Professors
2. Pre-requirements and co-requirements
To take this subject, students must have passed Construction III (AR045) and Projects (AS017).
To be enrolled in the subject Installations Set Up (AS024) is a co-requirement to take this class.
Among the recommended previous knowledge we can mention:
- General knowledge about architectonic typologies, their history and evolution.
- General knowledge about construction: material, building systems and their construction.
- Advanced knowledge about representation techniques: manual techniques, vectorial programs and parametric programs by computer assisted drawing.
- General knowledge about building structures: structural systems, criteria about election.
- General knowledge of installations and services: election criteria, implantation and installations. Thermal and acoustic exigencies, comfort parameters.
- Knowledge about sustainability in architecture.
- General knowledge of the technical and urban regulations.
- General knowledge about using model-scales as a tool for a project.
3. Competences that the subject helps to develop:
The principal objective of the subject is to introduce the student into the complex empiric process that the development of an architectural project implies. During the course, the student will familiarize with the different phases of an executive project, the graphic documentation that use to be part of these phases and with the adequate methods and tools for a correct development.
The enormous quantity of technical and normative requirements, the preexistence of the site and its environmental conditions, the indications for the construction or the incorporation of multidisciplinary professionals in the project are some of the many factors that affect and condition the final result of the building and sometimes they might provoke that the architectural idea of the beginning losses its coherence or that the generation principles disappear among all the other aspects that need to be satisfied. To understand that the development of a project is an enriching and maturating process and to avoid that it is converted in a reductive or denaturalized architectural work are the purposes of this subject professors who also have to help students to acquire conscience, abilities and flexibility when carrying out the project.
Learning objectives of the subject:
1. Aptitude to create projects that satisfy at the same time, the technical and esthetic exigencies.
5. Capacity to understand the relation between people and buildings and among them and the environment, as well as the necessity to relate buildings and the space among them according to its needs and the human scale.
7. Knowledge of the research methods and preparation of building projects.
8. Comprehension of problems related to the structural conception, construction and engineering associated with building projects.
9. Adequate knowledge about physical problems, different technologies and the function of the building so that is has the sufficient intern conditions of comfort and protection of the climate factors.
10. Capacity to satisfy the requirements of the building´s users respecting the limits pointed out by the budget and the building regulation.
11. Adequate knowledge of the industries, organizations, regulations and procedures to convert the projects in buildings and to integrate the plans in the planning.
4. Competences that the subject helps to develop:
4.1 General competences
Instrumental competences (IS):
IS 1- Capacity to analyze and synthesize conceptual framework generating new knowledge.
IS 2- Capacity to organize and plan the application of new knowledge.
IS 7- Capacity to acquire basic abilities using the computer.
IS 9- Capacity to solve architectural problems.
IS 10- Capacity to take decisions (in projects, building systems, organization, etc.)
Interpersonal competences (IT):
IT 1- Acquire critic and auto-critic capacity.
IT 2- Capacity to work in teams.
IT 4- Capacity to work in an interdisciplinary team.
IT 9- Capacity to be sensible with the environment (in projects, building systems, sustainability, etc.)
Systemic competences (CS):
CS 1- Capacity to apply knowledge into practice.
CS 2- Capacity to acquire research abilities.
CS 5- Capacity to generate new ideas (creativity)
CS 8- Capacity to work independently.
CS 9- Capacity to design and manage projects.
CS 12- Capacity to obtain new challenges (incorporating new solutions and working
methods.)
4.2 Specific competences
Group A: Abilities
A1. Basic urban architectonic project.
A2. Executive projects.
A6. Graphic ideation.
Group B: Knowledge
B14 Ecology and sustainability
B25 Building materials
B26 Conventional building systems
B27 Industrialized building systems
4. Units in which the subject is organized.
To develop an edification project, in our case an equipment or a public building, it is convenient to structure the subject´s syllabus in a similar order and phases in which a professional project is divided: Previous knowledge, preliminary plans, basic project and execution project. The proximity that the professor has with the professional reality should make the student be conscious about the importance of the undertaken process.
The first phase of the work is the preliminary plan, a document that shows the beginning plan of the building and exposes briefly the principal criteria or project strategies. It is done during the last part of the course before the subject of Projects 1. This document must include at least the following parts in DIN a-3 format: 1. Establishment, 2. Program and spaces, 3. Structure, 4. Installations, 5. Enveloping, 6. Singular space.
With this collaboration, besides saving some hours that may be invested to develop the project, is to demonstrate the student that the contents they learn in the different subject are related among them and not only separate information.
The intention of providing the subject with such reality underlies in the exercise proposed by the two subjects, projects and workshop, and that pretends to bring closer the university teaching and the professional practice.
After having the preliminary plans, this course is about the next two phases mentioned before: basic project and execution. Each phase is carried out in one of the two semesters of the complete subject.
7th semester: Basic project.
This first phase is until the end of January before the exam period. During this phase the general characteristics of the building are defined through the adoption and justification of specific solutions. Ion this moment all the disciplines of the architectural project are incorporated. The architectonic integration in the structural system of the building and the installations as indissoluble part of the building. In this phase the technical codes and other regulations must be taken into account.
The incorporation of all the demands mentioned before, generate modifications and alterations of the preliminary plans, so the sustainability and the viability must be verify one more time because it must satisfy the surfaces specified in the functional program, the accesses, vertical communications and circulations, the relation between different spaces, the use of urban parameters, etc.
At the end of this phase, the project is in an optimum state to be built. The document that is expected to be created for this project is more than a basic and traditional project, it is expected to be a work that besides showing the general building configuration, integrates information of the rest of the disciplines that intervene in the project.
Finally, we shall say that the basic project is sufficient document to ask for the construction permit but insufficient to start the construction because it is necessary to define the construction of the building which will be studied during the second semester.
Semester 8: Execution project
This phase begins in February and finishes until the end of the course. The execution project should be understood as a constructible document. The materialization of an architectonic work is the architect´s objective; therefore its development should be directed from a general conception of the basic project to other where the effort of detail should be directed to the act of building, this requirement gives the process of drafting the implementing special significance while carries a higher requirement. The attention to detail as an inevitable requirement, the rigor in technical resolution and the precision in the representation of details such as the order in which de information is presented isn´t a luxury, but a necessary condition to guarantee the unequivocal interpretation. It should be mentioned that it is an exercise with a great deal of liability. The information contained in this document, in the professional world, should be enough to tender the project and allow the beginning of the building work.
The execution project is an indispensable document to start the building work, and in consequence it should contain all the specifications, properties and characteristics of all the constructive systems used in the building, the materials, their dimensions and processes.
The elaboration of this document requires in first place of the knowledge of the profession, but also, a research process to implement correctly the systems. The project´s guidelines must allow the designer to keep everything under control at every moment during the execution process, especially when choosing among all the multiple solutions that the current industry offers, the systems that are most adequate for the project.
6. Methodology and educative activities
The subject´s methodology is a blended workshop complemented with several educative activities.
The activities carried out during class hours are of two kinds: expositions that include the presentations of the different deliveries and general recommendations about the strategies that may help the project´s development; and conferences given by professors of this subject, or of other subjects that are related with the project development, or invited speakers that are specialist in an specific aspect of the project. The rest of the class hours are for students to do practical work and for the professor to correct individual or group work. Professor will be available some hours to give tutorships to the students.
The eminently aspect applied the subject is demonstrated not only by the percentage of hours devoted to work sessions in term time, but especially by the high percentage of hours the student is expected to devote at home to the development of the project, practically half of the total hours provided. For this reason, the subject has been implementing for years a serie of support tools for the student within the subject website.
The remaining hours are reserved for guided tours of existing buildings that are similar to the exercise of the course, and for a public correction session with a jury formed by outside guests and that coincides with the completion of the basic design stage of the project, and ends with an exhibition of work within the day of "open projects" organized by the University.
Regarding to the organization of the course, faculty is distributed coordinating groups of 15 to 20 students. The course offers indistinctly students the chance to take the course individually or in groups of two. In the diagram below, the hours that correspond to the different types of work and planned activities are explained:
YEARLY TIMER
Dedication to the subject = 12 ECTS credits 26 credits/hour = 312 hours
Yearly dedication (7th and 8th semester) = 38 weeks (34 class weeks +4 exam weeks)
Weekly dedication = 289 hours /34 class week = 8,5 hours/week
Concept Total hours
102 class hours
Theory
. 17
Practices
..
85
187 hours of student´s work (individual and in group)
Guided work
34
Non guided work
. 153
TOTAL HOURS OF DEDICATION WITHOUT PRESENTATIONS
. 289
Hours to prepare the exam
..
.. 15
Exam hours
.. 8
Total
. 312
7. Evaluation of the acquired competences
The evaluation of the student´s work is continue and done by means of an organized control system of partial presentations until the final work is completed.
In line to the proposed presentation system, there are two different kinds of exercises with objectives and redaction velocities very different: the panel s and the execution document.
The intention of the course is to obtain a document comparable to the one required in point 6 of the Rules to elaborate the Career Final Project, (PFC) that is also divided in a memory (panels) and plans (basic and execution document)
The panel, understood as a graphic memory of the project, is a reflection document of specific aspects. These exercises are intended for students to organize clearly the architectural discourse and to think about their decisions before drawing. Exercises are short, barely covering a couple of weeks. They aren´t considered as closed documents; on the contrary, they must be updated because they evolve constantly and at the same time that the other document of the course, the execution project.
The plans of the PFC have their equivalent within the subject of basic and execution project. These documents are a clean transcription of the decisions of the project, they are large and long-haul and are structured in accordance with the graphic standards of the subject, EGLS, and its final mission is the construction of the architectural work.
At the end of each semester, a public correction with external guests is organized in order to guarantee or encourage independent criticism.
Complementing the two main documents of the course, panels and execution project, two general works TG are also carried out. All the students of this subject, either in groups or individually, are assigned with different works of general interest, for example, the development of documents related with the execution project such as: the model of the environment, the three-dimensional model, the preexistence plans of the general group, etc. During the second semester, these works are about constructive aspects: studies related with materials, building systems and their placing. The result of these works reverts to all students as documents or plans that are integrated into the technical-constructive development tool of the DTC subject.
Finally, the subject implemented years ago a personal blog as the principal correction tool in the working sessions. This application allows the on-line monitoring of the project evolution process.
7.1. Evaluation system of the acquired competences
Within this continuous evaluation system, the final evaluation of the work is done by the professor of this workshop-subject in coordination with the professors of the rest of the subjects that intervene in the project development.
Students that don´t pass the ordinary exam in June may correct the amendable deficiencies for the extraordinary period in September.
9. Basic information sources. Bibliography.
In the subject´s website, http://www.salle.url.edu/t1/, you will find the specific bibliography for this subject. It includes general references of the subject and specific references for the yearly proposed exercise.