‘Peer Critique’ in Debate: A Pedagogical Tool for Teaching Architectural Design Studio

UNESCO/UIA (2011) advocates that architectural education is to enable future architects to meet the worldwide challenge of combining cultural heritage with sustainable human settlements. It calls for a transformation of professionals to acknowledge social context, embrace environmental sustainability and develop learning capacity in architectural design. Modernism in architecture follows a conventional belief in systems based on scientific rationalism resulting from research data and findings (Healey, 1992). However, since modernist architecture was first taught, methods and styles have evolved; and architectural education now places greater “emphasis on issues in social responsibility, sustainability, environmental responsiveness, environmental integrity and human health” (Milburn and Brown, 2003: 47). Architectural education goes beyond nurturing a group of academically competent, creative, critically minded and ethical professional designers, and the curriculum needs to foster international, socially responsible citizens who are intellectually mature and environmentally sensitive in their design work (Ozorhon et al., 2012). Ultimately, architecture graduates can produce practical, inspiring and exploratory solutions to deal daily with complex types of problem solving before they start their professional careers (Megahed, 2017; Schön, 1988). The design studio is commonly regarded as the heart of various modes of learning in both undergraduate and postgraduate architectural education. Architecture differs from other subjects because it is interdisciplinary, comprising both art and applied science; and architectural students need to take an active role in learning; they should learn through doing and by reflecting on actions while recognizing professional practice and identifying a path towards professionalism (Schön, 1988). In the studio sessions, they may gradually develop skills to visualize and represent abstract concepts in graphics and verbal languages, acquire architectural thinking and ultimately develop a problem-solving capability (Demirbaş and Demirkan, 2008; Megahed, 2017). To prepare for contemporary architectural practice, student architects are strongly encouraged to ‘think outside the box’ with imaginative ideas and designs. They need to build the capability to visualize abstract concepts in graphics, communicate effectively and construct physical models (Megahed, 2017). This means that architecture educators need to create a collaborative, learner-centred, experimental, problem-based learning culture that inculcates social interactions between them and their students (Yuan et al., 2018). While students devote much of their time, energy and effort to practising core professional skills, there are many opportunities for them to evaluate their work through iterations of presentations and discussions in a design studio (Oh et al., 2013). Megahed (2017) points out that critique in a design studio, although it serves as part of assessment for evaluative purposes, encompasses an in-depth educational purpose. Critique can serve as formative for interim review or summative as final assessment (Nguyen and Walker, 2016). This can be conducted for individuals, with peers, by a panel of experts or the public, and the feedback format can be dialogical seminars or panel discussions, on paper or digital; the final product presentations may be evaluated publicly (Utaberta et al., 2013). No single rigid assessment model in a design studio is better than others, because it depends on the learning capability of students (Ozorhon et al., 2012). Feedback from instructors, peers and external judges forms the foundation for students to reflect on and revise their design work. This type of critique offers a positive and constructive experience sharing and externalizing design thinking and judgement. With a variety of assessment tasks, students are enabled to acquire skills in self-monitoring and making evaluative judgements about their own or peer performance through the integrated learning opportunities and the possibility of interrelationships between teaching, learning among peers, tutors and the juries in the learning environment (Cahill et al., 2010). We will use peer debate and peer critique interchangeably in this paper and will explore student experiences of peer debate in the design studio of a master’s degree in architecture in Hong Kong. The study focus is on the students’ experiences of the group critique process. A qualitative exploratory approach is used in this paper because data were collected and interpreted based on a case study. Participants were chosen from two cohorts of the master program in architectural education run by a university in Hong Kong in 2015 and 2016. Interviews were conducted after students had submitted their final coursework, and marks were finalized to prevent potentially undue influences on them. All data were collected and analysed based on students’ feedback during “Peer Critique” in Debate: A Pedagogical Tool for Teaching Architectural Design Studio