PROJECT PRACTICE TEACHING MODEL

Author: Franco Schiaffino

E-mail: franco@estudioschiaffino.com

1. TECHNOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGES

The rapidity of the changes that human society has undergone in the last two centuries is
considered as unique in the history of mankind by both historians and philosophers.

New technologies such as the PC, CNC, the Internet, and touch screens, among many
others, are changing the way we live, think, work, and study, with access to information through
the Internet being perhaps the most significant one.

Given this situation, each new generation considers natural what is new to previous
generations, changes the ways of learning, and creates new patterns of thinking. For example,
the multitasking performed with PCs is an existing behavior, but it has currently become a
feature of the modern digital being. This modality of work instead of scheduling tasks
sequentially, allows performing them in parallel.

In view of this, the current teaching model is outdated, based on the public education of the
early years of the Industrial Revolution. At this time, a linear, rigid, and sequential teaching
approach was implemented, grounded on a production system which needed those qualities
from its workers, and adopted the Enlightenment belief that reasoning and logic skills were
superior intellectual capacities and thus should be trained first and foremost.

2. INTELLIGENCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The way intelligence is viewed has also undergone some changes in the last few decades.

Researchers in the fields of neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology have found concrete
evidence that intelligence develops in many different ways, and that considering the supremacy
of two parameters of its capacity -reason and logic- is a reductionist approach.

Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences poses that intelligence is multiple, rather than
just one. He distinguishes between linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-
kinesthetic, and personal intelligence, which work in harmony and mostly independently. Neither
of these intelligences is more important than the other one, although one type of intelligence
can prevail over another. Each individual develops some of these intelligences with greater
preponderance according to their nature and their cultural background, which also contributes to
stimulate, or not, each of the individuals intelligences.

Different activities such as using words, drawing or body movement are possible means for
intelligence to shape thinking and creative responses.

3. BEING A PROFESSIONAL
Professionals rely on their own body of knowledge and experience to carry out their job. They
set up working strategies and methodologies, and produce or seek out the knowledge they
need. They also learn and perform different activities and procedures during their training and
daily work. This learning throughout their careers creates patterns of thinking and standardized
methods of action.
This is explained by the definition of "neural plasticity" which proclaims that, as a person repeats
certain actions or activities, fixed neural pathways are developed which the brain follows
constantly in order to save energy, enabling automatic behaviors and responses that turn into
the brains first response choices. Besides, to the extent that a group of people repeats the
same activities, they also standardize their responses at a neural level.

4. PROJECT ACTIVITIES

"Images and words are two means of representation with very different functions, though their
cooperation is required in many ways of cognitive functioning" (Architect Rafael Iglesia).

Each project activity, basically thinking, using words, drawing, and mocking-up has its own
specific features that endow them with certain nuances of expression and exploration which
makes them unique, and when combined, they open up a wealth of possibilities to understand
and approach the project in different ways. Words, both written and spoken, are the poets "raw
material" with which he builds his poetry, analyzes it and corrects it.

Drawings and mock-ups produce information which words cannot capture, only attainable with
the senses. This information can subsequently be put into words, but reading these words does
not generate feelings, as reading a score does not make us feel the music.

The mock-up enables an approach to the sensitive reality of forms, textures, and colors of
immeasurable design value, while assembling it brings forward a greater constructive
understanding.

The drawing leads to visual poetry, something between a tangible act and an unattainable
gesture that unleashes in a formal response at a single glance.

Furthermore, in the process of designing, certain tasks need to be carried out, a series of
project activities organized in view of a greater operative purpose, such as conducting an
analysis, but in no specific order. In other words, one can design by writing or analyze by
mocking-up. Each individual will feel more at ease with one or another activity to perform each
task. If you start drawing, at some point in the project you will need technical information to
continue, and if you start analyzing, you will have to visualize its materiality eventually.

Activities such as thinking, using words, writing, drawing, or mocking-up unlock the students full
potential, and to the extent that they can understand what to do and at which stage of the
project to do it, they can begin to create their own schemes of work.

5. PROJECT AND CONCEPT

"Concepts are the ultimate elements of all thinking. In this characterization of the concept, there
is an implicit radical distinction between the concept considered as a logical entity and the
concept as apprehended in the course of psychological acts" (Alexander Pfnder).

A concept can be defined as an "idea that conceives or shapes understanding". Concepts can
be generated in the process of creating an object, whatever it may be, and they serve to
analyze it or carry on with its creation.

The generation of concepts is one of the major aspects of project practice, whether rational or
experimental; a designer tries to elucidate a new connection between different concepts,
through words, images or mock-ups.
The concepts are adjusted, distorted or transformed, as the project progresses, allowing the
designer to direct and organize the project, and they can be framed at the beginning or as a
conclusion of the project.

Concepts can be developed using the different intelligences and the result of those
developments, whether they are written, drawings, or models, is then put into words, which is
the format established to appreciate it as such. For example, when a designer discovers a new
operational capacity with the movement of his hands, this first idea occurs through the
movement of the hands and, at a later stage, he puts his kinesthetic-body thinking into words.

It is therefore important to develop students intelligence through all means available: words,
drawing, mock-up, and movement. In such a way, they learn to rationalize the result of these
activities at a later phase. This is a highly suitable way of teaching students to generate
concepts for the project activity.

6. THE CREATIVE PROCESS

The creative process is totally different in the sciences and the arts. Design stands somewhere
in between since the harsh demands of the sciences, such as hypotheses, thorough control
systems and accurate and verifiable results are nonexistent. However, it does not stand on the
arts side either, where the methodological process is avoidable, the exchange with the outside
is defined by the artist, and results should only content him. In design, there are clear and well-
defined guidelines about what to project. Here, methods are the designers choice of
preference.

The subjectivity in design is also halfway between the arts and the sciences; in the arts,
subjectivity commands the creative search, whereas in science, subjectivity is governed by the
laws of science. In design, subjectivity is aligned with the requirements of the client's guidelines,
and beyond these guidelines, the designer can be as subjective as he needs in order to reach
the outcome of the project.

The creative process is defined as "a series of activities aimed at providing a new answer to a
given problem". In the various investigations conducted on the subject, similar conclusions were
reached regarding the stages involved: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification;
although this approach does neither include the prefiguration stage, which is an early response,
nor the last-minute layout creation; both cases in which the process is not clearly visualized.

The creative process is inductive, compared to analysis where a result is reached in a deductive
way. The creative process emerges from some specific and concrete fact, which gradually turns
into a series of possibilities, and ends up condensed in a given result.

The dynamics of the creative process consist in a continuous rescheduling of the tasks and
project activities until assembled in such a way that a desirable outcome is achieved; they do
not meet formal organizational criteria. It comprises a search that involves rational thinking
models and rational information, but there is an emotional process that is the driving force
underlying the creative act.

7. DESIGN METHOD

During the 20th century many design methods were developed in order to organize the work of
designers. They include list of needs, prefiguration, acting architecture, etc. Each design
method was developed with the aim of solving the project from a certain perspective.
There are also scientific methods of work, such as Ren Descartes Cartesian method, and Imre
Lakatos "hardcore belt", among others. The former propounds a predetermined sequence of
work, while the latter advocates a project structuring in terms of the ideas that the scientist
conceives, where the main idea is propped up and protected by secondary ideas.

Most design methods structure the project practice by performing certain tasks, which could be
summarized in information search and analysis, outlining of concepts and project ideas,
development of alternatives, selection of final proposal, and development of final proposal.

By means of these tasks, design methods have managed to organize and rationalize part of the
project work, but have failed to include the creative process, as it cannot be easily planned.

The traditional design method proposes a formal project development, deductive in nature,
which does not always lead the way to the creative process which is inductive (this may create
some interference in the students learning who does not receive a representative model of the
complete project process as a reference).

8. FRAME OF REFERENCE

Unlike Physics or Mathematics -disciplines governed by established laws from which they work-
in the world of Design there are no established laws serving as a framework for designing.

Consequently, designers draw on various kinds of parameters, from specific technical

information to cultural trends, aesthetic principles, trends in the profession, and, of course, the
clients guidelines. With all this information, the designer creates an environment to apprehend
the object to be designed, trying to determine relevant cultural, technological or ergonomic
correlations, among others.

Constructing this framework places great demands on the designer, since he must understand
and establish all the necessary relations that help to visualize and insert the object in the
external world, and when relevant aspects of the project are identified, combining them in such
a way that the project, formal, conceptual and technological consistency achieved by the
designer is ensured.

The information and knowledge network that the designer produces and manages is obtained
through deductive and inductive processes. This network is much more vast and complex than
what is obtained with an analysis and its conclusions, and it facilitates building the concepts that
direct the project.

9. CREATIVE PROCESS AND DESIGN METHOD

The creative process and the design method are easily confused. Although there are
similarities, they are totally different, since the former is a model of representation of the work of
an individual facing the challenge of creation, and the latter is a method of work to organize and
structure the project activities enabling the project to be guided towards becoming a creative
process.

The design method provides a formal framework for the student to find the way to leap into the
void of creation. But this formal framework is just the first stage of the design process; the
second stage, the creative leap, is not formalized in the design methods. Students are taught to
design with a method that accompanies only half of the project, and no further information is
given to them on how to continue the project until completion.
Both stages are necessary to carry out a project: the design method as the initiator of the
project, and the creative process for its completion. The former facilitates assimilating
information, generating concepts, organizing tasks, and controlling execution times for the most
part, and the latter enables exploring and trying until the assembly of activities that paves the
way for a successful outcome is found.

Besides, the creative process consists of tasks. These tasks are not always the same and are
scheduled in a fluctuating and dynamic fashion, making the process difficult to plan and difficult
to explain and teach as well. Although, design methods have provided great support to the
project process by organizing the first stages of the project, and although these can be easily
explained, they do not always ensure that the creative process is fully developed.

Coupled with these two models of work, students have all the resources needed to carry out a
project. These models must be taught so that both are complementary in nature, rather than
cancelling each other, or creating confusion in students.

10. CONCLUSION: TEACHING MODEL FOR PROJECT PRACTICE

As a conclusion, a series of proposals are presented. These proposals constitute a new

teaching strategy and take into account the dualities sustained over the last centuries among
advocates of rationalist and intuitive, objectivist and subjectivist, and deductive and inductive
approaches which, in turn, have spurred further learning and generation of knowledge from
these very same dualities. Perhaps today, they can be perceived as complementary and non-
antagonistic parts of human thinking. Another suggestion would be to present students with the
project practice as a process composed of methodical implementation stages (usually, the
stages as part of the design method) and a stage lacking any methodology (the creative
process) and without any established methodical order. It is also advisable to let students
experiment for themselves beyond the methodical stages in order to complete their working
model. Likewise, it would be good to let students implement different project model alternatives
and further develop these alternatives with the aid of the professor in order for them to find the
most productive ones to initiate their own creative process. For students to begin with their
project model, it is necessary to conceive analysis, proposal of conclusions, proposal of
alternatives, selection of final alternative, development of final proposal, among other factors, as
independent tasks that together make up the projects frame of reference and that are
assimilated into the dynamic and fluctuating stages of the creative process.

Finally, the main objective of this article is to propose professors to initiate a debate with the
suggestions presented in order to find other answers that allow the merge of the different
intellectual challenges inherent to the project practice. At the same time, these answers shall be
explicitly present in teaching models thus reconsidering the different teaching methodologies at
place. This would ultimately help envision the whole design process from a new perspective.