Planning Students' Experience of Geometric Modeling: Attitudes Towards the City

Design-based solution approaches should have a conceptual background, regardless of the profession. Following the conceptual background makes the design universal and saves it from subjective to objective perspectives. Nowadays, especially the spatial planning designers started to move away from this conceptual flow and the stages of the design process due to the proliferation of inputs and the complexity of the spaces. Therefore, the importance of abstraction and geometry should be emphasized more in design education. In this study, a method is discussed to understand urban space and the individuals who use the space by using abstraction in the City and Regional Planning 1st Year Basic Design education. Abstraction is a concept used to understand the most basic reality of a phenomenon or event and is a critical method to understand complex systems and reach core knowledge. In basic design education, from the beginning of the education process, it is aimed to provide students with the understanding of looking at problems with an abstraction approach, and all studies are designed to mentally prepare students for the final project. Before starting the final project, a workshop was organized where they could brainstorm over all this knowledge. Also, scenarios were discussed on social groups with different attitudes towards the city and the spaces where these groups live. As a result of the workshop, eleven different social groups were identified. Students were asked to prepare scenarios for these groups and abstract the spatial structures using the support of geometry and color. In the final project, it was seen that the students were able to use the concept of abstraction successfully in situations like understanding the problems from a professional point of view and producing the solutions for them.