Rethinking Global Business Services from Urban Decay

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN 6

The "Architectural Design 6" course at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde introduces students to the foundational concepts of urban planning and design. This studio equips students with essential skills in site analysis, urban design principles, and sustainable development, employing tools like AutoCAD, GIS, and other visualization platforms to craft site plans and presentations.

In tackling urban challenges, students are trained to balance aesthetics, functionality, and regulatory compliance while analyzing spatial relationships and understanding urban systems. The course emphasizes collaboration, cultural sensitivity, and effective communication, ensuring students address diverse community needs while integrating sustainability and inclusivity. By fostering critical thinking and professional presentation skills, the studio prepares students to develop well-rounded design proposals.

STUDIO GUIDANCE

Architect Harvey Vasquez leads the studio, bringing extensive experience from local and international architectural firms. His mentorship emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and ontological approaches to design—skills that guide students in the conceptualization and realization of their projects.

Through his guidance, students explore the intersection of technical precision and creative problem-solving, applying these principles to real-world urban challenges.

PORE 2016

 

“Back when this school started in 2009, its small group of faculty members knew each other and the passion to teach was very contagious. Even non-design classes were treated like a rigorous design studio. Five years later, the program has fully grown and so have its challenges. One of these challenges is ensuring that the design classes produce works that not only are communicated effectively visually, but that have also undergone a design process and argumentation of dialectics.

We want to maintain a strong studio culture, which, unfortunately, is not yet widely practiced among local schools. Alarmingly, teachers new to SDA, who do not share or come from the same culture, brought in outdated practices of design classes. Institutionalization seemed to be an inevitable measure to prevent this trend, but since most of our design professors are practitioners themselves, scheduling for evaluation is a dilemma. Therefore, we proposed an annual gathering wherein all the members of the SDAAR community (not limited to faculty and students, but including architects, design editors, and parents) come together to review the achievements of our department.

This endeavor obliges our architecture teachers to participate and, more importantly, to assess their own performance as a teacher, as the projects will surely reflect our motivations, sensibilities, and our breadth of knowledge as a designer and role model for tomorrow's architects.”

-Jim Caumeron

Caumeron, J. (2015, July). Po.Re Opens. Bluprint , (Issue 2 2015), 115.