Experiential Simulation and Psychological assessment as a learning process in architectural higher education

This paper presents the advancements of an applied methodology developed by the authors, namely an architect and two environmental psychologists, based on Virtual Reality coupled with psychological surveys − developed ad hoc by the authors − for urban design; in particular, the paper discusses its application in the field of architectural higher education. The proposed method is based on the pre-evaluation of people’s urban experience for testing the effectiveness of design solutions, discovering the unforeseen, and reducing the risk of failure. The method connects architectural to psychological approaches and investigations. The procedure can be schematized as follows: (1) final users navigate the simulation of the design scheme and feedback is collected; (2) the analysis of these collected data is run by professionals and discussed with the designers that then develop the final design solution. In this contribution, we illustrate the application to the urban design development carried out by 100 students of the last year of the Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Planning working in groups. The paper will firstly synthetically present the overall research; secondly, it will argue about its application for higher education; finally, it will conclude by describing the pros and cons of the experimentation, especially in relation to the whole learning and maieutic process and its impact on the design solutions adopted by students, with a focus on the experiential multisensory design.