A Cross-sectional Study of the Architectural Preferences of Students at Two Schools of Architecture

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the level of differences and similarities between senior students’ and lecturers’ perceptions. In the experiment conducted using the Lens Model method, 142 senior architecture students from two universities having different methods of teaching in terms of architectural studio teaching were included. 36 students from Selcuk University Architecture Department Konya trained by academic architects (who almost never take part in application processes) and 35 students and their 20 famous and rewarded architects as project coordinators from Gazi University Architecture Department Ankara were included in the research. The project coordinators were shown the images of 45 buildings, and they were asked to rate the cognitive properties of global aesthetic, ‘complexity’, ‘stimulation’, and ‘familiarity’. To find out which physical cues gave rise to these cognitive concepts, the same images were scored by an independent group of judges from faculty of architecture (n=10), and they were asked to evaluate, for each image, 34 physical cues. According to the results of the analysis, though the students’ from different universities perceptions on visual image judgements was similar for ‘stimulation’, and ‘familiarity’, they were differentiated in global aesthetic evaluations and in global aesthetic - complexity relationships. It was shown that the lecturers and their students were agree on global aesthetic evaluations and the relation to the complexity. However, the students from the other university, differentiated from the lecturers and their students. As a result, it can be said that design studio coordinators have an effect on students regarding images’ global aesthetic evaluations.