ARCH 401: Architectural Design V, ID 425: Advanced Planning & Design I, LA 460: Interdisciplinary Design Studio ©

Faculty: Keith Diaz Moore

Course Timeline: Fall Semester 2003 (September - December)

Number of Credit Hours: 5

Brief explanation of where the studio falls within the curriculum sequence: This is a fourth year undergraduate studio for all three design disciplines involved. After completing 3 years on the main campus in Pullman, students spend their fourth year in Spokane where the fall studio is to be an interdisciplinary experience.

Pre-requisites to the studio: Students would have had to complete all the requirements of their curricula through junior year in order to come to Spokane for this studio. Thus each student comes with between 4 and 5 previous disciplinary studio experiences.

Approximate Number of Students: 15

Pedagogic Framework

The pedagogy involved is a problem-based service-learning model employed in an interdisciplinary studio. This studio brings together upper division undergraduate students from the disciplines of architecture, interior design and landscape architecture to work collaboratively in the urban setting of Spokane, Washington. Much of the challenge of such a studio is to have students transcend their own disciplinary boundaries and languages and come to respect the expertise of each other. I have found that the most successful approach to this effort is to engage in service learning where the dialogical space demands engaging in an intelligible conversation with community members.

Project Overview

Students often assume that others have their adaptive abilities, but these competences may be compromised in many others for different reasons. This studio focuses on two populations who may experience such compromised competence, particularly relating to environmental stress: the socially-isolated elderly and families of domestic violence. Both of these populations are of social justice interest as Spokane is the seventh oldest city and has the second highest rate of reported family violence in the nation, yet both of these populations tend to be invisible. In both cases, significant issues regarding security, sense of identity and the parallel issues of control and power are raised at all scales of design. The design problem asks students to considering the implications of these issues in the rehabilitation of a downtown block with the program components including senior housing, domestic violence transitional housing, a comprehensive assistance center and an intergenerational day care center.

Core Objectives

1. Students will develop their abilities to work in collaborative situations, involving multiple disciplines, and community members with a wide range of experiences.
2. Students will enhance their understanding of the implications that the diversity of needs, values, behavioral norms, and social patterns that characterize different cultures have upon the societal roles and responsibilities of architects, interior designers and landscape architects
3. Students will gain a greater understanding of the complex network within which design takes place. Students will gain awareness of: other design disciplines; the salient role clients, advocates and the public play in design; and the public or social responsibility associated with design. The needed societal leadership role of the design community will become apparent.

Clients and/or user consultants involved

Nick Beamer, Aging & Long-term Care of Eastern Washington (Expert on needs and services related to the aging population) Chris Blodgett, Faculty, Human Development (Expert in community outreach & issues of child development) Cyndy Corbett, Intercollegiate Colllege of Nursing (expert in terms of health issues related to children and the elderly) Angie Freerksen, Washington Institute of Mental Health (expert in mental health issues) Gale Hammer, University Legal Assistance, Gonzaga (advocate for victims of family violence) Marie Raschko, V.P., Inland Northwest Chapter of the Alzheimer s Association (expert in elderly social isolation; cofounder of nationally replicated "gatekeeper" program) June Shapiro, Director of Human Services, City of Spokane (Department involved in administering services to both groups) Patty Wheeler, Office for Alternatives to Domestic Violence (advocate in faily violence) Gary Woods, Casey Family Partners (Family Violence Specialist) (forensic child psychologist, expert in family violence)

Approach to the Proposed Studio Process and Content

The following studio, which I believe captures and reflects all five cultures suggested in the 2002 AIAS studio culture report, is orchestrated in three segments. The first three weeks are designed to flush out the preconceptions about the various design disciplines and move toward a mutual respect for one another. During the first week, there is an institute-wide interdisciplinary design charette in which students get a taste for the challenges associated with transcending disciplinary boundaries. This is followed by a debriefing session in which students discuss and role-play scenarios that occurred. Students are then exposed to a series of seminars addressing enhanced understanding of the various disciplines within the context of design as a domain after which students write a critical paper recontextualizing their own discipline in relation to the others. The third week involves workshops on strategies for team building and conflict resolution. This is followed by a paper addressing these issues and developing proposed strategies for collaborative design.

The second segment involves problem-setting. Here students will be given the project statement, publications on the role of stress in our lives and begin to develop an understanding of the issues that will direct their critical interventions. This will commence with an empathic exercise designed to sensitize students to the difference experiences the same environment may have for people of difference, as is common in universal design studios (Welch, 1995). Students will spend a day in a wheelchair and document the experience in a PowerPoint presentation. Previous themes from this exercise include understanding of the inconvenience and frustration with what others appears to be an adequate environment and the perseverance demanded by that environment.

Students will then dialogue with experts in the field of aging and children-at-risk beginning with a plenary of expert panelists and continuing with research into the emergent design-related issues. While addressing two groups that appear very different, many of the psychological and behavioral manifestations are similar. Both the socially-isolated elderly and children of family violence are likely to experience compromised short term memory, concentration deficits, social withdrawal, challenging behaviors, and associated physical problems such as sleep disturbances and poor eating habits (English, et.al., 2003; Donini, et.al., 2003; Kitzmann, et.al., 2003; Wagner, et.al., 1999; Williams, 2000). Each of these issues have been addressed to varying degrees within the design literature, particularly that addressing design for dementia, but all certainly impact whether a design facilitates health (Weisman, 1999). Thus students will be asked to make lateral theoretical connections to such work but to develop the ideas further and with specific focus on these populations.

Several expert consultants have volunteered to be available through listserves to provide assistance and feedback to student teams throughout the project. Student interdisciplinary teams will work with these advocates through a series of workshops to refine the program and decide the design goals that should be achieved. This type of interaction raises the ethical and value-laden nature of design to the fore as students become collaborators with those of different experiences and perspectives than that of their own.

The third segment is collaborative design intervention. As student develop their conceptual and schematic designs, they will maintain a journal of critical decision points and insights as they occur. Additionally, their feedback will not be in the form of traditional reviews, but rather in a process review I call "professional charettes" in which volunteering local design professionals are assigned to work with a team throughout the semester and provide process feedback. These take the form of sketches, ongoing email dialogues reconfigured models and the like. The process becomes much more of receiving feedback from a collaborator rather than from an external expert. The final review is a workshop with the above community experts to dialogue about how the various interventions reflect the vision developed above. Students are then asked to write a critically reflective paper on the process and substantive matter of the studio.

Utilized assessment techniques include questionnaires that solicit self-evaluation, teammate evaluation and overall team evaluation from students; post facto focus group assessments from community members and (separately) involved professionals; and instructor (facilitator) evaluation based upon the course objectives. Each of these (instructor, student, external) assessments are weighed equally in informing 75% of the final grade for the course. The papers and the powerpoint presentation account for 25% of the grade.

Documentation of the semester typically takes the form of the development of a "mini-portfolio" for each student in pdf format. This portfolio is to document the process and final product of the studio while being structured within the final critical reflection paper. Questions previously asked in such documentation include the following: - What were the most challenging aspects of designing for individuals whose needs and abilities varied from your own? What were the most effective ways to overcome these challenges? - If you were asked to be a consultant on such a project, what would be your key piece of advice? - Out of the various experiences we had during the semester, which did you value the most and why? How will this experience continue with you into your professional development?

Responses to Reviewer’s Questions

1. Assure that students have some contact with individuals, not just the experts.

   I have diligently worked to assure that this point will happen, but unfortunately at this point I cannot guarantee the committee that the following activities will indeed occur. I have great confidence, but no assurances as of yet. My plan to address the issue of successful aging includes asking students to volunteer time at an intergenerational setting that assists many adults in maintaining their independence within the community. As an intergenerational setting, they will also witness the richness of interactions that occur between generations and gain some exposure to the environmental needs and abilities of both the elderly and children. Additionally, retired architects, all of whom are approximately 75 years of age yet who have experienced a range of issues relevant to successful aging (i.e. social isolation due to death of a spouse; loss of physical mobility; loss of driving privileges), have been asked to participate as “client representatives” on the various student design teams. Bringing their personal challenges to the discussion, yet being able to actively engage in the dialogue of design, should significantly enrich student learning.

   The second issue of family violence is more delicate in this regard. Working with the local group VOICES (Voices for Opportunity, Income, Childcare, Education and Support) a community-based low-income advocacy group, I have solicited two individuals from their speaker’s bureau (victims of DV) to come and discuss with students issues that families in crisis face in a plenary type setting. While not as intimately involved as the first group, these personal accounts should provide a powerful set of images to stimulate inquiry (e.g. Welch, 1995). The unfortunate missing stakeholders are children, but though I have tried, these children are carefully protected by all those serving this population. The exposure to children discussed above will allow students to access some sense of their environmental needs, but not the sensitivities of children at risk. This is a weakness I simply have not been able to overcome, but I believe it is most understandable.

2. Assure that the understanding about people with disabilities goes beyond the empathetic exercise using a wheelchair, which was discussed in the Welch book.

   The exercise described above is largely used to simply open student perceptions to the reality that environmental experiences differ, and most importantly, the relevance of these differences. This sets a context within which they are more apt to be attune to the needs of the different socio-cultural groups they will designing with in the following exercises. Given the manner in which they will engage the various stakeholders as outlined above, I believe that their awareness of people of differing abilities and differing needs will be well addressed.

3. Please clarify the process by which design goals and a specific project will be determined.

   In many ways, each project is more a matter of programming than strictly of design. Working with “client representatives” as well as the experts mentioned in the initial proposal, the successful aging project will result in a program with a set of guidelines as well as a very conceptual visioning of what such a society of buildings may look like. Thus goal setting and the resulting parameter-setting of each project will be done in a dialogical fashion, challenging students to develop techniques of consensus-building. The second project, will adopt more of a traditional service-learning approach where the community client will define the parameters and intentions of the project. This is currently something being developed by a consortium of DV advocacy groups in the city.

4. Please assure that within the target populations that the subgroups are identified and considered.

   Given the amount of personal contact students will have with both experts as well as individuals experiencing these issues, I would argue that this point will be quite evident to students, but can certainly be reinforced through instructional direction.

For more information contact Keith Diaz Moore at keithdm@wsu.edu

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Citation: Moore, Keith Diaz (2003). ARCH 401: Architectural Design V, ID 425: Advanced Planning & Design I, LA 460: Interdisciplinary Design Studio ©. Retrieved (Enter date here), from Universal Design Education Online web site: http://www.udeducation.org/teach/asj/diaz.asp

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