Ar.Jaim G Koippallil, Assistant Professor, DC School Of Architecture and Design, Vagamon
The foundation studio is a singular experience in architectural education. It tends to be a student’s first exposure to the field, not as much as a set of skills, but as a mode of perception and understanding the world.
And yet, schools have struggled with a familiar dilemma for decades: the disconnect between early design exercises and their eventual application in architectural design. Students are taught to work with lines, shapes, and compositions, but often struggle to translate these abstractions into actual spaces, purposes, and human needs.
Across the world, architectural teachers have felt the need for innovative, experiential pedagogies that take students from inquiry to creation. The first year is no longer a collection of discrete exercises, but a fluid experience of questioning, where perception slowly develops into architectural thinking.
This year, DC School of Architecture has overhauled its foundation studio based on a
forward-thinking approach aimed at bridging precisely this gap. The course unfolds along
five interrelated stages, each leading to the next. It starts with sensory awareness, where
students are prompted to heighten their perception and know the world by way of observation and interpretation. They then proceed to study elements and design principles, creating a visual language that enables them to translate abstract concepts into concrete forms.
The following step focuses on the shift from form to space, where students are introduced to how abstract studies can be transformed into spaces influenced by scale and human movement.
This logically leads to an exploration of space, function, and context, where design thinking grows to how spaces are structured, how they engage with users, and how they interact with their environment. Lastly, the process is concluded by design integration, where previous investigations converge in rational architectural solutions, allowing students to understand design as an uninterrupted and holistic process.
This dynamic methodology emphasizes expansion over repetition, ensuring that no exercise is done in isolation. Each step develops into the next, enabling students to realize that the essence of architecture is moving an idea, cared for and brought forth, and gradually becoming space. Taking this stance, DC School of Architecture is attempting to make the foundation year more significant, closing the much-debated gap between abstract startings and architectural design, and getting students prepared to take their ideas forward with confidence and clarity.
