This article discusses the process of a study designed to develop university students' sketching skills in schools of architecture. Acknowledging the relationship between cognition and writing, it aims to investigate the role of writing in learning sketching among architecture students and to examine how students regulate their thoughts by writing as they work on their freehand sketches. It includes writing texts before and after sketching tasks to improve sketching. The study was implemented in a school of architecture at a Turkish university as part of an elective course on sketching. The students' works were evaluated in terms of their sketches, texts and self-reports of their thinking and the views and comments of the tutor who carried out the programme. This article discusses how the study was conceived and developed. The results of this study may provide insights for educators in developing strategies in teaching and learning of sketching and design, using multi modes of thinking. JADE 29.3 (2010) Abstract

Design is a complicated task that requires the simultaneous operation of different cognitive processes. Many researchers claim that the design process is something that can be supported with various implementations. Design education helps students improve their design skills by utilising different types of exercises. This article presents a case study wherein third-year undergraduate students at an architecture school's design studio were the subjects. The normal workflow of the studio was reinforced with checkpoints where the students were asked to complete exercises based on sketching, writing and visual analogy.The aim of the case study was to stimulate different cognitive processes in the students' brains through structured exercises to support their design process. This study questions the interrelation between each cognitive process and their relationship with the overall design process, plus whether verbal and written tasks as well as sketching, as cognitive exercises, contribute to the design process. The case study's findings indicate that students derived significant support from the exercises, and that there is correlation between the students' participation level in the exercises and their success in the design task. The case study also shows the interrelation between the writing and sketching exercises and their effects on the students' success in the design process. This article suggests that design educators would benefit from structuring methods efficiently in order to achieve better results when training neophyte designers.

No abstract

This paper discusses the Archimath programme, which was designed to develop awareness of the built environment in elementary school students, and to initiate an effort to improve it. Acknowledging the relationship between education and awareness of the environment, the programme was constructed for use with elementary school students selected from fourth to eighth grades, as an integrated mathematics and architecture programme. It includes topics from an introductory course for architecture majors and from the elementary mathematics curriculum. The programme was implemented in several pilot schools in Istanbul and was evaluated in accordance with activity sheets, pre-and postperception tests, and the views and comments of the teachers who carried out the programme. It was revised and reorganized in accordance with this feedback and then implemented again on different groups of students in the selected schools. This paper discusses how the programme was conceived and developed.

Turkish cities, architecture and lifestyle were all ecology-friendly until the breaking point of transformation of cultural issues, living habits and physical environment. Traditional large families lived in one or two story houses with courtyards where the design of houses and the neighborhoods were utilizing basic design approaches such as proper siting and orientation of buildings, interior and exterior spaces, friendly living with nature taking benefit of the sun, topography and vegetation. After the 1950s, rapid population increase in modern Turkey brought with it problems such as re-structuring of existing traditional environments due to the increasing urban population as a result of migration and urban sprawl. Uncontrolled urban sprawl meant unplanned re-structuring and socalled 'development' of existing urban environments. Unfortunately the natural balance of urban and architectural environments were lost during the false urbanization process and authorities including governments, NGO's and universities in Turkey are now trying to restore the situation with a hope of bringing it back to humane conditions under the name of 'sustainability'. Considering sustainability is the process of maintaining ecological systems at a certain level indefinitely, in the Turkish case, success is a utopia; or the question is at which level should the environment be maintained? At the level before the 1950s?