Teaching Decision Making in Architecture Studio Courses Using a New Technological Case-based Tool

Abstract

Design fixation is an effect that prevents designers from producing creative solutions. This document presents an experiment carried out at a studio course which demonstrates the existence of high rates of fixation among Architecture students, where decision making while designing is characterized by the transposition of typified components from referenced cases. As a consequence a Case-Based Design Aid (CBDA) is formulated to support design processes by enabling students to visualize similar problems to those presented in studio courses which have been solved by professionals in real practices. The strategy is to relate the technical data of cases to their real contexts and to the situations that produced them into acyclic graphs. The final objective is to increase students´ analysis, design, and creativity capacities by referencing precedent practices.