Educating structural engineering students to be creative designers

摘要

Structural engineering education often focuses on an analytical understanding of structural behaviour in which engineering specific vocabulary, formulas and calculations are central elements. It requires students to go in depth first of a structural understanding before an overall comprehension of structural behaviour can be developed. This approach aims to teach students how to calculate structures.However, before a structure can be calculated, a conceptual design needs to be created first. This includes making design choices, for example which are the composing elements of the structural system and how are they configured, where are the supports, how is the structural system going to transfer loads to the supports and so on. Such a conceptual design requires a holistic approach where various options in design decisions can easily and quickly be explored before calculations in depth are performed.As part of my doctoral work that focused on a creative collaboration between architect and structural engineer, a holistic and designerly approach to structural understanding was developed. This has led to a proposal for a new language to express structural conceptual designs. This language contains four layers that provide knowledge on structural design: structural order, structural function, structural dimensions and possible structural solutions. This language has been successfully used for the structural education of architecture students during theory courses and design studio’s. It is based on a general understanding of structural behaviour to enable an exploration of various structural conceptual designs in relation to an architectural design process. It helps in overviewing three-dimensional structural design possibilities on a conceptual level without having to go into details of calculation and even structural typologies (e.g. beams, columns and trusses). The paper gives an introduction to this language, shows different results of its use in architectural education, and proposes its application in engineering education.