Architectural responses to societal challenges via design-build programs in architectural education

The aim of this paper is to introduce public interest focused design-build programs in architectural education. The architectural education programs that embrace both designing and building/constructing of a project are commonly called 'design-build programs' in literature. Design-build programs have the potential to make architecture students think and play an active role to overcome societal challenges. In this study, nine different public interest focused design-build programs that are both curricular, and extracurricular are studied by reviewing the literature to comprehend what design-build programs are, how they emerged, the elements and organizations of these programs, their content, their application formats in architectural education, their goals and contributions in architectural education. When it comes to understand the process of design-build programs, the author of the paper participated in the workshop called Design-Build for Public Interest, which is organized by Yestermorrow Design/Build School in the state of Vermont in the USA in August 2012, making good use of the observations and experience gained there besides comments of the participants who joined different design-build programs. The paper presents findings of above mentioned studies.