Architecture lies at the intersection of engineering and art; therefore, architectural education faces multiple dualities that must be integrated, such as theory and practice, poetic and scientific, beauty and function. Establishing meaningful connection between dualities has become difficult in contemporary society, which has led many architects to argue that architecture is losing its authority. My role as a teacher is to expand architectural knowledge as a result of these recent developments.

I believe that understanding the design process is the essence of teaching studio. My goal is to make the design process narrative, experiential, and exploratory. Renderings and pictures tend to dominate the scene, creating a “stylistic” kind of architecture. However, Steven Holl exemplified the problem with this state of affairs when he asserted, “If we allow magazine photo or screen images to replace experience, our ability to perceive architecture will diminish so greatly that it will become almost impossible to comprehend.”

Architecture is a spatial art that aims to understand the relationship between subjects and objects. The architect’s palette is geometry, material, structure, and light. The main question for the architect is how to bond together these disparate elements to create an experience that meaningfully stimulates the senses, embodies culture, and integrates environmental and sustainable considerations. In this context, studio will train architects to offer alternatives and gain value of judgment through exploring how to achieve harmony among these controversies, which in turn helps develop the individuality of each student.

My teaching approach in studio seeks to accomplish these goals through several methods, i.e., discussions, readings, and physical/digital engagement. Before engaging in the design process, studio participants will begin by discussing their own architectural aesthetic experience and exploring its physical features. Afterward, I ask students to participate in a series of discussions and reading that will facilitate the main concept of the studio project. Because architectural thinking requires solution-based strategies, in studio it is important to spread the culture of “making mistakes faster” that promotes learning through experience.

I also aspire to teach lighting class in a unique way. This class is meant to allow students to think about spaces poetically. The class will discuss the question of how architects use daylighting techniques to improve the quality of space and enrich the spatial experience, which opens an opportunity to create explorations for studio projects. Afterward, the class will discuss technical problems such as glare, heat gain, and daylight factors with applications to the explored spaces. This class will partly use the flipped classroom method. After addressing theoretical matters in the form of lectures, students will present their experiments and learn from each other.

Architectural pedagogy must aim for the ideal, even with the dominant forces imposed by professional practice. In architecture, the primitive must be driven by poetic, aesthetic, and theoretical factors that will later be integrated via scientific, functional, and practical factors. I seek to expand new knowledge—such as sustainability and digital technology—with architecture in a manner that maintains human beings as the central consideration of architectural design. Fundamentally, I believe that profound architecture must involve both logic and emotions.