ON THE RELEVANCE OF PRE-STRUCTURING OF DESIGN PROBLEM IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN STUDIO WITH “USER IN MIND”

The issue of “user” that was one of the main concern of design studies in architecture and many other design disciplines, especially after the 1960s, is still being discussed as part of growing public concern and intended more inclusive design practice, in order to provide meaningful integration of “user” into architectural design process. Despite the accumulation of valuable “user” related knowledge as a result of man-environment studies, since 1960s and developments towards more “user” inclusive approaches; there are still problems, originating from conventional approaches in their definitions of acquired “user” related knowledge in relation with design process. Considering, these problems, it can be assumed that for more inclusive design process and environments, designers need more specific, contextual “user” related knowledge generation within design process itself to affect design solutions.

Considering its core position to develop established design attitudes in practice, it seems that architectural design studio has an important possibility to develop intended more user inclusive design attitudes. Raymond Lifchez’s (1987) studio experience with physically disabled consultants and his notion of “user in mind,” which provides meaningful insights for the development of actual user interaction with students and acquisition of user experience in architectural design studio, can be observed as an effective response in this problem field. As a step further for the integration of user related knowledge to design process, Hillier et al.’s concept of “pre-structuring” (1972), structuring design problem and tentative design solution at the beginning of the process, provides strong connection between “design” and “knowledge and seems to allow new perspectives to transformation of user related knowledge to design solutions.

This paper tries to combine user related knowledge with design process in architectural design studio and argue the relevancy of Hillier et al.’s (1972) concept of “pre-structuring” with Lifchez’s (1987) notion of “user in mind,” in which both design student’ and user’ experiential knowledge can meet, so inform design problems and concurrently design solutions, for the cultivation of design student’s “user” included pre-structuring skills and for the improvement of his/her conception of “user” as meaningful participant of the decision making process.

(Selected) References:
Hillier, Bill, John Musgrove, and Pat O’Sullivan, “Knowledge and Design,” in EDRA 3: Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference, (ed.) William Mitchell (Stroudsbourg: Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, 1972), pp. 69-83.
Ledewitz, Stefani., “Models of Design Studio,” in Journal of Architectural Education, Vol.38, no.2, winter, 1985, pp.2-8.
Lifchez, Raymond., (ed) Rethinking Architecture: Design Students and Physically Disabled People, (London: University of California Press, 1987).
Rittel, W. J. Horst and Melvin M. Weber., “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” in Policy Sciences, 4 (1973), pp. 155-169.