The second year (3rd and 4th Semester) design studio is supposed to find its didactical position between the first-year Basic architectural design or the introduction to the realm of design and the third-year design studio, where students are supposed to be prepared for their practical internship experience. It plays a bridging role within these two years parallel to teaching and researching on the ‘how’ of architecture. How to make focused architectural research? how to make archi¬tecture? the dialectics in architecture and construc¬tion and how to communicate in architecture? These facets are broadly questioned in the two consecutive design studios. In short one learns the alphabets of architecture through these two courses.
Within the time span given, the studio atmosphere undulates within the verbal and practical dimension of architecture. As Gur & Erol [2010] argue, the stu¬dent is expected neither to recite back the theories of architecture nor the strength of materials; rather, he or she is expected to understand a problem fully and to devise a solution. Thus, the student must observe, speculate, reflect and discover.
The current curriculum of this specific studio sets the following objectives as a guide line: -
1.Understanding of the basic material dimension of architecture,
2.Knowledge of the interdependence of construction and composition,
3.Ability to design a building according to a given con¬struction system,
4.Ability to present a project with the appropriate media.
Based on the given scope of objectives the following didactic objective are elaborated. Though It is evident the objectives and teaching methods have direct link to the framing curriculum, further effort has been made to design a methodology that incorpo¬rates the advancement of contextually relevant design knowledge rather than grafting prescribed design teaching curricula from other contexts.
