The Department of Architecture is absolutely dedicated to utilise Digital Design Media for students to create, evaluate and communicate all aspects of architectural design, including industrial and urban design. This commitment follows the need to promote IT that is part of the government’s vision to re-invent Singapore’s construction industry (‘Construction 21’).

Design primer for students to study appropriate
environmental responsive skyscrapers

Given the proliferation of IT, the Design Computing component of the Design, Research & Teaching (DRT) Unit at the Department of Architecture has been set up to highlight the interconnection of digital design media (DDM) and design thinking. DDM allows an integrated mode of presentation, where images, movies, drawings, and numbers (qualitative and quantitative design representations) are created as one and can be shared and reproduced easily. As the externalisation of ideas is considered an important part of the design thinking process, any improvement in the media used to externalise ideas or provide a filter for one’s thinking can also improve design thinking and should thus be applied (see: ‘Things Different: The First NUS Architecture Mobile Digital Design Studio’).

How DDM is used in the Architectural Department is described as follows. During this past semester, one of the eight Digital Design Studios (DDSs) that was conducted dealt with the topic: ‘Small Skyscraper—Vertical Mall’. The first part of the studio work consisted of a design primer (which contained renderings from 3D-CAD models of built and proposed skyscrapers) that allowed students to study appropriate environmental responsive skyscrapers before constructing individual designs. Through the use of various parametric 3D-CAD programmes, students re-modelled the skyscrapers, studied the spatial and programmatic configurations, and responded to the site and urban context. To understand conceptual environmental responsive design, they employed simulation tools, such as lighting simulation, to study the path of the sun and wind and their impact on buildings.

Next, students created their own designs by applying various DDM. Other key portions of the studio included documentation and presentation of the studio work done. To communicate their findings clearly and comprehensively, students used various authoring tools to create dynamic webpages. For documentation purposes, they also digitally video-recorded all of their presentations.

The DDSs were oversubscribed compared to conventional studios. Students showed great enthusiasm and the high quality of their work in using DDM can be seen in the accompanying illustrations. Consequently, there is a long-term obligation to maintain or even increase the amount of DDSs. However, conducting DDSs requires an appropriate curriculum that is quite different from those in conventional studios.

A study of spatial and programmatic configuration

Rendered views of buildings from Flash presentation of design primer by students

In December 2001, a printed, web-based and DVD documentation of the work accomplished during this first set of DDSs, comprising the primer and the final individual designs, will be published.