11200 Architectural Design Capstone Project: Integration

Description

This capstone subject for the Bachelor of Design in Architecture (C10004) gives students the opportunity to demonstrate the full extent of their learning. The subject supports this opportunity by teaching students how to integrate architectural ideas and technical systems in ways that enrich architectural experience. Students produce a coherent architectural proposal that uses a critical, disciplinary-based mode of design thinking to frame and direct an integrated systems approach to architectural design. Drawing on the techniques developed in previous design studios, students undertake a historical analysis of this systems-based design approach as a mechanism to investigate the qualitative and quantitative conditions that sponsor a sustainable built environment.

The summative nature of this capstone project asks students to apply both the critical disciplinary learning developed in the history–theory stream and the technical knowledge fostered throughout the degree in this subject. Students demonstrate the capacity to synthesise these different knowledge sets by integrating issues such as spatial and programmatic organisation, architectural experience, formal and tectonic expression, systems of construction, environmental performance, urbanism and building services.

Valuing a practice-based learning method, the subject mirrors how a professional office might work through a two-stage competition brief. This process follows a Stage 1 conceptual design phase, with a technically and programmatically resolved Stage 2 final design proposal. Relying on successive design iterations, students achieve a comprehensive, integrated design solution that responds to a heterogeneous and competing set of design parameters.