Beyond realism : into the studio

In his epilogue to this special issue’s collection of essays on early modern drama and realism, Tom Cornford returns to Stanislavsky’s studio and to the practices which gave rise to his “System.” This approach is often cited as the means by which realism came to dominate the aesthetics of theater-making in the last hundred years, and yet, as Cornford shows, it was also an attempt to go beyond realism and was inspired as much by the challenges of staging Shakespeare as it was by any other form of drama. Stanislavsky’s studio practice was widely influential and this article focuses, in particular, on Harley Granville Barker’s ideal of an “exemplary theatre” (described in his 1922 book of that title). This was intended as a theatre “founded upon corporate study by the actors,” a model which is employed by Barker to redescribe Shakespeare’s work as well as to inspire innovations in future practice. Turning to the present day, Cornford uses Barker’s ideal to evaluate some current developments in studio-based theater-making before setting out his vision of a Shakespearean studio for the future

An empirical study of the “prototype walkthrough”: a studio-based activity for HCI education

For over a century, studio-based instruction has served as an effective pedagogical model in architecture and fine arts education. Because of its design orientation, human-computer interaction (HCI) education is an excellent venue for studio-based instruction. In an HCI course, we have been exploring a studio-based learning activity called the prototype walkthrough, in which a student project team simulates its evolving user interface prototype while a student audience member acts as a test user. The audience is encouraged to ask questions and provide feedback. We have observed that prototype walkthroughs create excellent conditions for learning about user interface design. In order to better understand the educational value of the activity, we performed a content analysis of a video corpus of 16 prototype walkthroughs held in two HCI courses. We found that the prototype walkthrough discussions were dominated by relevant design issues. Moreover, mirroring the justification behavior of the expert instructor, students justified over 80 percent of their design statements and critiques, with nearly one-quarter of those justifications having a theoretical or empirical basis. Our findings suggest that PWs provide valuable opportunities for students to actively learn HCI design by participating in authentic practice, and provide insight into how such opportunities can be best promoted

Continuity and change: Challenging the disposable Chinese city

The newly outward‐looking economic stance that China adopted in the 1980s was reflected by a Western‐style building boom. As widely spaced towers replaced traditional courtyard‐based environments, urban legibility was lost – and the new buildings were not designed to last. In recent years there has been a backlash: adaptive reuse is now encouraged, as are loose‐fit approaches to new design for greater durability. California‐based architect Renee Y Chow traces these shifts, and highlights projects that have sought to redress the balance – including one by her own practice, Studio URBIS

Waste as a resource: an exploration of sustainable processes in the Ceramics Studios of UKZN through the practice and creative production of Natasha Jane Hawley.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.The following study is a practice-based research project that incorporates theoretical and practical components in order to identify more sustainable systems in the Ceramics Studio of the CVA and to understand the relationship between, process, media and concept in the creative practice of the researcher, Natasha Hawley. The studio based practice focuses on a Zero Waste philosophy, altering existing studio practice and integrating waste as a medium. The main concepts of practice include experimentation, sustainable practice, waste as an aesthetic medium, visual art materiality theory and cultural materiality theory. The theoretical framework integrates sustainability and materiality. An in-depth examination of the effects of waste on the environment supports the context and relevance of a sustainable approach on which this study is based. An interrogation of materiality theory pertaining to the visual arts and social systems provides insight into the embodied meaning of the vessel in my work. This exploration is reinforced by the studio practice, which reflects on the physical qualities and processes of the media. The style of writing pertaining to creative practice in this research has been based on the reflection, reflexive style as prescribed by the practice-based research approach. This discussion focuses on the physical and historical materiality of my key media and the vessel form, and the contribution of process to embodied meaning. Images and journal references are accompanied by in-depth descriptions of the media and process in order to establish their fundamental connectedness. Additionally the modes of display and contribution by peer-review in the set up of the final exhibition illustrate the importance of appropriate display tactics

Design Studio: A Community of Practitioners?

What constitutes design studio practice, and how do conceptualisations involving communities of practice further our understanding? This analysis is based on key findings of an interview-based research project that examined the insider experiences of final year undergraduate students of architecture, focussing on the network of relationships between peers, places of work and everyday working practices. The analysis critically examines the application of a community of practice model, and draws on Bourdieu's conceptions of habitus and field as a means of understanding how value is conferred upon individual practices through their display in the often challenging social arena of studio culture

Can grey ravens fly? Beyond Frayling's categories

This paper analyses the effect of Christopher Frayling's (1993) categorisation of artistic research ‘research into art and design, research through art and design and research for art and design’ on the debate surrounding the efficacy of studio-based artistic research as being valid within the university. James Elkins (2009:128) describes this as ‘the incommensurability of studio art production and university life’. Through an exploration of the positive and negative responses to Frayling this paper seeks to explore the influence that these initial definitions have come to have on framing the scope of the debate. The paper presents a range of responses and analyses them and focuses especially on the alternative frameworks that have been suggested and examines why they have so far not created a coherent and uncontested frame-work for practice-led research in the art and design field especially in relation to fine art

Critical Learning and Reflective Practice through Studio-based Learning in Planning and Architecture Education

Studio-based Learning is central to architecture and planning education. In terms of assessment and time spent, almost forty to fifty percent of the credits are devoted to the studios courses. Based on real life situations the Studio helps students synthesise various concepts in the process of finding solutions to complex problems. This paper attempts to connect the concepts of Experiential Learning, Reflective Practice and Critical Pedagogy to Studio-based Learning and, argues that, instead of being the ritualistic exercise it is currently perceived as, Studio-based Learning has an untapped potential to provide a transformative experience for the student. Such a transformative experience would include a re-examination of the current teacherstudent relationship, nature of studios as physical spaces, system of assessment and transformative nature of the studio exercise. Studio-based Learnin

Virtual studio: a digital repository in architectural education

The “virtual studio” is a project exploring the potential of virtual learning environments to augment conventional studio culture in the Lincoln School of Architecture. Staff saw an opportunity to bridge the long-acknowledged divide in learning between theory, technology and studio practice by linking a wide range of digital material and media from across the curriculum within a single virtual space, both formal learning objects created by staff and work produced by students. Early in its development the project was expanded to link with Lincoln’s JISC-funded Institutional Repository which aims to establish a digital repository of teaching and learning objects and peer-reviewed research across the University. The School of Architecture was to be an initial test bed for the creation of a more generic, university-wide repository. However, architecture is an atypical discipline; its emphasis is more visual than literary, more practice than research-based and its approach to teaching and learning is more fluid and varied than either the sciences or the humanities (Stevens, 1998). If we accept that it is social interests that underlie the development of technology rather than any inevitable or rational progress (Bijker, 1997), the question arises as to what extent an institutional repository can reconcile architectural interests with the interests of other disciplines. Architecture and the design disciplines are marginal actors in the debate surrounding digital archive development, this paper argues, and they bring problems to the table that are not easily resolved given available software and that lie outside the interests of most other actors in academia

Fishing in the inner sea

This work is a practice-led research that inhabits the frontier between the tradition in Portuguese ceramic tiles and contemporary art assembling painting, glass and ceramics under the idea of rhizome. The concept, borrowed from Deleuze and Guattari book A thousand Plateaus (1988), is used as a metaphor for the creative process developed under reflexive practice. Anchored in a framework that concerns contemporary authors and artists regarding creativity, studio practice in ceramics and glass, and driven from a praxis based research, this dissertation describes and reflects on: i) the site for the emergent ideas – the graphic diary; ii) the territory for the development of glass and ceramic forms – studio practice; iii) the paths, pitfalls, connections that constitute such rhizomatic proposal under the glass and ceramic creative process to render the work visible. The final displacement of works as an installation results exactly form the rhizome structure underneath the creative process followed in this research. As an outcome, a rhizomatic proposal for creative process in glass and ceramic practice-led research is thus offered for future studio practice-based research

Making judgements about students making work : lecturers’ assessment practices in art and design.

This research study explores the assessment practices in two higher education art and design departments. The key aim of this research was to explore art and design studio assessment practices as lived by and experienced by art and design lecturers. This work draws on two bodies of pre existing research. Firstly this study adopted innovative methodological approaches that have been employed to good effect to explore assessment in text based subjects (think aloud) and moderation mark agreement (observation). Secondly the study builds on existing research into the assessment of creative practice. By applying thinking aloud methodologies into a creative practice assessment context the authors seek to illuminate the ‘in practice’ rather than espoused assessment approaches adopted. The analysis suggests that lecturers in the study employed three macro conceptions of quality to support the judgement process. These were; the demonstration of significant learning over time, the demonstration of effective studentship and the presentation of meaningful art/design work