National Design Studio Survey:Findings

The report describes the findings of a survey of the impact of COVID-19 on studio teaching in architectural education. 798 students and 120 teaching staff at 29 schools of architecture responded to the questionnaire. This allowed us to construct an overview of the challenges and opportunities faced in a post COVID-19 world and provide insight into how schools of architecture might respond.Across all items surveyed, satisfaction among students had decreased following the move to remote teaching. Most significantly affected was the ability for students to learn from each other, to feel part of a community and to access the emotional and motivational support of their peers. This was echoed in responses from tutors.While in many cases universities were commended for adapting to online teaching, the absence of a physical workplace resulted in an overall detrimental impact on student learning. There was a 58% fall in student satisfaction after the move to online learning and only 7% of students preferred online delivery over its face-to-face equivalent.This report describes the findings of the largest design studio survey of its kind. It examines the challenges faced by students and staff in responding to the national closure of physical design studios and explores opportunities for the future. In the likelihood that social distancing measures will continue into 2021, these findings provide information that may help schools of architecture develop appropriate responses in the post-COVID 19 environment

Query complexity for searching multiple marked states from an unsorted database

An important and usual problem is to search all states we want from a database with a large number of states. In such, recall is vital. Grover's original quantum search algorithm has been generalized to the case of multiple solutions, but no one has calculated the query complexity in this case. We will use a generalized algorithm with higher precision to solve such a search problem that we should find all marked states and show that the practical query complexity increases with the number of marked states. In the end we will introduce an algorithm for the problem on a ``duality computer'' and show its advantage over other algorithms.Comment: 4 pages,4 figures,twocolum

A Look at Public Health

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Critical sustainability in the design studio:Pedagogic change through student engagement and collaboration

Preparing the architects of tomorrow for the challenges of rapidly shifting global, regional and local environments must be at the forefront of architectural education. Sustainability is an essential concept that requires critical appraisal to develop innovative and successful means of addressing its issues. This research considers a final year MArch studio at a leading UK institution and asks how a critical appreciation of sustainability may be developed in students about to enter the architectural profession.The research describes the results of an ethnographic study into the design studio to identify domains for change in collaboration with learners. It goes on to discuss the development of a sustainable design community of practice to developed strategies for enhancing critical sustainability.Adopting a bottom-up approach the research sought to challenge hierarchical pedagogies and develop strategies that engender deep learning, meaningful behavioural changes and an inquisitive and nuanced approach to sustainability. Approaching architectural education from a learner perspective offered new and valuable insights into the relationship between sustainability and the design studio. Four domains for change were identified; the course structure and content, the specific learning experiences, the ethos and attitudes represented, and the context of the learning

Enhancing Critical Sustainability in the Design Studio:An Action Research Project

Sustainability is a complex and contestable field. The architectural design studio typically frames sustainable design as a technical, performance orientated exercise, often at the expense of contextualised responses which address the conflicting needs of a range of stakeholders. Sustainability is often viewed at odds with “design”, in part driven by teaching structures which outsource sustainability to satellite units, elective modules or specialist consultants.This paper describes an action research project to enhance integration of sustainability into the architectural design studio. It took place over an academic semester on an MArch course at a leading UK institution. The researcher staged a series of interventions into the design studio through workshops, lectures and tutorials. A cyclical reflective process informed the structure of these sessions led to the development of a model to encourage critical responses to sustainable design.The findings show that while the workshops were deemed valuable in isolation, developing effective long-term learning for sustainability which enhanced individual design practices was more challenging. Some students were able to adapt the content and methodology of the workshops and integrate this into their own design process. Others, however, struggled to relate the sessions to their studio work without regular input. There were also differences in how students integrated the knowledge created through the workshops; some saw it as a means to clarify conceptual strategies while others used it as an analytical tool. This research concludes that although the interventions enhanced learning, their effect was limited by the implicit agenda and expectations of the design studio. Framing design as an autonomous activity which is independent, or contradictory, to sustainability was prevalent in the design studio, acting as a significant barrier to change. This paper also presents the resultant model for critical analysis of sustainable design. The findings have significance for architectural pedagogy and the nature of teaching interactions. Structured learning through facilitated workshops and seminars, embedded within the studio, may offer legitimate alternatives to the more common desk-top tutorial and “crit”.<br/

Critical learning for sustainable architecture:Opportunities for design studio pedagogy

Embedding sustainability within building design programmes should be of primary concern for educators. This research identifies opportunities to enhance learning for sustainability within a design studio pedagogy. The design studio is the primary means of educating architects in Europe, however, integrating holistic and critical approaches to sustainability is often neglected. The research adopted a qualitative approach in which a leading RIBA Part 2 architecture programme in the UK was chosen as a case study. Prolonged engagement revealed underlying pedagogic barriers and opportunities for sustainability integration. The research was conducted over two years, sampling two consecutive cohorts of students. Data were collected through interviews with staff and students, observations of teaching practices and analysis of course documents. The findings show that although students exhibited motivation for sustainability, implicit architectural values undermined holistic approaches to sustainability. However, the studio presented opportunities to overcome these barriers including: mainstreaming sustainability within assignments; embracing critical pedagogies; grounding learning in existing experiences; and focussing on the process of design. The research has significance for all design led pedagogies. It provides transferable recommendations to design educators as well as providing insights for the wider profession to enhance sustainable practice

Automated single-cell sorting system based on optical trapping.

We provide a basis for automated single-cell sorting based on optical trapping and manipulation using human peripheral blood as a model system. A counterpropagating dual-beam optical-trapping configuration is shown theoretically and experimentally to be preferred due to a greater ability to manipulate cells in three dimensions. Theoretical analysis performed by simulating the propagation of rays through the region containing an erythrocyte (red blood cell) divided into numerous elements confirms experimental results showing that a trapped erythrocyte orients with its longest axis in the direction of propagation of the beam. The single-cell sorting system includes an image-processing system using thresholding, background subtraction, and edge-enhancement algorithms, which allows for the identification of single cells. Erythrocytes have been identified and manipulated into designated volumes using the automated dual-beam trap. Potential applications of automated single-cell sorting, including the incorporation of molecular biology techniques, are discussed