PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION
The DT175 BSc (Honours) Architectural Technology programme is an integrated studio and project-based academic programme which seeks to provide a holistic learning and teaching environment for the undergraduate education of the professional architectural technologist.
Studio provides a structured setting which exposes the student to a variety of learning experiences. Project work is undertaken against the background of lectures, critiques, one to one tutorials, workshops, group work and construction skills classes.
In studio, students have unrestricted access to a dedicated workspace and work alongside one another for long periods of time, both during timetabled contact hours and beyond. Studios are equipped with both manual drawing facilities and PCs, allowing students to carry out their project work using a variety of media and approaches.
The focus in studio is on active and reflective learning, with continuous formative assessment of project work providing ongoing staff feedback to students. Extensive project work allows the student to apply the various techniques introduced throughout the programme, and to develop the abilities expected of a graduate. Such skills include planning and management of their own work over an extended period of time, meeting deadlines, tackling work which lacks a well defined outcome or which has a wide range of possible answers, being creative, putting technical work in a social and economic context, presenting information in a variety of ways, searching published sources of information, and applying knowledge to unfamiliar problems.
Studio provides the setting for the development of a student’s problem solving and technical design skills, allowing the application of theory and principles, introduced in lectures and discovered through research, to technical design problems. Central to this technical design process is the ‘’esquisse’’ which provides the means for analysing three-dimensional problems using freehand sketching, hard line mechanical drawing, butter paper overlays and model making. Projects are subjected to regulation compliance audits, especially in the areas of fire safety, access, energy and health & safety ensuring compliance with appropriate regulatory requirements. Existing and new technical design solutions are selected, tested and refined against performance criteria, leading to the development of skills in analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
Studio projects allow the development of technical drawing skills using CAD to produce both 2D hard line working drawings and 3D renderings, while presentation of studio projects in the environment of the critique encourages the development of the student’s verbal communication skills.
Studio projects also examine architectural, structural, and mechanical & electrical design factors, the function of design consultants in these areas, and the coordinating role of the architectural technologist in resolving these design inputs in the building design process.
DIAGRAM
While concentrating primarily on individual effort, studio also allows for teamwork, between architectural technology students within the architectural technology programme, and in a multi-disciplinary way with students of architecture, and with students of quantity surveying, structural and services engineering, and construction management within other DIT schools and faculties in a variety of joint projects.
The studio format also offers flexibility for students to attend project related site visits and field trips away from the college environment, thereby widening their understanding of the context of their project work. These experiences are supplemented by industry and professional presentations, specialist structural engineering and services engineering workshops, building trips and visits to building exhibitions.
While the BSc (Honours) Architectural Technology programme will replace the long standing DT105 three-year Level 7 ordinary degree programme in architectural technology, it allows a Level 7 exit award at the end of year three, facilitating access to the workforce, or educational progression to a Level 8 degree in architecture.
First Year Semester 1
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First Year Semester 2
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Second Year Semester 3
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Second Year Semester 4
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Third Year Semester 5
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Third Year Semester 6
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Fourth Year Semester 7
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Fourth Year Semester 8
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