Closing the Gap: The e4d Design Series and the Mediation of Digital Design Skills

The e4d design series is looking for an innovative use of digital technology in architectural education to overcome the gap between design development and the acquisition of digital skills. Digital design approaches include multimedia technology, the crossover of analogue and digital techniques, rapid-prototyping, visualization, and the presentation in artistic movies. Over the past two years a problem- based design approach was developed, which enabled students to learn digital and architectural skills simultaneously and efficiently. The educational concept consisted generally of four steps, which, though independent of each other, are determined by questions of the ongoing design process. The first step consists of an abstract or subjective research phase; in the second step the findings are transferred into dynamic spatial structures. Later, the detected qualities are used to develop a given building program. Finally, the different traces are connected, when site-specific parameters are blended with the design traces. This paper examines and evaluates textual and visual design approaches, the precise use of different kinds of media for the projects’ visualization, and the way architectural projects can be discussed; in addition, a competent monitoring of the process and outcome of innovative and efficient design strategies in architectural and pedagogical aspect is included.