Delta column ‘Exploring Futures’, which I had rather just titled ‘Architecture’, but the editors thought that was too boring. I wanted to get something down on the difference between engineers’ focus on causing/guaranteeing functionality and architects’ aim to make possible, to create (necessary but not sufficient) conditions (Cf. Taeke de Jong). It turned into something a little different, more on the question of what it means to practice design and/or engineering as an academic discipline. Not my best work.
Notes / Other stuff
Went to Antwerp on holiday. What a stony city. Hardly any trees.
First session with my ‘Climate & Transition’-themed cluster for IMS. Off to a good start. Great session. It makes for such a different class atmosphere when an assignment actually matters to students.
This week was the start of the large enrollment BSc course I’m teaching at ME this quarter (‘Integrated Mechanical Systems’). It includes a project that ends with a written report. In discussions beforehand, a colleague said we really can’t assess learning goals in the area of general analysis and evaluative, critical thinking with a report anymore, what with ChatGPT and all. But after the experience of administering the group formation for hundreds of students, I think we should realize that we were never able to adequately teach those sorts of things simply do to the number of students, the fact that we’re forced to make it a group project because of those numbers, and the very limited time we have to engage in actual discussion with students.
Tinkered
I played around with redesigning my personal homepage (bobvanvliet.nl). More and more often I wish I had a central online repository of my stuff to point people to. Ended up going with a barebones block of text for the time being, after also sketching out some more fun stuff (see below). Took too much work to make responsive, though, so I opted for just getting something out beyond just an email address (which was what I had before). I would like to find the time to prepare and publish more of my educational materials for reuse by others.
This week I read most of the 31 papers for the ‘Bio Inspired Design’ course. Lots of wacky designs as usual. But this year especially, it strikes me how difficult (or just not intuitive) it is for students (even at the MSc level) to separate the prototype from the actual design. Under ‘design improvements’, for instance, a good number of groups describe tweaks to the 3D printed version of their work, while the final design would be injection molded or even made of metal or something.
This was my first week working 50% at the Architecture faculty and to get a sense of the level and approach of their first year’s, we joined their presentations. The designs were much more complete and (sometimes) rich than I expected. Fun!
Also, many models displayed that same sort of naieve inability to make an abstract model or representation of a plan or design that I noticed in the mechanical engineering students’ work. Most of these were very literal, unsuccesfully trying to look like real grassland and stone with printed textures on everything, and with way too much detail in unimportant parts.
University/organizational
Responses to my column on the rector’s remarks about protest and freedom of speech on campus have kept coming in this week. I don’t think I ever had this much positive response to a column from staff and students.
