate academic discipline. The relationship between the under-resourced design-build programs and under-examined projects leads to the tangen卢tial standing of design-build pedagogy relative to traditional academia. 鈥淲hat鈥emains clear is that design-build activi卢ties continue to resist theorizing and critical discourse.鈥3 The same bias that privileges the initial act of construction and the completed, built project combined with end-of-project fatigue encourages participating faculty to equate the end of the project with the end of the build. As a result, it is rare for design-build faculty or programs to assess the outcomes in terms of the building performance and client experience common to post-occupancy evaluation. The lack of critical evaluation at the end of the project negatively impacts the beginning of the next project as design-build project leaders lack information necessary to articulate or refine the criteria to evaluate outcomes or define success. As a discipline design-build lacks the informa卢tion necessary to determine if the projects succeeded either within or beyond the scope of the academic studio. However, a close examination of current design-build programs reveals some evolution relative to the incorporation and integration of post-occupancy evaluation. This paper outlines some of the challenges imposed by administrative and institutional structures conspiring to limit post-facto evaluation while also identifying nascent efforts to include critical assessment as a fundamental part of design-build pedagogy. Specifically, the text highlights some of the schools attempting to expand post-occupancy assessment either through innovative program structures or curricular changes that improving project and learning outcomes relative to the community being served and the academy broadly.
Volume Editors
ISBN
978-1-944214-49-4