Teaching architectural design through character reading

Teaching the understanding of critical thinking within architectural design education supports students to develop design thinking and strengthens individual creative design processes. To comprehend architectural design teaching through critical thinking more effectively, an approach to introduce character reading as a design methodology was investigated in a second year architectural design studio. Through a guided process, students were asked to explore distinctive qualities of characters appearing in a novel and implement them into an architectural design for residential use. The student’s performance was measured by evaluating their argumentative approach and their final design. As an outcome, most students successfully showed improved creative and visible development of their designs through character reading and its implementation as a design methodology. Critical thinking as well as character reading proved to be a critical in design education and design thinking.