International Journal of Architecture, Engineering and Construction Vol 8, No 3, September 2019, 32-40 Designing, Conducting and Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Integrated Public Interest Design Studio Mohammad Saquib * Faculty of Architecture and Ekistics, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, India Abstract: The design studio has often been criticized for not keeping pace with the changing needs of the society and profession. Attempts to evolve alternative studio pedagogies to counter issues include concepts such as sustainability, compu- tational thinking and social perspective to design. Public interest design (PID), advocates a socially conscious approach to design. The research aimed to develop a framework for the integration of the concept of PID in the conventional design studio, and measure its outcome through a mixed methods approach. A studio based on the designed framework was conducted for a single group in 2017 in the second year of the undergraduate course. Analysis of qualitative and quantitative data obtained from three different stakeholders i.e. students, faculty and users was performed through triangulation of data. The findings revealed that PID integrated design studio is effective in enhancing learning outcomes among students and making a worthwhile contribution in their immediate environments. Keywords: PID, Public interest design, conventional design studio, design studio pedagogy, post occupancy evaluation DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7492/IJAEC.2019.016 1 INTRODUCTION The definition of design has been evolving ever since design led researches initiated in the 1960s. In accordance with cur- rent transformations taking place in design and architecture, three knowledge content areas have emerged in the disciplines of environment behavior studies (EBS), sustainability and en- vironmental consciousness, and digital technologies or virtual practices (Salama 2015). Public interest design (PID) lies at the intersection of EBS and sustainability. EBS calls for the consideration of social and behavioral aspects of architecture and the urban environment (Salama 2015). According to Moore, “the field of EBS emerged in an attempt to develop empirically-based understandings of the reciprocal interaction among individuals, social groups, cul- tures and the environments in which they live, and to apply such understandings to the better planning and design of the built environment” (Moore 2004). The three pillars of sustainable development i.e. environ- mental, economic and social sustainability are relevant to the design profession too. Although many advances in the envi- ronmental design of buildings help the designer to avoid some ecological impacts, these measures largely cater to the envi- ronmental and economic concerns of sustainability. The “third leg of sustainability,” or social sustainability is not addressed effectively in design since the users are not involved in the design process. While designers have tended to serve the interests of elites, in almost all cultures, serving the needs of vulnerable groups have been treated as an ethical issue, not as a professional one. Advocates of PID therefore view design as an issue of social justice (Meron and Scharphie 2015), and believe that those affected by what is designed should actively participate in the design process (Lundmark 2018). 1.1 History of Public Interest Design PID has its roots in the social, economic and political voices for the upliftment of the weaker sections of the society, and evolved as the term ‘community design’ in the 1960s (Tok- er et al. 2006). At the 1968 AIA Convention Whitney M. Young Jr. in his keynote speech challenged the AIA mem- bership on the issues of human/civil rights, diversity, and in- clusion (Waldrep 2016) citing architecture’s failure to impact social and civic culture in the communities that need design the most (Abendroth and Bell 2016). The event marked the beginning of efforts to broaden the meaning of diversity in ar- chitecture (Bizios and Wakeford 2016). According to Sanoff (2011), community consciousness in the 1960s led to the direct involvement of public in the definition of their physical envi- ronment and an increased sense of social responsibility. As a result, community design centers (CDCs) were opened up to offer design and planning services to the poor. * Email: arsaquib@gmail.com. 32