Proposal of a new method for teaching basic desgn lesson with movies

Studio courses form the backbone of architectural education. The purpose of the other courses is to support the studio courses and to ensure that the students graduate with a strong background. The Basic Design is a course in which the main principles and elements of design are taught and the ability to think abstractly is given to the students. In the basic design course, students learn how to start design, how to express themselves, how to use arguments and technical material. Today, some universities have Basic Design course as a replacement of Studio 1 course. Basic Design course is first taught in Bauhaus Art & Design School in Germany. It has been rapidly accepted in Turkey as well and has become a part of architectural education. The literature research shows that new methods are applied constantly for teaching basic design. In order to adapt the course to the changing life style over time, the instructors update and renovate their teaching methods. This thesis proposes a new teaching method along with cinema movies for the basic design course. Researches show that this method has not been exercised before and it is a unique study. The students that have been studying in universities nowadays are called Z generation which were born in the digital era. It is getting more and more difficult to attract the attention of this crowd, who are accustomed to seeing instant slides on social media and the internet, encountering a novelty every day. The starting point of this study was the concern to increase students' interest in the basic design course. Acting on the idea that the kinship of architecture and cinema will benefit the basic design course, a method has been put forward in which movies are a part of the basic design course. According to this method, only cinema films guided the students in transferring the subjects. The applications to be made have also been made in this direction. The method proposed for conducting the basic design course by movies has been experienced with a group of students in 1st year of architecture. The other 1st year students which are not part of this group continued with the conventional teaching method. At the end of the semester, qualitative and quantitative researches were conducted that took the students' opinions and measured their perception levels. Mixed method application has been done to obtain the results. Two independent senior instructors have evaluated the design studies created by students over the semester. As a result, it has been seen that the students find the movies-oriented teaching method much fun and the group taught basic design with movies are much successful along with students perceived and internalized the subjects better by this method.