1/1 ÖĞRENME İÇİN BÜTÜNLEŞİK BİR PEDAGOJİ

Summer Construction Practice (Arch 190) at the Middle East Technical University (METU) Department of Architecture, which is conducted at the end of the first year of the education, uses the act of building as an educational tool to explore processes that form architecture. It is a learning process connecting the idea to practice through the act of construction; students are expected to derive knowledge of architecture from their own experiences, and from the actions they perform in the construction process. Following the footsteps of the Bauhaus pedagogy, the first year education in architecture at METU, which is formulated around basic design, aims to introduce the students to architectural culture and prepare them for the general traits of design (1). In the Bauhaus, beginning with the “basic course”, the students are required to experiment with different materials besides their studies on form (Gropius, 1952, 22). In METU, the first year education is developed around abstract experimentation of form and distanced from the constructional aspects of building. Arch 190 aims to eliminate this distance (Zelef et al., 2001, 277), and acts as a bridge between the first year and second year education by introducing tangible aspects of architecture and providing an opportunity for experimentation with these aspects (2). There are various buildings realized mainly in the rural areas of Turkey as a requirement of Arch 190 dating back to 1958 (Özkan, 1974). Each year, buildings are designed by different teaching members of the department, who are also responsible from the coordination of the course. Within two months, students construct a small size building. 1/1 full-scale construction is a continuation of architectural education in real site. Besides its educational dimensions in connecting an idea to practice through experimentation, working and living in the rural area, and communication with the inhabitants of the village underline the social significance of the summer construction practice. These practices help to develop awareness for social, cultural, local aspects of architecture in the student, and to teach the traditional way of building with the available materials. Besides faculty members who design the building, and organize the construction process, local craftsmen are among the significant actors of the 1/1 learning process with their experience in traditional way of building. Students are expected to learn the local aspects by working with the constraints of the context, considering contextual forces and physical characteristics of the local environment, ways and processes of collaboration and team-work with client(s) and user(s). This article dwells on the summer construction practice realized in 2003. In this practice, students constructed a Computer Workshop for the Primary School of Arılı Village, which is located in Rize in the Eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey (Gür and Yüncü, 2004) (3). The Workshop was constructed mainly out of timber as the local material, within two months from July 1st to August 31st, 2003. The work schedule was organized in a way that different work groups as teams could simultaneously act. Students were encouraged to participate in different work groups. Therefore, students have the opportunity of observing and experiencing different construction processes and materials. This article particularly focuses on the pedagogical aspects of the design and construction process of the Computer Workshop in Arılı, which provides a ground for rethinking architectural education within the context of 1/1 learning. Here, we address not the product (i.e. the Computer Workshop) of 1/1 learning, but the integrated process of learning-designconstruction itself, which evolves as the Workshop. Our challenge is to conceptualize 1/1 learning in Arılı by meaningfully integrating pedagogy with the process. The summer construction program at METU is a hands-on building practice, in which students learn from their experiences and actions. Actions done in a construction process have a determining effect on what is to be produced. Then, process and form constitute each other; they are two major aspects of 1/1 learning. It is in this sense that rather than being preoccupied only with form or process, an approach that integrates process and form by maintaining their distinctive educational potentials is required. Therefore, in 1/1 learning in Arılı, we developed and implemented an integrated pedagogical approach of ‘processing the form’, in which there is a mutual relationship between form and process instead of a hierarchy. At the core of this approach is the unification of the processes of design, construction and education so that students encounter various aspects of architecture simultaneously. In implementing the integrated pedagogy, a single operational strategy is proposed to unify the processes. The timber computer workshop is considered to be a sequence of sections that yields possibilities of different relations rather than a fixed relation between plan and architectural envelope. Sections are repeated in one direction in a way that repetition becomes not a limiting act yet an act that generates differences. In this strategy of ‘repetition of section’, the section is considered as an architectural form that defines spatial relations while repetition is an act that utilizes the section for the emergence of the Computer Workshop. 1/1 learning should not be considered as a simulation of professional practice in a real site, instead it is a particular form of learning that is to be defined through its own tools, methods and operations. In this context, this study discusses the particular pedagogical approach of ‘processing the form’ and its implementation through the strategy of ‘repetition of section’ as a contribution to 1/1 learning.