Iteration has been a key concept, method and theory in many areas of research and practice, including mathematics, computer science, music, language, cognitive psychology, HCI, industrial design, planning, and architectural design.

The phenomenon is ubiquitous in everyday and non-design situations, like speech, song, rehearsal, psychosis, communication, and human settlement. In this keynote I will explore seminal examples of iteration in the design thinking and design cognition literature and present a framework for understanding the basic parameters, role, and potential impact of iteration in design(architectural, software, industrial, shape grammars, and so on). The definition of iteration will be based on the assumption that “progressive refinement” is its principal purpose.

In addition, some speculative questions spun off from this deliberation will be posed; “Is there a logical basis to design?” “Can we do without iteration in design?” “What about the first design is the last design phenomena?” “Are there prerequisites for successful iterative design processes?”

Ömer Akin has been a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University since 1977. He earned his Ph.D. from the graduate programs of the Department of Architecture in 1979 and has been conducting research on the design process and architectural ethics since then. He has authored numerous publications on topics including creativity, early stages of design, architectural programming, computer aided design and human computer interaction. He has served as the chair of three international conferences and guest editor of several international journals.

His teaching in the design studio deals with user occupancy and building systems integration; and in the class room with architectural decision making, the design process, and research methods. He has lectured nationally and internationally on related topics. He has been advising graduate students in similar areas of research since the early eighties. He has served in many administrative positions including as head of the School of Architecture. His personal accomplishments include professional recognition and national athletic championships.

Architectural education is largely based on the studio experience. The studio is a simulation of practice, to one degree or another; it is where students work on design projects with the guidance of teachers who are, for the most part, practicing architects. We inherited the studio system from the Ecole des Beaux Arts’ atelier where it was initiated two centuries ago, and every architectural education program since then, regardless of philosophy and vision, has left the studio intact.

The most prevalent activity in the studio is the desk crit (critique), in which the student presents a current version of his or her project to the teacher and then they discuss it, with the aim of advancing the project. The discussion is based on the presentation materials which, until recently, consisted mostly of paper drawings and three dimensional models at various levels of articulation and detail. The teacher would bring along a pencil and often speech was accompanied by quick sketches, on the student’s drawings or on overlaid sheets of paper. This was done in order to correct mistakes, clarify issues, give examples from precedents, and suggest different options. The crit would thus be truly interactive.

Today this is no longer the case in many studios. The students do not bring rolls of drawings and sometimes refuse to build cardboard models even when asked to do so. Instead they bring their computers and project onto a screen a PowerPoint presentation of two and three dimensional drawings they had prepared using one or another modeling software. Classrooms are equipped with black curtains which are drawn so that images will be clearer in the dark. Teachers no longer carry pencils; instead they sometimes use laser pointers to single out something on the screen during the discussion. Teachers talk, but they do not demonstrate and do not model for students. We must bear in mind that unlike reviews and formal juries wherein a finished product or a finished phase are presented for discussion, the crit is a much more informal and frequent event that a student experiences two or three times a week; the material presented is work in progress that is subject to continuous revisions.

This is a totally new way of handling the traditional ‘crit’, and we claim that in terms of educational benefits, the death of the pencil in the studio is a great loss. In the dialogue which is the crit, it is the teacher’s role to help the student reach the best results possible, but also ensure that the student will learn from the process lessons that transcend the current project. In the traditional studio the dialogue between teacher and student had two communication channels that reinforced one another – speech and action, the action being acts of drawing; this facilitated the creation of a shared mental model of both the task and the solutions. In the digital studio we limit ourselves to a single channel, that of speech, and often mental models of the two parties are shared only partially, if at all. This talk will compare the two modes of critiquing and show why it is essential to find a way to bring back the action channel to the crit in the architectural studio.

Gabriela Goldschmidt held the Mary Hill Swope Chair in Architecture & Town Planning at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, until her retirement a few months ago. A graduate of the School of Architecture at Yale University, she had practiced architecture until she became a full-fledged academic in the late 1980s. Based at the Technion, she has also held visiting appointments at MIT, Stanford University, Delft University of Technology, University of Montreal and Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. Her research interests include design cognition, design reasoning, design representation, visual thinking and design education. These topics had informed her writings and the graduate seminars she had taught. Gabriela continues to carry out research work and supervise theses in her areas of interest.