Conversant Immersion: Toward Long-Term Collaboration in the Architectural

Engineering Capstone Studio

Jeanne Homer School of Architecture, College of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology, Oklahoma State University, 101 Donald W. Reynolds Architecture Building, Stillwater, OK 74078; (405) 744-6043; f (405) 744-2862; jeanne.homer@okstate.edu ABSTRACT Collaboration is a highly valued skill by professionals, yet the way it is most commonly introduced to students may emphasize only short-term impacts. Within a traditional interdisciplinary project, cooperative collaboration is often employed in which students of different disciplines are responsible for contributing their specialized knowledge and approaches to a project. There is some learning and general awareness achieved, but it is difficult to measure whether each student adequately understands all of the material in both the short- and long-terms. To better confirm that material is absorbed more fully for long-term impact, what we do in the Architectural Engineering Capstone Studio and throughout much of our curriculum is based on an expanded idea of the teaching technique of role-playing. The phrase that better describes our process is conversant immersion that emphasizes depth and breadth of the design process. In the conversant immersion process of the Capstone Studio, the students must not only design and analyze structure for a building, but they also must individually do the architectural design of the building. In addition, they design and calculate elements of the mechanical system, lighting system, and envelope system. All of these systems are integrated, and decisions made in the design of one system usually impact another. Why have the students go through this effort? We have surveyed professionals who hire our graduates and our alumni, and they report that this immersion makes them better collaborators in the long-term. This paper proposal will outline for educators in architecture and architectural engineering schools what we do during the Capstone Studio semester, reveal the project results of this process, and share the responses of professionals who have experienced the studio or employed our graduates.

INTRODUCTION Collaboration is a highly valued skill by professionals. More than ever, collaborative skills are requested of our graduates by firms doing work related to architecture and construction. There is a documented overall shift in business and industry away from an “individualist approach toward a cooperative teamwork paradigm”. (Datar) In education, ABET, the national engineering education accreditation board, requires that students understand multiple disciplines and have the ability to function on collaborative teams upon graduation. Some noted general benefits to collaboration include improved creativity, development of analytical and communication skills, and development of a respect for others’ ideas. (SERC) Collaboration can be achieved in a variety of ways, each having its benefits and challenges. The School of Architecture at Oklahoma State University, one of the few programs in the country to combine architecture and engineering, is structured based on collaboration between the two disciplines, offering both 5-year Architectural Engineering and Architectural degrees. Collaboration occurs throughout the curriculum, but the Architectural Engineering capstone course, called the Comprehensive Design Studio, in particular establishes connections between the profession and academia through an expanded idea of the teaching technique of collaborative role-playing. The phrase that better describes our process is conversant immersion that emphasizes depth and breadth of the design process. STRUCTURE OF THE CAPSTONE COMPREHENSIVE DESIGN STUDIO The Comprehensive Design Studio is a six credit-hour studio for both architectural engineering and architecture students with an integrated three credit-hour technology course. In addition, in a three credit-hour co-requisite management course, students explore issues such as contracts, budgeting issues, and specifications. Essentially, these three courses form a comprehensive semester organized into schematic design, design development, and design documentation, based on the three project phases utilized in most practices. In the technology and management courses, the seminars and assignments correlate directly to activities happening in studio. Underlying these activities is the goal of students’ understanding the importance of integration of systems and disciplines and communication. Having interconnected assignments requires extensive coordination among the faculty of the course. In the Comprehensive Design Studio, a course first developed at the School in the 1940s, five faculty members work as a team: three architects, one architectural engineer, and one environmental systems professor with an expertise in sustainability. All five professors review both architectural engineering and architecture students’ work in the studio and teach seminars in the technology course. Some topics in the seminars in the technology course include: code and ADA issues, preliminary structural and mechanical system selection, sustainable design, lighting and daylighting, building envelope design, heat gain calculations, structural member calculations, construction documents, and detail design. This teamwork among the

faculty represents a more common notion of collaboration that involves cooperation or the “mutual engagement of participation” (Dillenbourg) of various members performing within their different areas of expertise. Each faculty member contributes his or her specific talents to benefit every student. The architectural engineering and architecture students in the course are assigned a project, typically 30,000 SF or more, for the entire semester. The faculty adopts a variety of project programs including small theaters, community libraries, and homeless centers. For the architectural engineering students, the program must have some inherent structural complexity either through several stories or a long-span requirement, while the architecture students need programmatic and code complexity. The programs are often community-based with actual “clients” who might either be working toward a proposal or construction of a new facility or have a particular expertise valuable to the project program. The client closely reviews a program draft and, when relevant, supplies the faculty team with supplemental information. Throughout the semester, students interact with professionals. At the end of the semester’s phases, the faculty invites a jury of professional architects, structural engineers, and mechanical engineers as well as client representatives to engage students. Students present to several jurors at the end of schematic design, and they face the same jurors at the end of design development. Professionals are also invited into the studio at different times to discuss and critique issues related to code, integration of Revit into the process, lighting design, and wall section assembly. Workshops enhance students’ integration of Revit and of lighting in their designs. In the wall section assembly critiques, an architect is paired with an engineer to review students’ drawings. Students and their projects benefit from all interactions, and the professionals report that they enjoy the chance to interact with students in less formal situations. OVERVIEW OF CONVERSANT IMMERSION IN THE COMPREHENSIVE DESIGN STUDIO Since we have both architectural engineering and architecture students in the Comprehensive Design Studio, a common assumption is that the students work on cooperative teams in which the architecture students focus on the overall design, function, and aesthetics of a building, while the architectural engineering students analyze and design the structure. (Homer, 2011) If this were the case, it would be ideal to then collaborate with a mechanical engineering class, and these students could work through the mechanical system design. See Figure 1. This model would parallel practice, and although we try to model the course based on practice, in the end educational goals must focus on gaining knowledge. Education should also offer a wide variety of experiences. More typical collaborative team assignments work well in classrooms and studio courses with a primary goal of developing students’ social and cooperative skills and broadly scaled creativity. It has been determined, though, that typical cooperative collaboration results in as much as a 50% decrease in “covered ground”. (SERC) Comprehensive Design Studio, in addition to honing

collaborative skills, must achieve breadth and depth of understanding of a complete design process with systems integration within tight time constraints. In order to achieve all goals efficiently, we have established a different type of collaborative structure I call conversant immersion. See figure 2.

Figure 1: Typical Collaborative Figure 2: Comprehensive Studio Diagram Collaborative Diagram

With conversant immersion in the Capstone Comprehensive Design Studio, the architectural engineering and architecture students each design his or her entire project individually, including the architecture, the structure, and environmental systems. If students move in and out of their area of comfort and “walk in one another’s shoes” so to speak within the structure of conversant immersion, students are provided a more thorough and long-term understanding of a related discipline’s issues than simply working on a team with members of separate disciplines. (Homer, 2011) Although it may be more comfortable for students to stick to their particular task and viewpoint, experiencing some discomfort is an important step in learning. (Duckworth) Architectural engineering and architecture students are dispersed within the same work space, encouraging informal interactions and interdisciplinary critiques. Immersion is an effective tool in other types of learning, including language. Applying a typical cooperative collaborative model to language learning, within a

group one student might be working on grammar, another vocabulary, another sentence structure, etc. To produce something cohesive might improve students’ communication and social skills, and they may get some appreciation for the language, but not only would the depth be limited due to the need for extensive group activities, the long-term appreciation also might be narrow. Instead, if each student had to work on every aspect of the language with input from different faculty members and professionals with expertise in that particular aspect of the language, there could be a better, more conversant experiential familiarity with the language. This involves shifting where the team collaboration happens: from the student group to the faculty team. In an intensive environment like immersion, students learn all aspects of the language more quickly. If immersion time is short, they may not speak the language fluently, but there not only is a deeper appreciation of the language, but they also may learn further about the culture, about languages in general, or even more about their own languages. Our process in Comprehensive Design Studio, like typical cooperative collaboration, involves role-playing, but our studio is an intensive immersion in the design process with a cooperative team of faculty supporting each student in his or her different roles. We do continue to explore the possibilities of typical cooperative collaboration opportunities in the studio, but we have found that students’ understanding and application of relevant material is not adequate. IDENTIFIED PROBLEMS WITH TYPICAL COOPERATIVE COLLABORATION IN THE COMPREHENSIVE DESIGN STUDIO In the studio, we have designed a variety of activities that were the more typical cooperative model. I have found that, although students gain experience working in groups, often students either do not master the material to a level necessary to design a project or show resistance to claiming responsibility for a particular aspect of their designs. Some examples below demonstrate limitations of the typical model through a research assignment, basic code compliance requirements, and landscape design. Research Assignment At the onset of the semester during schematic design, students research as they explore the project conceptually. In previous years, the entire class has done most of the analysis and research as a group, covering topics such as site and program analysis, precedent research, background issues relating to the program, sustainability for the particular building type, structural and mechanical systems, and code issues. See the top of Figure 3. This is cooperative collaboration in which the class group breaks into small groups to accomplish the separate tasks toward a common goal. Although the information gathering is straightforward, time is limited so activities must be highly structured, perhaps negatively affecting their self-reliance and independence. (Dillenbourg) In this assignment it has been a challenge for students to see the larger collective picture as they work separately, despite individual quizzes that ask them to be responsible for the material. This year, the faculty changed the assignment to be done within smaller student teams of three, so still within a typical cooperative structure. See the bottom of Figure 3. One surprise is that each student individually easily researched more material than the larger group structure of

previous years and completed it to the same depth. Another surprise is that, even with small teams of three students, one student was often not familiar, or conversant, with the other information his or her teammates gleaned and communicated. The faculty finds that with the cooperative collaboration structures we tried, unless there is a follow-up quiz or debate very heavily directed by the faculty that covers all of the research material, students tend to not engage or absorb the valuable overall research results in the time allotted.

Figure 3: Research Assignment Structure. Top: Previous years in which a student completes one task within a group that ties into a larger document. Bottom: 2014 in which a student completes several tasks within a smaller group that covers the same amount of information as in previous years Code The faculty asks all students to make their designs code compliant. We introduce code in a technical seminar and periodically review students’ projects for compliance, and for many years, we have had code officials from Tulsa generously donate their

time and individually review our students’ projects for basic code compliance. This has worked to varying degrees throughout the years, but about three years ago, our students began to be less engaged in and responsible for code compliance. Students assumed that the code officials or faculty would catch their mistakes. Worried that they were not understanding code issues, this year we further exposed students to code with more professional and interdisciplinary student interaction. First, we had a professional emphasize the spirit of the code and how knowledge of it can empower a designer. Second, according to a typical cooperative model, we had our students interact with fire protection students. Our students provided plans of their designs to fire protection students who reviewed them for code compliance. Their students met with ours to review their marks. The results on our end were disappointing. The students seemed to infer from the exercise that code compliance was not their responsibility, despite the well-presented message by the professional architect and the thoroughness of the student fire protection review. A professional juror noted that this year’s group understood less about code than in other years; ironically, we did more collaborative code activities than ever. Next year, we plan to place the responsibility back onto the student and direct some graded exercises in which they review their own drawings. Landscape Although we generally try to limit the scope of site development in our programs, there is typically some sort of site planning or outdoor garden area that students must design schematically. It could involve parking layout, loading access, drainage, or sidewalk layout for pedestrians. It is clear that students need to have at least a basic understanding of these issues when designing the layout for a building, so, starting about two years ago, the studio immediately preceeding Comprehensive Design Studio began working with a landscape architecture studio within a typical collaborative structure. Students, we professors, and professionals alike appreciate what is happening in that studio, and it is important for our students to be able to work with different disciplines. Since then, however, there has been a pervasive thought among students in our studio that the outdoor environment is completely a landscape architect’s territory, which is simply not accurate. Engineers and architects must be fully engaged in site development. So, instead of applying what they learned from working with landscape architecture students, it is now even more difficult to get to students to engage the project at the site level. SUCCESSFUL ARCHITECTURAL ENGINEERING STUDENT ACTIVITIES OF THE CONVERSANT IMMERSION STRUCTURE During schematic design, architectural engineering and architecture students individually perform the same tasks: they schematically design a building, address major code and programmatic issues, design site layout, and select a mechanical and structural system for their projects. Engineering students locate the lateral force resisting elements in their projects for wind and seismic forces, which are reviewed by the architectural engineering faculty. Preliminary load calculations are performed

to size members, and their spatial and visual impact studied. If the work is lacking during the process, it will be returned to the student for revision. During design development, an important process of design, test for technical soundness, and redesign occurs. The exercises in the studio and technology courses are more than contemporaneous; activities or assignments in the technical course can directly impact elements of students’ projects in studio. For example, as part of the technology course, during design development, students take their building envelope designs and use eQuest software to analyze their envelope for heat gain. If the heat load is too high, they must redesign their exterior skin to be more energy efficient. Or if, during the structural calculations, the students realize that the sizes or spans they estimated during schematic design are off, they must adjust accordingly. The same goes for daylighting and artificial lighting. (Homer, 2013) In the Comprehensive Design Studio, each student performs all of these activities individually with the support of the respective faculty. Immersed in these activities, students can directly see the inter-related nature of architecture and systems. The engineering students in design development revisit their initial schematic structural design decisions, make revisions, and perform analysis using calculations, RISA, and/or Revit software. All students continue to design, test, and perform calculations of environmental systems: mechanical systems, lighting, and daylighting. Students must integrate systems through a detailed wall section and verify that their projects meet code requirements for environmental performance. Figure 4 features an example of a student’s lighting layout and daylight test results. When daylighting was initially tested by the student, the heat loads and illuminance levels were too high, so she added louvers to reduce the light and heat levels. The design was re-tested to meet requirements. As these types of changes occur, the artificial lighting layout must coordinate with the structure, so any changes to the structure would affect the lighting, and any changes to the selected luminaire would change the calculations and possibly the layout. All of these elements are incorporated into a building information model, and their spatial effects communicated in a rendering of that model. This process could happen within a typical collaborative group, but it would likely take longer, and each student would not have the opportunity to personally experience the shifts required for each element. They may not have to do all of these activities in practice, but perhaps if they realize directly the architectural issues related to program, client needs, code issues, and aesthetics in academia, they may be more perceptive and conversant of others’ roles later or may be willing to engage earlier in the process in a more impactful way. The same holds true for architecture students; they may become better aware of issues the engineers are addressing at various stages. Communication between the two can be more fluid, and perhaps issues that might occur in the project could be averted in a team with members who are more familiar and respectful of each discipline.

During the final phase of the semester, design documentation, all students create some construction document sheets. Every student, including the engineers, must do an architectural floor plan and wall section. This helps them be able to read architecture floor plans in the future. Architectural engineering students also create

Figure 4: Example of results from daylighting and lighting studies in a student project. structural framing plans, schedules, and structural details and complete more extensive structural calculations, while finalizing the loads on their RISA models. Architecture students create other related sheets. Faculty and professionals agree that these activities not only provide the depth needed in an engineering capstone course, but also promote the idea of integration of different disciplines. Students experience first-hand what happens architecturally, structurally, and mechanically at all phases of a project. See Figure 5. ASSESSMENT OF THE CONVERSANT IMMERSION PROCESS The reality is that engineering in essence is a design process, and architecture absolutely involves an understanding of more technical phenomena. It is easier to consider each student’s neatly doing his or her separate tasks within a group as in cooperative collaboration, but there are overlaps and interrelated activities in the profession, nuances of anticipating what is next, and decisions that have effects on the overall process and product. (Homer, 2011)

Informally and formally, engineering employers and architects who work with our architectural engineering graduates report that they make great partners down the road due to their experiences at Oklahoma State. More than some other graduates, they are likely to understand how to integrate into the process early, communicate with architects, and engage architects in a dynamic and interactive environment. In fact, many of the engineering students are quite good designers and challenge misconceptions about engineers.

“Often people call me architect engineer as a compliment. It is meant to signify a quality of engineer who is more imaginative and design-oriented than a normal engineer….the engineer is associated with unimaginative and dull solutions.” (Rice)

Figure 5: Example of the impact of structural system and architectural refinement in an architectural engineering student’s project from schematic design (top) to design development (bottom). John Phillips, the architectural engineering faculty member in the Capstone Comprehensive Design Studio, in a paper summarizes student, graduate, professional, and employer feedback from course and curriculum assessment regarding the amount of architectural design our architectural engineering students perform during the curriculum and capstone course. (Phillips) To many people’s surprise, all constituents continue to agree that requiring architectural engineers to design architecture is valuable, as long as the necessary depth of structural design is achieved. This is our

challenge in the studio, and constant adjustments to the course ensure that this is happening. Ultimately, the goal of any adjustment to the course is an attempt to bridge the often present gap separating engineering and architecture and between education and practice. As stated by theorist Viollet-le-Duc, “The means of healing this rupture could only be an education in which the architect is taught engineering as well as art, and, optimally, the engineer learns how to practice his craft with appropriate artistry.” (Hearn) Viollet’s theories are easily applicable to the present day, because the basis of his ideas calls for the incorporation of structural design, new technologies, and new materials into architectural design. The work of many contemporary engineering and architecture practices are manifestations of his theories, including Guy Nordenson, Ove Arup, RFR, and Renzo Piano. Our intention is to not to simply mimic practice, though, but to prepare all students to be thorough problem solvers and effective team leaders. A good leader sees a project through many lenses and is able to anticipate opportunities and problems in integration. A leader also must communicate to a variety of constituents, and what better way is there to learn and respect the various languages than to be immersed in them, albeit briefly? The faculty and professional alumni support the activities performed in the Comprehensive Design Studio that foster positive professional relationships in the long-term. REFERENCES Datar, S., Garvin, D. & Cullen, P. (2010). “Rethinking the MBA: Business education at a crossroads.” Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA. SERC (2012). “Potential Challenges with Cooperative Learning.” Cooperative Learning Techniques, http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/techniques.html> (June 15, 2014). Dillenbourg, P., Baker, M., Blaye, A. & O'Malley, C. (1996). “The evolution of research on collaborative learning.” In E. Spada & P. Reiman (Eds) Learning in Humans and Machine: Towards an Interdisciplinary Learning Science, Oxford, Elsevier, 189-211. Duckworth, Angela L. (2013). “The Significance of Grit: A Conversation with Angela Lee Duckworth”. Deborah Perkins-Gough. Educational Leadership. ASCD. September, 2013, Volume 71, Number 1, 14-20. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept13/vol71/num01/The-Significance-of-Grit@-A-Conversation-with-Angela-Lee-Duckworth.aspx Hearn, M.F., ed. (1990). The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentaries, MIT Press, Cambridge, 126.

Homer, Jeanne (2011). “Comprehensive Design Studio: Creating Opportunity for Multifaceted Collaboration.” Collaboration/Innovation, AIA Illinois Conference.

Homer, J., Mansy, K. & Phillips, P. (2013). “Collaboration, Integration, and Redesign in the Comprehensive Design Studio.” In Zarzycki, A. and Dermody, R., (Eds) Building Technology Educator’s Society Tectonics of Teaching Conference Proceedings, 83-93.

Phillips, John (2013). “Architecture in a Comprehensive Studio for Architectural Engineering Students.” In Zarzycki, A. and Dermody, R., (Eds) Building Technology Educator’s Society Tectonics of Teaching Conference Proceedings, 73-81. Rice, Peter (1994). Engineer Imagines, ellipsis london limited, London, 71.