Architecture Students’ Understanding of Landscape Issues in Design Studios (A Comparison Approach in Some Tehran Architecture Schools)

Without the surrounding environment of a site, architecture loses its full meaning. In the evolution of the design process, a siteʹs environment should be understood as the integral factor within which a designed product or artifact is expected to perform. The environment is not of secondary priority. Every building is intertwined with its context; context being its physical, visual and ecological potentials. Modern day practice encourages the consideration of ecological factors in any plan to create/alter sites even for those who are not landscape architects. In the pedagogy of Tehran architecture schools today, the architectural design process barely touches upon landscape environment; this is a flawed presentation of architecture which should be remedied. In common practice of Iranian education, buildings rise to represent only themselves. The graduates of this lacking method owe their mal-education to the problematic studio education system. This paper presents both qualitative and quantitative evidence to support the notion that Tehran schools should change their teaching methodology to accommodate the importance of environment in the architectural design process. All research participants are students of architecture. The data, which includes content analysis exports and log-linear analysis, presents the difference between the studentsʹ point of view regarding a designed building and its relationship with the surrounding landscape.