Collaboration for Service Learning in Historical Architectural Education: Old Rendering & New Media

Description

Research into a historical architecture is an important means of preservation and appraising itsvalue. Since 2008, applicants Xue and Ching have been involved in organizing students and staffof various departments at CityU to participate the investigation, exhibition and publication ontraditional Chinese architectural heritages. Their footprints are left in Shanxi, Hebei, Pearl RiverDelta and two sides of Taiwan Strait. Thousands of students have been benefitted directly ordirectly.This project will continue the effort of engaging students from architecture studies by usingChinese heritage building as a platform. This project aims to arouse student’s interest onexploring historical archives and heritage through the method of creating replica model anddigital records of historical architectures based on ancient documents and information collectedduring field studies. This may enhance students’ understanding of information literacy andsharpen their skills on digital interpretation through deep reading. The experiential learningmethod was proved that it can strengthen a wide range of interpersonal skills, increase intrinsicand extrinsic motivation and promote emotional intelligence of students 1 . Based on thecross-pollination design of learning activities, students from different academic subjects may gain knowledge from other professions and share their knowledge to the others. For example,while students from Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering may gain more extensivecultural and environment knowledge about the architectural and landscape design, students fromother department may also have chances on getting ideas about how to apply various software(Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Revit etc.) during the Building Information Modeling (BIM) processof historical architectures; All these may build up their own learning profile which can furtherpresent as a model of learning and reference for teaching activity design.