At the heart of the CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) model is the Capstone project, which helps link up materials from different courses in the curriculum so as to deliver the optimal learning outcomes in terms of students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes. However, with respect to the architecture discipline, its Capstone projects have a long-time tradition with certain similarities and differences compared to the CDIO approach. In any case, a Capstone project in architecture can only be effective as long as the design problems presented in those projects are relevant to the current and future real-world trends and requirements. While every architecture student would prefer working on some original problems for his or her projects, those are not always available. Most of the times, students will have to work on some age-old architecture problems, trying to refine or recreate already-available solutions. So, it is important that architecture instructors should help guide, select and/or develop the right kinds of architecture problems for their Capstone projects. Of course, the ultimate goal would be to optimize students’ learning outcomes based on available design problems and resources, rather than to create some original architecture design problems. This paper thus will introduce a number of problem design methodologies for architecture projects using the CDIO approach at Duy Tan University (DTU). In essence, it is a significant move toward open-ended and concept-oriented projects in architecture so as to provide students with additional room for creativity and innovation. This project-design approach would require certain work settings and team synergy for participants to be successful, and we will discuss various sets of training tactics for team members to be successful in open-ended and concept-oriented architecture projects. Certain assessment measures in architecture are also essential in preventing students from copying previous work of other teams or classes in the past. Given that the focus of our CDIO approach is “student-centered” and “outcome-oriented”, new evaluation measures for architecture have been developed at DTU so as to ensure that the problem-design methodologies for our Capstone projects do accommodate for the evaluation of both teamwork and individual performances. Last but not least, the allocation of resources at different phases or stages in any architecture project is vital to the learning curve of our students, and some of the novel practices at our institution will also be presented and assessed.
Proceedings of the 12th International CDIO Conference, Turku, Finland, June 12-16 2016