Creativity within method. Evolution of the second year Architecture+Urban design Studios

Abstract

Our second year architectural and urban design studios I & II, aimed with greater or lesser success to test  several educational innovations by asking new questions, by looking for new answers, or by elucidating queries and answers that are actually too vaguely or imprecisely expressed. Our goal was to get as close as possible to the ideal studio format that we would have liked to experience when we were degree students. Both semester’s design studios rely in creativity within a method. We strive to inform accurately by not mixing concepts too soon, to give clear examples of every single content, to pose elementary and well delimited tasks, to play games at a crucial time of the process and, above all, to dose and sort out the students’ efforts. We present hereby the findings that better define our studio as well as the formulae that we adopted and adapted from other practices, divided into seven basic steps —pills, game, analysis, tutorials, programme, jury, synthesis— in the hopes that, in turn, they may be useful beyond our school walls.