Building experiences - a reflective design process for media architecture

Media Architecture design, although visually prominent and involving interdisciplinary collaboration, rarely succeeds in creating urban situations of contextual relevance beyond temporary effects. This research understands Media Architecture as a communication medium and proposes the need to engage with its multi-stakeholder audience from early on in the conceptual design stage.

This practice-led design research presents a broad critical investigation into the emerging field of Media Architecture (Jaschko & Sauter 2006; Foth 2008; Haeusler 2009) spanning conceptions of media space, experience, participation and design as discourse (Scollon & Scollon 2003; Fatah gen. Schieck 2006). Its findings contribute a new perspective on Media Architecture as experiential visual design process, based on an analysis of design methods, principles of participatory design and reflection, as well as an overview and classification of Media Architecture practice. Following a related literature review, the thesis identified experiential learning and the notion of troublesome knowledge (Meyer & Land 2003; Perkins 1999) as a distinguishable new perspective on design for Media Architecture. By connecting exploratory and generative design research tools (i.e., interviews, collaborative expert workshops, visual prototyping) with theoretical constructs of learning theory (Schön 1983; Kolb 1983), experience (McCarthy & Wright 2004) and ownership in urban design (McDonnell 2009; Townsend 2013; Lange & Waal 2013), this thesis developed an experimental design methodology for stakeholder involvement in Media Architecture. An iterative review and reflection process led to methods evolving from initial research tools for analysis to self-reflective design process outcomes.

The findings of this study were used to create the Media Architecture Archive (MAA), a digital participatory database using a comprehensive classification system of Media Architecture practice. It is complemented by an experiential method framework based on visual design for contextual research, envisioning and prototyping in Media Architecture. Thus, the research contributes a novel approach to visual communication in Media Architecture, by applying visual design to encourage stakeholder involvement, discourse and reflection at early stages in the design process. The self-reflective structure of the study contributes to our knowledge of how practice-led learning processes applied through visual communication can serve as an extension of the Media Architecture experience as both process and outcome.