There is a current vacillation in choosing hand or computer for design presentation in academia. Although the computer emerged as very powerful alternative presentation medium, it could not sweep away the hand totally. Believing that this vacillation cannot only be due to the positive and negative aspects of both media, we worked with a group of students in a design curriculum to observe the factors that affect their choice of medium for presenting design ideas. The students were required to use both media for the same task, subsequently their satisfaction and evaluation were examined through a questionnaire. Students acknowledged the positive aspects of both media, rather than accumulating on one side. Findings led us to concur that the constant oscillation of architecture between art and science penetrates down to the individual choice of presentation medium. We assert that the warmness of hand is not deserted as it contemplates the artistic essence, while the digital perfection of the computers flirt with science. The ever-attended, age-old question of architecture's being art and/or science occupies the architectural agenda at various levels. Both the polarizations and the reconciliations have theoretical, practical and educational consequences. This paper locates itself within this context and proposes a new framework for analyzing the impacts of this oscillation in design presentation, concluding that the future of presentation in education points to the coexistence of both media.

This article argues that interior/architectural design education favours a dominance of final presentation over the design process in the studio environment, particularly in the evaluation of a project. It suggests that the appeal of design juries for pleasant drawings, which may shift the emphasis from the project itself to its representation, may be recognized as a discursive habit with limited contribution for educational concerns. The theoretical stance argues that the interest for graphical presentation has primarily remained within a formalist aesthetic agenda and has rarely been conceptualized beyond this convention. With this in mind a series of questions is developed in order to reform the relationship between graphical presentation and the design education process.

The tendency towards computer aid in design presentations differs in academia than in the practicing field; practice seems to welcome computer aid in presentation, whereas in academia there seems to be a dilemma. In this study, we approach this duality based on our teaching experience within an interior architecture curriculum. First, we unfold the problematic to identify the contributing factors, then we observe the tendencies through a questionnaire with design students and interviews with design instructors, and finally we project upon our findings. We claim that the contributing factors to the problematic are: loss of author identity, problems of authenticity, and proficiency of the instructors in computers. Also we claim that although the transitional period of accommodating computer tools in design education in terms of presentation seems to be over, an adjustment period is starting anew. One of the powerful aspects of this period is not allowing hand skills to fade away.

Abstract

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