In order to enhance the general understanding on architectural environmental design, it is important for undergraduate architectural students to understand the relation between architectural design and environmental elements in living areas in a quantitative way. In this study, educational program for architectural undergraduate students in their third-year, which introduced simple field measurement about outdoor thermal environment and practical exercises about ultraviolet radiation environment in outdoor living areas, had been developed and conducted for two years (Sep. – Nov. 2013 and Sep. – Nov. 2014). The results confirmed that the program successfully enhanced students’ understanding on environmental elements. Moreover, the results demonstrated that the use of pictures taken by fish-eye lens had an instant effect on proposing the types and sizes of countermeasures for the target site. On the other hand, some areas were highlighted for improvement, especially about students’ countermeasures for improving environment of the target site; most of students’ countermeasures were biased toward planting trees and using greens, and little in architectural design. This showed the needs of improvement in this program with regards to the content of the lectures section and the final report, introducing lectures about specific examples of environmental improvement plans and design.
Specifically, the following findings were obtained from this study;
Firstly, it was confirmed that there had been no misunderstanding or misuse on environmental elements in the report which was submitted after simple field measurement, which was the serious problem in the previous study. The preliminary survey showed that all the students, which were architectural undergraduate students in their third-year, had taken basic course of environmental engineering, compare to the architectural beginners in composite regions. This result showed the effectiveness and necessity of taking a class of environmental engineering.
Secondly, as the things in the pictures taken by fish-eye lens had visually presented the view factor of each member around the target sites, painting countermeasures in the pictures taken by fish-eye lens was very easy way for the students to grasp the influence of countermeasure upon thermal and ultraviolet radiation environment in the target site. This demonstrates that a picture taken by fish-eye lens have a simple and instant effect on proposing the types and sizes of countermeasures on environment in outdoor living areas.
Thirdly, most of the students had been analyzed the environment of the target site quantitatively depending on the result of simple field measurement and practical exercise in the final paper. Moreover, some countermeasures of the target site had been considered not only environment but also other architectural elements, such as traffic, landscape, and visual quality. The result showed that the architectural students had considered non-environmental factors and had been keeping balance between environmental countermeasures and architectural design. From this point of view, the educational program, proposed in this study, had accomplished the original target in one part.
On the other hand, most of students’ countermeasures in the final paper were biased toward planting trees and using greens and none of the proposals involved designing spatial structures or materials of the target site, except for sunshade settings, despite of clear instructions for students to make architectural design by teacher.
