By means of the bachelor proof, students of interior architecture of the University of Antwerp (Faculty of Design Sciences) are stimulated to design interiors for real-life public libraries in view of particular societal challenges. During three subsequent years the teaching staff elaborated a set of learning objectives and activities that jointly form a competence-based learning process focussed on the development of the societal awareness of design students. In this paper we report on the intermediate experiences of the teachning staff and the students as indicated by a set op mainly qualitative data. In short it concerns four lessons learned relating to the over-and underestimation of (i) disciplinary filters, (ii) comfort-zones, (iii) motivating complexities and (iv) copy-cat behavior.
Developing societal context awareness in interior architecture students is one of the main objectives of the bachelor thesis at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). By means of a 2-year project on public libraries (2014)(2015)(2016), the coaches of the design studio initiated research into the changing role of public libraries and the societal embedding of interior architecture, as well as the empathic role of the designer. The article is based on data acquired by the use of various qualitative research techniques, such as focus group debates with the studio coaches, analysis of the coaching sessions with the students, and analysis of the comments of the expert jury in the first research year, supported by half-structured individual interviews with students in the second research year. Based on an initial explorative evaluation of this research project it is clear that the development of societal context awareness in students is hindered by three phenomena: an activated selective perception, a dominant comfort-zone reflex, and copy-cat behavior. The article subsequently reports on (a) the subject of the bachelor thesis (i.e. Flemish public libraries and their societal challenges), (b) the pedagogical design of the renewed bachelor thesis, (c) the ex-ante and ex-post perceived societal awareness of the students, and (d) an initial set of identified enablers and disablers of the learning process. The article concludes that interior educators should continue to invest in triggering and developing societal awareness in their students if the interior discipline aspires to "the social compact to do good."Our focus on societal context awareness is not only related to the internal debate within the interior discipline but also to important changes within the discipline of public management. Given the subsequent trends of new public management (NPM) and public governance (PG),
In Western countries, the discipline of interior design has struggled to define itself from the beginning. One reason is that designing interiors is a multifaceted, layered, even interdisciplinary process. One has to deal with architectural environments as well as objects, with spaces as well as more ephemeral backdrops. Moreover, because designing interiors is not very different from certain everyday activities, interior professionals want to dissociate their activities from everyday decorating. Nomenclature has played an important role in trying to professionalize. By employing the term of "interior architect," professional practitioners have sought to insist on the distance that separates their work from everyday design practices. However, interior architecture has also wanted to avoid being seen as a subcategory of architecture. As a result, alternative terms have circulated, which have been equally question-begging. By means of a case study of one country's attempt to professionalize the practice of designing interiors, this essay will uncover how professional identities emerged and were labeled in postwar Belgian Flanders. We will show how different profiles, ranging from schooled interior architects to self-made domestic advisors and interior decorators, enabled practitioners to approach interiors differently and sometimes design in different ways. At the same time, we will investigate why the term "Interior architect" was employed by all the profiles of practitioners. The historically and culturally specific case study will be framed against the internationally ongoing process of professionalization. The road toward professionalization in Flanders runs parallel to that in a lot of Western countries. The Flemish case is remarkable, though, in that issues of nomenclature and identity formation were already heavily debated, even taken to court, from the mid-1950s until the mid-1960s. While in North American and Australian educational programs and professional contexts, the gradual adoption of descriptions such as "interior design" and "interior architecture" is of more recent vintage, this process took place in Flanders already in the 1960s. With our historically early case study-the first Flemish interior design program dates back to 1946-we want to contribute to the ongoing international debate about the professionalization of the interior discipline as well as discussions on nomenclature and the complex relationship between professionals and amateurs. Through a historically and culturally specific case study, this article will show how different profiles, ranging from schooled interior architects to self-made interior advisors and interior decorators, enabled practitioners to approach interiors differently and sometimes to design in different ways.
Growing insights from neuroscience—here, understood as an umbrella term for a number of empirical disciplines that study the relation brain, nervous system, genes, and behaviour—and its inquiries into how human behaviour and well-being is affected by interiors can enrich and inform the design of interiors and its properties innovatively. Interior design education can play a key role in linking the insights stemming from research and turn the question of human, experiential responsiveness into an elementary perspective of the design process. In this paper, we explain a pedagogical method developed for one of our graduate studios that addresses this issue and create a framework for a neuroscience-informed focus. Additionally, we illustrate the outcomes of student work created in this studio through two projects, each having a unique focus relating to interiors and the question of human behaviour and well-being, i.e., visual complexity and affordances. With the establishment of this master studio, we aim to provide students with an awareness and insights into how the many fields of study within neuroscience can facilitate, support, confirm, or adjust design knowledge.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.