Architectural Design Studio as A Knowledge Intensive System: Sociology of Design Knowledge

Architectural design studios are still an inseparable part of the architectural design education. Different pedagogical approaches, architectural design norms, evaluation methods and assumptions prevail on how to carry out architectural design studios. It is widely acknowledged that is a futile attempt to search for a unitarist approach on how to carry out architectural design studios. A new conceptualization of architectural design studio can open up new venues to appreciate the plurality of various ways of organizing and running architectural design studios. It is a challenging task to identify how exactly students acquire new design knowledge from the design-oriented, knowledge-intensive, and fragmented architectural design studio environment. Architectural design studio can be conceptualized knowledge-intensive social system in which participants, individually and collectively, acquire design knowledge , assimilate design knowledge , transform design knowledge and finally exploit design knowledge to construct an output. This knowledge intensive social system, is in fact, points out the subtle operation of social learning process. Design knowledge is always embedded in design studio environment. It is subjected to the prior assumptions, design routines, practices, and power relations among social actors of the design studio. The basic idea is to conceptualize the design studio environment as a knowledge ecology composed of socially enacted knowledge process provides an alternative view to articulate a systematic framework to explore the social nature of design knowledge and its taxonomy. Understanding how this social learning environment operates can provide important insights on the taxonomy of design knowledge. The research presented herein studies the design knowledge and its typology by developing a new conceptual framework. The proposed framework builds on a succinct review of different, competing and conflicting conceptualizations of “knowledge” and “design knowledge”.