Online education on furniture design for household people during lockdown

Abstract

During 2020 Spring academic semester, the majority of the universities in Turkey shifted to fulltime online education due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result theoretical and applied courses in both graduate and undergraduate programs were carried out to an online platform. “Contemporary Furniture Design” was one of the undergraduate elective courses in Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Architecture. The course started in studio environment with face to face interaction and shifted to online education regarding the lockdown regulations. For the final submission, students were asked to develop a detailed furniture design system for household people during lockdown. Each week a milestone has had to be achieved such as; scenario building and brainstorming ideas for the first week, developing themes and evaluation of initial ideas through sketches, collages, concept/mood boards etc. for the second week and so on. Within this context, this study aims to demonstrate the process and evaluation of designing furniture in an educational setting. The challenges and benefits of online education in applied courses is an additional finding to be discussed in this study.