Aesthetic cognition in architectural education: a methodological approach to develop learning process in design studios

Aesthetics and the design studio have been widely regarded as germane to architecture education and architectural design education respectively. Despite this obvious importance and relationship, very scant studies have been done on how aesthetics as a concept, has been thought in architectural schools especially with regard to the pedagogue of acquiring aesthetic knowledge as perceived by instructors and students in the Design Studio. Moreover, despite its centrality in architectural studies, there is a current gap in literature pertaining to aesthetics and the steps to teaching it in architectural design studios. This paper presents a discussion on the aesthetics and the process of teaching it in design studio using a qualitative grounded theory approach. In view of the paucity of work on the teaching pedagogue in architectural design studios, this study aim at shedding light on how students and studio instructors perceive the extant state of the methods of teaching aesthetics and identify the aesthetics of architecture. In this regard, the study by hypothesizing the design studios as the core contributor in architectural design developed the contributing elements in aesthetic education of architecture.