Paper ID #33854

Convergence in Engineering and Architectural Design Education:Mission-driven Integrated Design Studio

Dr. Ryan Solnosky P.E., Pennsylvania State University

Ryan Solnosky is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Architectural Engineering atThe Pennsylvania State University at University Park. Dr. Solnosky has taught courses for Architec-tural Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Pre-Major Freshman in Engineering. He received his integratedBachelor of Architectural Engineering/Master of Architectural Engineering (BAE/MAE), and PhD. de-grees in architectural engineering from The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Solnosky is also a licensedProfessional Engineer in PA. Ryan’s research interests include: integrated structural design methodolo-gies and processes; Innovative methods for enhancing engineering education; and high performing wallenclosures. These three areas look towards the next generation of building engineering, including howsystems are selected, configured and designed.

Prof. Moses Ling, Pennsylvania State UniversityLisa D. IuloMr. David Eric Goldberg, Pennsylvania State University

David Goldberg, ASLA, is an associate clinical professor of landscape architecture and the technologyoperations manager for the Stuckeman School at Penn State. There he teaches courses in design vi-sualization, building information modeling, site design, and geodesign. His research interests includeoptimizing the physical and virtual environments where teams interact; enhancing interdisciplinary andtransdisciplinary collaboration between industry, practice, and the academy; and developing virtual learn-ing environments for studio design courses. Topically, he focuses on how the landscape is incorporatedin building information modeling and how big data and near-real-time data may be leveraged to create”digital twins” for landscape architecture. The results for which will be impactful to the practice anddiscourse of geodesign.

Dr. Sez Atamturktur Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Sez Atamturktur is the Harry and Arlene Schell Professor and Department Head of ArchitecturalEngineering at The Pennsylvania State University. Previously, she served as Associate Vice President forResearch Development and Provost’s Distinguished Professor at Clemson University. Dr. Atamturktur’sresearch, which focuses on uncertainty quantification in scientific computing, has been documented inover 100 peer-reviewed publications in some of the finest engineering science journals and proceedings.Dr. Atamturktur’s research has received funding from several federal agencies including the NationalScience Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Department ofTransportation, the Department of Education, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, as well as industryorganizations and partners, such as the National Masonry Concrete Association and Nucor. She servedas the director of the National Science Foundation-funded Tigers ADVANCE project, which focuses onimproving the status of women and minority faculty at Clemson. Previously, Dr. Atamturktur was thedirector of the National Science Foundation-funded National Research Traineeship project at Clemson,with funding for over 30 doctoral students and a goal of initiating a new degree program on scientificcomputing and data analytics for resilient infrastructure systems. In addition, Dr. Atamturktur was thedirector of two separate Department of Education-funded Graduate Assistantships in Areas of NationalNeed projects that each provided funding for 10 doctoral students. Dr. Atamturktur served as one of thefour co-directors of Clemson’s Center of Excellence in Next Generation Computing and Creativity. Priorto joining Clemson University, Dr. Atamturktur served as an LTV technical staff member at Los AlamosNational Laboratory.

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

Convergence in Engineering and Architectural Design Education: A Mission Driven Integrated Design studio

This paper presents a convergence-driven educational approach for a newly formulated cross-disciplinary design studio for architecture, landscape architecture and engineering students. The studio, titled Mission Driven Integrated Design (MDID), was taught in both Spring and Summer 2020 and is continuing to be offered in Spring 2021. Studio-based educational settings documented in literature often rely less on formal lecture delivery but instead adopt a Socratic mentoring style. At the forefront of the traditional architectural education, studios place creative emphasis on how to develop the aesthetics through form and space with general function of the building and engineering systems taking a secondary role. A comprehensive design studio, especially one including engineering students, on the other hand, interconnects architectural design and engineering principles to simultaneously achieve two goals. The first goal is delivering traditional content that is in architectural design studios for architects; and the second is the inoculating system-level thinking and integrated design of supporting building systems. To achieve these two goals, interdependencies between spatial organization and engineering systems are emphasized in the MDID studio course. Emphasis is placed on such topics as the iterative design process, systems-of-systems thinking, considerations on how to maximize overall building performance and occupant well-being all while keeping the design environmentally conscious and economically viable. By interlinking the architectural and engineering aspects, the course provides a learning experience where students focus on integrated solutions that require careful coordination of various design decisions, study of the synergies and tradeoffs each decision and convergence of disciplinary expertise to reach a holistic yet balanced design. This paper discusses how the studio courses can mutually support cross-disciplinary collaboration of architecture, landscape architecture, architectural engineering students by providing mission driven lenses informed by real-world issues and clients. Discussion points in the paper include course outcomes, collaborative mechanisms for multi-disciplinary instruction – both in-person and remote, teaching students to focus on the mission of the project, format of the course and generalizable trends on the success of the course. 1.0 Introduction

Designers, builders and owners have been increasingly recognizing the value of having more

integrated approach in the design process to facilitate development of an overall better building performance (Holland et al. 2010). To be equipped to contribute to and lead integrated design teams, it is critical that students gain experience during their education in integrated design projects that leverage collaboration (Messner et al. 2011). In academic settings, strategic locations for integrated design education are commonly located in capstones and design studios. For engineering students, capstone courses look largely at technical integration and engineering system development, whereas for architecture students, design and holistic integration of a building is primarily covered in a series of design studios (Solnosky et al. 2021). For architectural engineering (AE) students, this integrative thinking comes through in their exposure to architectural studios (Iulo et al, 2017).

In general, design studios are meant to provide students with knowledge necessary to produce innovative, creative and competent design solutions (Ibrahima and Utaberta 2012). Historically, architectural design studio models have focused on learning by doing. Schön (1984; 1985) found that most architecture studios utilize active learning that is ‘reflective’ and ‘conversational’ in which the students and instructors gradually come to understand each other. While some traditional design studio consists of a teacher telling students what to do and student doing what they are told, other formats have student taking the lead with the critique being the main feedback mechanism for what to further explore (Hassanpour et al. 2010). Part of this reflection comes from classical training of architects and the experience imparted to students by their design instructors. Rarely are these instructors are experts on educational theories. The experience of the faculty may or may not align with the projects and thus, a disconnect exists (Goldschmidt

et al. 2010). Hence, a need has been recognized for moving beyond a trial-and-error approach to design by adapting to more systematic iterations (Wang 2010). There have been educational attempts to critically shift the studio paradigm including (Grover et al. 2020):

• Collaboration beyond subject boundaries to tackle cross-disciplinary performance challenges

(O’Rafferty et al., 2014) • Sustainable development and building performance (Howlett et al. 2016) • Competitive design challenges within and across teams of students (Fleming 2002) • Gamification-based approaches (Reinhart, et al. 2012) • Technology adoption in increasing student learning and for design enhancement (Goldberg et al.

2012) • Interdisciplinary design adopting Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) approaches (Holland et al.

2010; Goldberg, et al. 2014; Iulo et al. 2017) Architectural design is a collaborative process that involves participatory practice (Emam et al.

2019). It requires teams of individuals working together to achieve a singular vision and a predefined set of goals (Crosbie 1995). In a learning environment, students and faculty need to cooperate to achieve common goals in a highly collaborative nature consistent with the industry the designed building will serve (Daniels 2002). To equip students with the skills for interdisciplinary collaboration, many accrediting boards of different disciplines require collaboration as a learning criterion, although they do not dictate which disciplines should collaborate or in what setting (e.g., studio, seminar or lecture) collaboration should be achieved (ABET 2019; NAAB 2020). Although the Landscape Architectural Accreditation Board standards does not reference collaboration specifically, it states that “a professional degree program at the bachelor’s level shall provide an educational context enriched by other disciplines, including but not limited to liberal and fine arts, natural sciences, and social sciences, as well as opportunities for students to develop other areas of interest” (LAAB 2021). For engineering, ABET (2019), requires all programs to have some experience that has students “function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives”.

Attempts at studio collaboration between departments of architecture, landscape architecture, architectural engineering, civil engineering, and other design disciplines have been ongoing for decades (Fruchter 2003). These collaborative studio courses have not gained widespread adaption, however, in part because coordinating different learning objectives, curricula schedules and teaching responsibilities is challenging and because different design cultures exist for different disciplines (Poerschke 2011). The studio course arrangement discussed herein overcomes these challenges by creating a multicourse, co-instructed structure that works within the constraints of the undergraduate architecture, engineering, and landscape architecture curricula.

The authors purport that design as simply a creative expression must make way for a deeper purposeful training exercise that prepares students for leadership in the ever-challenging building design professions. In this paper, we present a collaborative studio instituting a re-envisioned building design course and serving as an alternative architectural studio at Penn State. This new vision focuses on providing valuable design experience for students informed by project mission in tight collaboration with building clients and professionals. To advance traditional studio approaches and ongoing collaborative challenges in architectural design education, this paper describes this ongoing initiative that offers students the opportunity to work on a team comprised of architecture, landscape architecture, and AE students specializing in structural, mechanical (HVAC), lighting/electrical, and construction options.

2.0 Architectural Engineering Studio History

Tying to ABET, one of Penn State’s Architectural Engineering (AE) Department’s ABET Program Educational Objectives (PEO) states that graduates will apply expertise in one or more areas related to integrative planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of buildings and infrastructure in their professional careers (ABET 2019). Additionally, current ABET program specific criteria states that the achieved synthesis (design) level of one of the three curriculum areas must be in a context that works within the architectural design. While this non-specific criterion sets the passing bar, Penn State’s AE Department has long recognized that engineering graduates have benefited from hands-on involvement with architectural design. To prepare students as discipline experts and interdisciplinary leaders the AE Department is built on a convergence education model where deep integration of knowledge, techniques, and expertise from multiple, traditionally disparate fields form new and expanded frameworks for addressing scientific and societal challenges and opportunities (USC 2017).

In the AE Department, architecture studios are programmed in the 2nd and 4th years, totaling 12 credits for the design option students (4 studios) and 9 credits for construction option students (three studios). For the last three-credit studio, students may choose the standard 4th year studio, a study-abroad studio, or this Mission-Driven Integrated Design (MDID) studio. Studio courses in the curriculum traditionally carried the charge of providing familiarity and developing appreciation for architectural design. Since 1952, studio courses have evolved in the program based on continuous improvement processes, reflections from faculty and alumni, and the changing dynamics in industry. Historical development has included:

• 1970’s and earlier – AE offered individual design projects and role-playing an architect

• 1980 – AE introduced studio design teams more out of necessity do to a drastic increase in class

enrollment. Studios were staffed by architecture faculty and operated in a similar fashion to studio classes for architecture majors.

• 2009 –AE joined with the Architecture and Landscape Architecture Departments to successfully pilot a BIM Studio / Collaborative Studio (Colab) in a time when building information modeling was starting to establish a strong foothold in the industry. The Colab studio became the established alternative to the 4th year second semester studio with a focus on integration. Several AE faculty members volunteered to serve as studio critics and provided technical support as needed but the course was primarily instructed by architecture and landscape architecture faculty members.

• 2020 – AE incorporated a Mission-Driven Integrated-Design (MDID) approach for the Colab studio with the goal of moving towards a truly integrative design and professional experience. At the same time, there was increased industry interest to introduce healthcare design into the consciousness of the AE student. As a result, MDID studio has taken on a healthcare-focused project. Studios for AE students have transformed from simply a vehicle to provide students creative

experiences in architecture to thoughtfully promote design leadership by focusing on the mission of the client and, at the same time, provide a platform for an integrative interdisciplinary design process. Moreover, the collaborative studio fulfills research and leadership objectives for the upper-level architecture and landscape architecture courses cross-listed with the MDID studio. This is an ongoing evolutionary exercise.

3.0 Course Learning Goals and Objectives Our Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry calls for the best-educated,

creative graduates to lead integrative teams to solve technically challenging building projects. When restructuring the Colab Studio, two primary goals set the tone for the new pilot: 1) have projects that are mission-driven towards a client’s needs and 2) develop integrated design solutions to meet the client and code requirements that follows a professional design environment. The duality of technical expertise and skillful leadership in integrative design demands an innovative form of learning. The MDID studio took the overarching goals and prior successes from former studios to establish several hopeful course outcomes. The following learning objectives sought to create a pedagogical solution.

• Objective 1: Promote an interdisciplinary learning environment with students from different

disciple backgrounds. • Objective 2: Foster individual engagement and collective teamwork on the project. • Objective 3: Promote design processes that focus on the mission of a real-world project. • Objective 4: Engage in an outcome-focused (i.e. value-based) design process output (i.e. volume-

focused). • Objective 5: Gain working knowledge on the mission of the project. • Objective 6: Understand special issues with building systems, infrastructure, and sustainable

systems.

Objective 1 centers on the structure of the teams, where at least one student from each major and discipline is focused on the mission of the project. Success here is largely dependent on individual efforts. Teams with individual shortcomings can affect other disciplines as well as the overall success of the project. Spring 2020 and Summer 2020 MDID studios utilized a hybrid self-selection process for team formation that look at student preferences that are balanced by various design and technical skills. This approach was adopted from recommendations by the Lean Construction Institute (Seed, 2017). Strong teams with self-selected, motivated student clusters generated more successful and integrated outcomes. Objective 2 centers on encouraging individual engagement, contribution and commitment throughout the design process. During the initial conceptual phase of project, student teams are required to generate multiple design solutions. All team members must provide input based on their discipline specific expertise. This exercise was met with limited success as fourth year AE students began their discipline specific studies only one semester prior to this studio. While this can be viewed as a failure of the course, it can also be argued that MDID paved the way for students to understanding limitation on what they don’t know, encouraging them to engage in precedent evaluation and other means for engaging the mission-driven approach of the studio. Anecdotal evidence points to the MDID as a means for providing an initial immersive experience for students working in a large-team design structure. Although, at the beginning of the semester, students struggled with the diverse work habits across architecture, landscape architecture, and architecture engineering students, at the end of the semester, students commented that the most valuable experience was working with others.

As Objective 3 focuses on the mission of a real-world project, the MDID Studio is modeled after the integrated delivery method loosely following the American Institute of Architects (AIA) project design phases, while encouraging the inclusive and iterative process central to integrative practices. Here, student in MDID progresses through the following steps: 1) establish design drivers and “conditions of satisfaction” (CoS) for the project; 2) master planning with a minimum of initial required design variations; 3) conceptual design, still exploring more than one solution; 4) schematic design; and finally, 5) design development. Teams developed design drivers and CoS that served as a mechanism for teams to create a common vision for what is a successful end design. While these steps are followed in sequential order, design teams refine their design through the 15 weeks, much like a real-world project there are still iterations. Reviews are held at each project phase with faculty and invited jurors. The professional design team was central to identifying

the project site and brief given to the students at the start of the semester and participates in the presentation and critiques of the design. Real-world considerations for the project include:

• Code analysis (e.g. IBC, FGI, NFPA, etc.) and allowances, zoning and parking evaluation • Program and methods development building square-foot vs. construction type • Fire protection planning: egress, emergency lighting and signage • Plumbing fixture count • ADA considerations • Stormwater management • Life cycle assessment (embodied carbon) • High performance envelope performance requirements • Resiliency (extreme weather events) • Flexibility, versatility, and diversity • Prefabrication

Objective 4 utilizes the healthcare focused theme to more persuasively direct students to engage in

an outcome-focused design process vs. output-focused solution. This is a departure from traditional studios where students’ output and the final design, is the center focus. With outcome-focused projects, student emphasis shifts to the design process and appropriateness of how the design serves the project mission. Projects were selected specifically to engage students in outcome focused design. A particularly obvious example was the design of the birthing suite for which a midwife was invited to discuss her experiences and preferences, based on experience working with clients- birthing mothers and their families - in a virtual meeting. The conversations noticeably moved away from “I want to…” towards “the project requires…”.

Undergraduate programs frequently cover specific types of buildings, such as museums or other public buildings, in their curriculum. Other project types, including healthcare, are covered less so due to specific requirements and expertise required. Objective 5 sought to have students gain a deeper working knowledge on the mission / theme for the project by focusing on the mission – human wellness in healthcare design – and providing opportunities for students to engage with professionals and experts in the field. To supplement the student knowledge base, a holistic yet deep dive 8-hour micro-credential workshop was organized outside of the regular class. Speakers from national healthcare design firms, construction organizations, and hospital facility project management teams were invited to present in a day and a half workshop. Topics addressed included architectural design drivers, hospital facility management, the construction process specific to healthcare, and an overview of MEP systems. This workshop was well received by the students as it better prepared them to focus on the mission of the project.

Lastly, Objective 6 looks into developing a student understanding of special issues with building systems, infrastructure, and sustainable systems. One way to do this was to adopt mutually supportive architecture and engineering thinking. A resulting studio rule is that no one is a consultant; instead, everyone is a design team member and design decisions should result from careful consideration of the impact of and on all disciplines. Teams were challenged by the MDID studio and faculty to set goals to achieve the following:

• Maximize building performance: performance of architecture being a focus of this studio, teams are presented the following categories of design considerations:

o Climatic response to sun, wind, rain, and snow o Site considerations for wayfinding, vehicular, bicycle, and pedestrian travel, pick-up and

deliveries, refuge collection o Long-term performance, operation, and maintenance

• Occupant well-being: Healthcare design challenges the students to design a healthcare facility as a place of hope. The design of a healthcare facility must be people-centric. Focus on patient and staff experience rises above all other concerns. The design must focus on healing.

• Economical design solutions: Much of the in-class time is used to discuss and pull together individually generated design elements into a coordinated collective whole. Through this process, mutual respect and understanding is generated. Having a construction option student on each team, tracking and controlling project costs throughout the semester is an ongoing exercise.

• Holistic yet balanced design: In addition to engineered solutions, the project must address climatic responsive and human-centric solutions.

4.0 Course Development: Basis, Challenges and Solutions

With objectives and goals for MDID formulated, the development and structuring of the course pilot was undertaken. Many of the successful notions from the previous version of the CoLab were adopted into MDID. This section of the paper details the course basis, challenges encountered and some solutions that were tried. Focus areas are the:

• Mission development • Student cohort size and selection • Competing institutional constraints to overcome • Appropriate project selection • Professional support • Studio infrastructure

While the topics discussed here were considered at the planning stage of the course, some of the

challenges only surfaced during and after the course was implemented. Hence, MDID studio remains a work in progress, an academic exercise where each successive offering will results in revisions based on reflection of the faculty and consideration of student feedback. 4.1 Mission Development

To better understand the MDID underpinnings, the mission-driven aspect stresses that design must serve the building occupants’ mission. As building designers and constructors, the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) professions serves the client through the creation of a building project solution to achieve their mission. The second portion of MDID is Integrated-Design. Here students works towards integrative solutions to building’s problem and solutions that embody multiple aspects of a design and involve multiple disciplines. Students must, through their joint efforts, bring together the complementary and contradictory pieces to serve the purpose of the project and resulting in a wholistically considered project. As architectural engineering educators these diverse aspects are traditionally thought of as structural, mechanical, lighting, electrical, acoustical and construction. We cannot though forget about the critical integration with architecture and landscape architecture to encompass the entire building and its site. 4.2 Student Cohort

In the vision of MDID studio, the size of the student cohort per academic offering was limited in the pilot to a small size for the initial offerings. Each year of the pilot, the studio consisted of teams with the following composition of disciplines; one or two architects, one or two landscape architects, and four AE students, one from each primary discipline. For Spring 2020 there were five teams while in Spring 2021 there were six teams with eight members each. Flexibility in the cohort teams was necessary at both the department scale to accommodate this studio in the students’ academic programs and typical class schedule but also at the student level to accommodate times to meet and work outside of class. This is especially

challenging during a global pandemic where students are studying remotely, some from opposite sides of the globe. Students in these cohorts participated at a different point in their respective programs.

• Architecture 5th year undergraduate or graduate students; expanded to 4th and 5th year architecture

students in Spring 2021 • Landscape Architecture – 4th and 5th year undergraduate students • Architectural Engineering – 4th year undergraduate students

4.3 Academic Program Collaboration

Involving three departments and multiple instructors, MDID studio, at times, posed challenges when working collaboratively. While participation has happened with all three departments, prior to MDID formulation on two occasions, the landscape architecture department took a hiatus from the studio due to lower student enrollments. More recently, student interest and enrollment in the studio has increased. Amongst the three departments, two architecture faculty that have relevant technical and professional experience are advisors, one landscape architecture faculty with professional experience and advanced design computing expertise advises; and one architectural engineering faculty with professional experience advises. While diverse interests may be viewed across the faculty when developing project programs, visions for student emphasis areas, and advising during discussions with students, the distinct and complementary expertise and skills of the advisors more than compensate for any friction. Moreover, input from multiple advisors and professionals encourages students to consider different viewpoints and take ownership for decisions and providing thoughtful and thoroughly considered rationale for designs based on input from multiple disciplines represented on the student teams.

4.4 Competing Institutional Constraints

The cross-departmental cohort of students in a single studio experience presented many unique logistical challenges to organize and execute the MDID Studio. As with all traditional studio instruction, courses require or expect significantly more out of class design and collaboration time as compared to scheduled in-class meetings. While architecture and landscape architecture studios are six and five-credits respectively, architectural engineering studios are 3-credits. As such, a workload balance between the three to six credits split along with expectations of available time had to be overcome. The tested solution was developed with a slightly different in-class experience for each cohort of students. Listed here are the breakdown of expected hours of in-class work.

• Arch 491 (6 credits) – Tuesday and Thursday 1:35 -5:30 • LArch 414 (6 credits) – Tuesday and Thursday 1:35-5:30 • AE 497 (3 credits) – Tuesday and Thursday 2:30-5:30; with the introduction of the MDID, an

additional hour of in-class instruction was added, previously students met from 3:30-5:30.

To effectively collaborate and integrate designs, a core 3-hour meeting time (2:30-5:30) is set aside for cross-disciplinary instruction, guest speakers, design presentations with full building design crits, and time to work on the project. Most periods, teams work in their studio “pods” during the core 3-hours with faculty circulating between pods offering just-in-time desk crits or simply observing the interactions of the team dynamics as decisions are being made. During the 1:35-2:30 time block, architecture and landscape architecture faculty members meet independently with their respective student cohorts. In 2021, architectural engineering instituted an “AE Huddle” after the core studio hour to address issues and provide discipline-specific feedback.

4.5 Appropriate Project Selection

Selecting an appropriate project is critical to the success of the studio due to the complex and distinct expectations by each program and advising faculty. The faculty has found that a real project provides the necessary sense of purpose for the students, although the program may need to be adjusted to match the learning objectives. The project must be simultaneously manageable and yet challenging. Based on precedent and experience, 40,000 square feet of building floor area is an ideal project size for spatial design and systems integration. The site size and program must be sufficiently challenging when there are two landscape architects are on the teams. A challenging site where collaboration of the project master plan and building/site relationships in the early phase of development, is ideal. The site planning and phasing may address the total buildout of the site while holistic, integrated project design is concentrated on the development of the building and its immediate context. Planning for phased development and the potential of the possibility of multiple financial stakeholders has proven to be quite educational. 4.6 Professional Support

Having access to the real project’s architectural and engineering design team is invaluable to the

learning outcome of the students and faculty alike. In the studio setting, the professional team provides a wealth of knowledge relevant to the project, such as site condition, local regulations, owner and community expectations, and regional economic climate. These practitioners provide their expertise on these themed building types (healthcare, etc.) and critical practical design perspectives. As a result, the instructors are relieved of the burden creating the project real-life scenario while allowing students to learn details from professionals that faculty are not inherently as familiar with (particularly healthcare design). Students directly benefit from gaining first-hand expertise on the project in informal reviews, formal presentations, and milestone deadline reviews.

4.7 Studio Infrastructure

To support a collaborative interdisciplinary studio and ensure successful collaboration, the physical

setting is another key factor. Student motivation is supported by the physical space that teams utilize. This MDID studio is held inside one of the College of Arts and Architecture’s studio spaces where AE students join. Outside of class, students can continue to work in this space or AE students can work in the AE Department’s studio space (in a separate building). A large open studio was used to provide the “big-room” experience similar to how firms co-locate all design in a single space. Initially, on a weekly basis, all team members met in the big room for group instruction and team meetings. The faculty was able to deliver both preplanned and spontaneous instruction to the entire cohort of students, at the same time allowing students to collaboratively work in smaller teams. Additionally, each team is provisioned a dedicated “Collaboration Pod” to serve as their meeting space and was provided access to a high-performance workstation. Each workstation is equipped with a CPU (4.0 GHz i7, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD, and NVIDIA RTX 2080-8GB) connected to a 24” touch display, 60” LED display, and HTC Vive VR headsets. However, the pandemic altered our access to these resources.

When instruction switched to remote delivery in the middle of the semester, the collaboration pods were quickly “virtualized,” Microsoft Remote Access was enabled on the workstations and were made available on a virtual desktop infrastructure server (secured inside a virtual private network). A facsimile of the physical meeting spaces was simulated in Avaya Spaces. In Avaya, teams were able to hold persistent meetings to discuss their projects and faculty were able to engage in critiques.

To be successful in these cross-disciplinary teams, technology execution by the students was critical for integration and meeting the mission. An advantage of having upper-level design students in the studio was being able to leverage their advanced, technical proficiency in applying specialized design software to produce professional-quality submittals. Specialized software includes: Autodesk Revit, AutoCAD Civil 3D, Navisworks, BIM 360; Esri ArcGIS Pro; Lumion 3D; Adobe Creative Cloud; ETABS,

DAYSIM, RISA-2D, STAAD Pro, Trance Trace, eQUEST, and AGi32. In addition to design software, the use of an online whiteboarding application, concept board, proved very successful. While students worked independently, their work was posted to a shared whiteboard, allowing team member and faculty to edit and comment on. The shared, online whiteboards effectively facilitated both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. These whiteboards removed the barrier that previously limited faculty’s ability to look-in on students’ work while in progress.

5.0 Assessment of Student Work

To properly assess these student deliverables in MDID, course outcomes were mapped to the different stages of design. From there the faculty utilized a three-way triangular approach to the evaluation of student work. Having a success record of accomplishment from previous years, the collaborative faculty utilized presentation critiques, written comments, and grading rubrics. Representative examples of student work across the different stages of design are shown in Figures 1-4.

Figure 1: Early studies on form, integration and performance through iteration.

Figure 2: Schematic designs for engineered systems.

Figure 3: Final design renderings of healthcare spaces to showcase client first design.

Figure 4: Final design poster set

6.0 Pilot Results: Faculty Observations and Student Perceptions

The studio grounded in interdisciplinary design to deliver considering the client’s mission served the engineering students well, in that it encouraged their deeper participation. The MDID studio also provided the appropriate experience as one of many studios for architecture and landscape architecture students. Defining the interdisciplinary studio as “mission-driven” leveled the playing field across majors (where no one major had priority in the design over others) and within disciplines by removing the traditional hierarchy of designer-to-consultant attitude. Every student, regardless of major, was a design leader. Every student inherently has discipline-expertise to share. Esoteric design solutions were less likely a result when the student teams had to focus on the mission rather than their discipline. The “I want to…” thinking was removed and made way for critical thinking around “the project can be better if...”.

A feature of an ideal project but was determined not to be critical for a successful student experience is having the project, within driving distance of the University so that a site visit can be arranged. Although proximity was not essential, a working session with project client and representative building users was. In the spring of 2020, the actual project site was not available in the middle of winter when construction mobilization has just begun on the greenfield site. A visit was arranged to the Penn State University Health System’s main hospital to meet the client and tour several ongoing projects. This visit resulted in the participation of several senior hospital facility managers participating in reviews later in the semester. Students indicated an appreciation for the need for design integrity when the project owner was involved. While not always possible, involving the project owner was a standing criterion for project selection.

Through the University Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness (SRTE), several generalizable trends were identified. Student cohorts rated the course, its mission, and learning experience highly. Answers to the open-ended questions reflect the need of some student to understand the course objectives and expectations of the deliverables more clearly and reminded of the goal of mission driven. Comments point to the dichotomy of the pedagogical format. On one hand, students have been conditioned to view university courses as having learning outcomes and rubrics for all activities. Studios on the other hand relies on Socratic interactions between the students and the instructors. By design, studios are open to the probing of assumptions, reasons, evidence, viewpoints perspectives, implications, and consequences. Active participation and self-motivation are key to its success. This point must be clarified at the onset of the semester. The most often repeated negative comment was the high amount of technology involved in this studio. The learning curve is steep. While exposure to the multitude of software platforms is good, a balance needs to be achieved.

In the Spring 2020 MDID studio, a student team incorporated their knowledge of computational design with Rhino and Grasshopper to parametrically study their team’s design for daylighting. The ability of these programs to perform early decision analysis and evaluations provide a powerful tool and an added dimension to this studio, particularly for this team’s response. While expertise in these design platforms is

not yet common among the student population, the AE Department has recently introduced three courses in computational design. A longer-term benefit of these courses will provide the students to gain proficiency in computational design and infiltrate studio design with a new dimension and perspective of iteration, integration and holistic study.

A unique 6-week offering of MDID Studio in summer 2020 was held with only engineering students in the integrated bachelor and master (BAE/MAE) program due to the cancelation of the AE faculty-led summer study-abroad programs. Time and logistical constraints prevented collaboration with the architecture and landscape architecture program students. Without architecture and landscape architecture students, AE students took on the challenge of programming and site logistics in addition to other programmatic challenged. The design efforts pivoted away from systems requirements and design options. AE students were able to demonstrate their creative talents in developing an architectural solution. While the design and graphical output differed, student feedback was equally good. Students enjoyed the design experience working outside the constraints typical in the engineering domain. Students and instructor alike found the 6-week period too restrictive. There was not adequate time to develop the design. The focus was generating enough design progress in the deliverables for the next submission.

7.0 Covid-19 Interruptions

The unplanned serious impact of the pandemic at the mid-point of the semester drove home the reality of the mission of healthcare. Midway during spring semester 2020, the University pivoted to remote learning for the remainder of the semester. Having much of the collaborative tools already in use, the adjustment was less painful than expected. Team meetings, desk crits, and presentations all were held virtually using Avaya Spaces and Zoom. In some respect, collaboration was more connected and effective. Until the COVID-19 interruption, the presentations were held in person in a College of Arts and Architecture Department presentation space. After pivoting to remote learning, the presentations were held as synchronous Zoom meetings. The students were able to engage the technology and presented virtually and separately from their respective homes. The critics commented that transitioning to the virtual mode was excellent training for real-life practice.

Having the in-person experience for the first half of the semester, MDID studio concluded successfully with the second half held in a virtual format. With the abrupt change to remote learning, most international students remained in the United States. As the result, there were no time-zone issues. Studio courses during Summer 2020 and presently in Spring 2021, were less efficient since some students returned to their home country making real-time synchronous collaboration more difficult. 8.0 Conclusion

The field of Architectural Engineering involves the merger of the professions: architecture and

engineering. The sequential order of the disciplines may hold the key to its successful industry practice. Architecture comes ahead of engineering and should be optimized in an interdisciplinary design process prior to applying an engineering solution. Architecture educators have long espoused that the best format for promoting learning of technical subject application is in design exposure in studios. For architectural engineering, simply replicating design-for-design sake studios in an architectural engineering curriculum is insufficient as technical system knowledge must be incorporated specifically to integrate and innovate the solutions so systems and form positively impact one another. Ultimately, the goal of architectural education is to create discipline experts that are also interdisciplinary leaders.

This piloted Mission-Design Integrative-Design (MDID) Studio is a step towards putting into practice these interactions by placing the client and their mission before designer wants. From a healthcare mission and themed perspective, the mission for a healthcare facility is focused on healing. The design is people centric. The focus on healthcare facilities positions the design experience in a creative space with metaphysical, social, environmental, and economic boundaries. Healthcare facilities are inherently multi-disciplinary and require substantial integration across disciplines due to their complexity while also having

a critical driving factor of performance necessity to support the users of the facility. Due to this unique type of building that is inherently very user focused permitted the students to design towards those missions more proactively.

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