Ten years ago, two instructors were working professionals. One was a practicing architect for a world renowned architectural firm and the other a structural engineer for a prominent engineering firm. Today, both are instructors. One teaches architecture at Iowa State University, the other teaches structures at Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo. As educators, the primary goal is to prepare students for life after college. To that end, a class was developed to emulate real world practice, where students are exposed to the trials and tribulations of communication, negotiation, and the total design process. In terms of learning, student feedback indicates exposures to the first two soft skills were the most demanding – just like practice.

Premise

As noted previously, a primary goal for college professors is to prepare students for the future. We do this by:

• Teaching critical thinking skills so individuals can become problem solvers
• Teaching speaking and writing strategies so individuals can become better communicators
• Assigning group projects so individuals learn about group dynamics and nuances of negotiation
• Exposing students to problems that reflect real life situations so students can learn from past mistakes and become confident to tackle future problems.

Each lesson is necessary for preparing successful students in today’s working environment.

Goals / Learning Outcomes

Proposed learning outcomes can be summarized as follows:

• Further develop communication skills; verbal, written, and graphic
• Further develop small group working skills
• Understand how to work regionally, and ultimately globally
• Further develop design skills when the “other” design team establishes the constraints
• Develop project management skills, such as forming a project binder (documentation) and establishing delivery dates and project deliverables

The initial purpose of the class was to expose students to a real world experience using design techniques acquired by the faculty members while working in practice. A primary objective for the engineering students was to expose them to projects that were not merely a box, but were elegant building solutions that promoted structural diversity, addressed site as well as internal programming issues, and exposed students to the total design process.

But as the class was developed in more detail, the project became a vehicle to promote additional critical working skills. It became apparent that the first two learning outcomes were really the hallmark of this class – communication and small group dynamics. It was imperative that students learned how to communicate clearly and concisely, since their teammates were located 2,000 miles away. We often take for granted how to communicate with others who study the same discipline – we speak the same “language” and find it hard to explain things to other consultants. The task set to the students was to describe technical or abstract thoughts in layman terms, so that everyone could work on the same page. Students learned how valuable a well-crafted letter or e-mailed sketch could improve their communication. They also learned that well-written documents take time to produce. The additional time spent improving a letter was typically less than the time required to explain things over the phone after a poorly crafted letter was sent to their partners. The class was organized so that, after the kick-off meeting, all correspondence between team members was via phone, e-mail, and instant messaging.

The Program

In the inaugural year, a glider-port was selected for the design program. This year student teams entered the AISC steel competition for an aquatics center. These building types were chosen for a variety of reasons: potential for a variety of building systems, potential for long-spans, incorporation of a multi-use facility, and the fact that the students were familiar or became familiar with the building uses. Again, the program became a means to facilitate not only the design process, but to facilitate learning of communication and small group dynamic skills.

The Kick-off Meeting

The kick-off meetings were crucial to the success of the project. The kick-off meeting addressed two objectives: to introduce the site/project program and to form partnerships. Our most successful kick-off was when we held the meeting at one of the schools. One school served as the host, the students were responsible for planning extra curricular activities, shuttling services, and finding ways to eat meals together. The main goal was to form partnerships early in the design process. This is analogous to partnering meetings that occur on projects to help form stronger bonds between the team members.

As an added bonus, structural/architectural contests were implemented to build camaraderie and again to help build relationships. The contests were simple but required interaction between architect and engineer. The first contest involved building a “human” bridge; another involved constructing a spaghetti structure. In both instances grace, elegance, and efficiency were rewarded.

Collaboration (The Design Charette)

Following the initial meeting, the teams began work on their designs, communicating on a daily basis to ensure that the architectural work was informed by the structural and environmental needs. Two months into the project, the first design coordination meeting was held. During this time, teams met face to face on the Midwest campus. Students learned the value of face-to-face negotiations and communication, the value of relationships in the working world, and acquired a deeper appreciation for each other’s work. Student assessment responses indicated that the most valuable time spent on the project was during the collaborative design meetings. Students felt they better understood the design concepts implemented on the project and had a clearer vision on how to proceed with the project. The meetings also enabled students to bond as a team, understand the priorities of each other’s design, and generally understand the give and take necessary to complete a project successfully. Even with all the technological advances made in communication, students felt nothing could replace meeting on a personal basis.

The engineering goal at this point was to establish a viable gravity load and lateral load resisting system – essentially provide enough information or guidelines about the structural system so that the architectural team could proceed with their work, yet not invest an inordinate amount of time on the structural design since it might change. Design is a fluid process. Revisions and refinements are a natural byproduct of design, so the goal for the engineering students was to describe a few basic rules for the architects to follow—rules that were easy to follow and easy to implement —while not restricting the freedom of the designers. In other words, have basic structural engineering principles been communicated clearly and concisely such that the architectural design could proceed?

This meeting captured what we were trying to achieve with this class. There was a lot of give and take, and a lot of “teaching” by the students to each other. Students discussed where columns were needed and why, and where columns could not be placed and why. The structural designers learned how braced frames and shear walls impact interior circulation. Architects learned that shear walls and braced frames are required to make a building seismically strong. The architectural engineering students sketched structural details on how things would go together, and the architectural students sketched renderings showing how it was supposed to look. All the things we try to prepare the students for in the classroom seemed to come together during this 48 hour time period. In the end, the students learned to appreciate the power of a sketch and more importantly the value of speaking and working with each other face to face.

On Your Own Again – Integrate

After returning from the design charette, the idea was for each designer to return to their “office” and complete their structural design. For the most part this happened. There were still coordination issues, but more fine-tuning rather than addressing massing issues or fundamental scheme design principles. Since the charette was such a success, correspondence between team members increased and more collaboration occurred.

Another obstacle was the 2000 mile separation and the two-hour time zone difference. We scheduled design studios such that the meeting times overlapped to help foster collaboration, but students typically communicated in the evenings after classes. And as mentioned before, most communication was conducted via e-mail, telephone, and to some extent text messaging. At this point in the project, students conducted business similar to working in a consulting office. Images were sent attached to an e-mail and then a marked-up sketch was sent back with a follow-up phone call so that design issues could be resolved.

The Presentation - Communicate

Upon completion of the project, oral presentations and project binders were presented to faculty and invited practitioners from industry. As with any assessment vehicle, the presentations and ensuing feedback from the visiting practitioners provided the students with another perspective on how building design can be approached and design issues worth considering for future projects.

Presentations were typically slide shows, structural drawings, skeletal models showing the framing scheme, plus any props required to convey the structural principals behind their designs to the reviewers. Students were required to keep the knowledge of their audience in mind, again reinforcing the concept of clear and concise communication and a reminder to use simple terms to describe complex engineering principles. Three practicing engineers with various structural expertise plus both instructors presided as the jury for the student presentations. Projects were reviewed for technical merit as well as architectural sensitivity – how well was the architectural intent preserved. Most design solutions expressed the structure to reinforce the architectural space, so sensitivity to the total solution was imperative. A sample of a structural and corresponding architectural solution is shown on Figures 2 and 3.

Project binders were started at the beginning of the process, January, and ended with their final submittals, June. The binders included all correspondence between team members, internal correspondence between “office” mates, and supporting technical information – documentation expected when running a project in the working world. The binders were a constant reminder of how important written documents are in real world situations. If you want to see how the project evolved into its final shape, or if you have researched a particular study previously and want to embellish it, the project binder provides the historical data necessary to retrace your thought process and move onto the next phase.

Lessons Learned - By the Instructors

Student exit surveys were very positive, and participants at both institutions have given the course high marks. Students felt the collaborative design experience better prepared them for their career in the consulting business and appreciated the challenge of complex structures and architectural constraints. But most of all, they all re-iterated the work it took to communicate to another discipline. This was a positive experience for the students and the two hallmark learning outcomes for the class were addressed:

• Communication skills were further developed when the team members found themselves teaching other students and themselves about load path, stability, seismic design, and constructability, and having to coordinate with someone 2000 miles away.
• Small group skills were improved when the architectural engineering students were forced to apply their two years of architectural training in proposing structural solutions that were sensitive to the architectural treatment of a space, or when the architectural and structural solution did not mesh. Is there a viable solution that can meet the criteria required for each discipline?

Additionally, an on-going challenge will be developing group exercises that encourage collaboration between structure and architecture while allowing students to become familiar with one another. Once those friendships are formed, it’s much easier to pick up a phone or write a note to someone asking for advice or requesting feedback. As with any new course, there will always be room for improvement. However, the instructors feel the challenges can be overcome, allowing future courses to be more representative of real world experiences.

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