Joint Architectural Projects with Students in Visiting Countries During Field Studies

The increasing globalisation in the world has generated a market for more and more international students studying aboard and increasing number of university graduates working on overseas projects. For these reasons, universities have been developing international oriented curricula to foster skills that meet the requirements of diverse cultures. This paper discusses architectural projects designed as the results of two international trips for third year architectural students from the University of Huddersfield to go to Kunming, China in 2008 and 2009. A number of joint projects were organised for staff and students from Huddersfield to work with those in Kunming University of Science and Technology. Students from both countries shared their skills in order to seek out relational aspects both within the context and to the design conceptual frameworks. We argue that the aim of the project is for students to be able to use the knowledge they learnt about a place to influence their design processes. Rather than focus on the feel and look of a building, the emphasis should be solving the local problems with respect to local culture and environment.