Adapting to a Pandemic: What Was Gained and What Was Lost

The Covid-19 pandemic presented some challenges that may have been unique to the students and faculty in the Hillier College of Architecture and Design (HCAD). Architecture and design are taught in a collective process, with students working together in large studios and maker spaces, where the interchange of ideas, methods, and technical know-how is how students learn. Course assessments are conducted as group reviews, where students present their work to classmates, multiple faculty members, guest reviewers, alumni, and professionals from outside design firms. Students usually have the ability to produce work in both physical and digital realms. Just before spring break, however, this experiential and in-person way of learning was disrupted abruptly, yet both students and faculty demonstrated an amazing capacity to adapt quickly. 

For their part, some students recreated the studio environment virtually using various platforms they had already deployed to stay connected as a class, and then expanded on how they used those platforms. Digital design major Kaylin Wittmeyer said that “as a group we set up streaming voice channels on Discord so we could sit together and share our screens and talk while we worked. We also set up studio help channels.” 

Faculty adapted both technologically and pedagogically, in many cases moving course projects from the physical to the digital realm. Prof. Tom Navin said that for the third year architecture studios, “In lieu of a final physical model we asked students to develop an animation which depicted a walk-through of their digital model. This was a first for many of these students creating an animation, and this proved to be beneficial to everyone.” What got lost in the shift was “the studio culture and in-person contact it brought, but I attempted to maintain a semblance of the collective studio by having a collective WebEx meeting of the entire studio at the beginning or end of each Monday and Thursday studio.” 

Staff and faculty organized to practice virtual operations during the Spring break week, and according to Navin, overall, adaptation to moving classes online worked very well. “The ITS support was invaluable. Prof. Rima Taher's Canvas tutorials were also of great help. These preparations also included making sure that the guest speaker in my seminar class and the guest critics for my midterm studio review who were not affiliated with NJIT could gain access to Cisco WebEx.”  

Under normal circumstances, students have access to everything from the AIAS print shop, to the Littman Library, digital fabrication tools and each other. Building and making also had to move to the digital realm, with the exception of some students who were able to construct their work as physical models despite the constraints of limited space to work at home, and not always having materials or tools on hand. In at least one case, Prof. Hannah Kum-Biocca, digital design instructor, mailed equipment to one of her students so that they could complete their project. Industrial design students in Prof. Mat Schwartz's class produced a virtual trade show to present their end of term work.  

From the standpoint of adapting to available communication technologies, Glenn Goldman, Director of the School of Art + Design (A+D) remarked, “We are nothing if not versatile. In the third year A+D reviews Hannah Kum-Biocca’s Digital Design studio was on Zoom, Ana Penalba Estebanez was on WebEx for Interior Design, and Google Meet was used by Martina Decker for Industrial Design.”   

When it came to end of semester reviews, Prof. Gernot Reither, Director of the School of Architecture pointed out that “Typically guests from the industry are invited to join to provide feedback to students; now that there are no physical boundaries, studio faculty have invited designers from all over the globe to join. In just one studio students met with architects from Tel Aviv, Rio de Janeiro and Vienna, Austria.”  

“First Year student work is especially noteworthy because all of us were working and creating under exceptional, unprecedented, and often trying circumstances. The student performances were indicative to me of one of the things I have always prized about NJIT's architecture students, which is their quick adaptability to unexpected and often problematic circumstances and refusing to allow their creativity to be compromised by such situations. This was clearly on display at the Super Jury where the guest critic's ran out of superlatives to describe the First Year work," said Prof. Tom Ogorzalek, Coordinator for the first year of architecture studies. 

While experiences varied across the spectrum and many of the measures put in place did compensate for distance and the absence of in person learning, nonetheless, Prof. Steve Zedepski pointed out that “the ability of students to work collectively, in teams, interactively, spontaneously was lost. A fundamental attribute of professional architecture practice is collective decision making, involving multiple points of view, varying objectives and criteria. Although the almost daily online discussions attempted to maintain these conditions,” the difficulties, Zedepski said, are found in how architecture is learnt. “Large scale drawings and presentations are based upon the relationship between various components, between plan and section, building systems and elevations, etc. Formal large-scale presentations are read collectively as a whole, rather than sequentially. Relating architectural information is a fundamental aspect of architectural thinking and logic. Limiting presentations to the small screen and a more sequential presentation greatly diminished these important learning objectives and understanding of the work itself.” 

Nonetheless, students have been finding ways to adapt to both the asynchronous learning and working independently. Nick Irwin (Industrial Design), noted that "Getting into a routine definitely helped, usually by waking up early and getting right to work was the best way to keep focus."  Dhruvi Rajpopat (Architecture), said that “While we weren’t able to produce physical deliverables, we were able to focus on fine-tuning different methods of representation, such as renderings, written narratives, conceptual drawings, and collages. My peers and I became more adept in using software such as Photoshop and VRay to depict interior and exterior views, and some even integrated physical sketches and drawings. Being able to dedicate time to develop other avenues of our projects helped us narrow down what our projects were truly about; we used the opportunity as a critical step in our design process.”

Speaking to the personal impact of the pandemic on individuals and families in the HCAD community, Reither said, “The students found ways to present their projects professionally many times while family members were working and studying online in the same space. All this was being done while they tried to stay healthy and even while close family members got sick. Several took on jobs because their parents got laid off. They often made it to the finish line alone without seeing anyone else in their cohort. In spite of it all, our students successfully presented impressive projects this semester during final review week under incredible pressure and sometimes tragic circumstances. These are the students that made it through the worst health crises and financial crises of our time.”