Design studio discourse in architecture in Australia: The role of formative feedback in assessment

Studio-based teaching is a central component of the curriculum in architecture where designs are discussed, critiqued and challenged in the assessment of students’ creative works. Drawing on Dannels’ genre framework and a holistic approach to assessment, this article presents an analysis of design studio discourse based on non-participant records of observations of design studio presentations/crits and audio recordings of student focus groups and interviews with design studio tutors. Aspects of design studio pedagogy explored are the studio as context of learning and the discourse of guidance and feedback. Findings reveal the tension between providing explicit guidance that may constrain the freedom required for creative works, the difficulty of providing transparent feedback and the centrality of the subjective in design assessment. The studio as context of learning remains a challenging forum, in which the subjective nature of design is openly negotiated in discourse based, to a considerable extent, on tacit discipline understandings.