Keywords

1 Introduction

1.1 Purpose and Background

While Western universities often offer non-professional or minor architecture courses [1, 2], such courses are almost non-existent in Japan [3], probably because architecture is one of the engineering fields in the Japanese educational system. Japanese students seldom have opportunities to learn the subject, and the knowledge gap between professionals and the public is worrying.

Even though the living environment is one of the essentials for humans, “Home Economics” in primary and secondary schools only briefly touches upon the living environment, among other topics such as food and clothing. Teachers are not confident in teaching architecture-related topics mainly because few specialise in it at teachers’ colleges [4]. “Technology” may cover design and drawing in woodworking or mechanics laboratories, but not in all schools. Moreover, “Home Economics” was only for girls, and “Technology” was only for boys until the 1990s.

“Our Home” was taught in mathematics in middle school from 1950 to 1952 but disappeared soon [5] because some educators complained that pupils should spend more time on abstract thinking and drills to improve their calculation skills [6]. Ironically, the mathematics and natural sciences scores of Japanese pupils have dropped significantly in 50 years after that. Less than 30% of high school students choose to study natural science courses now. However, “Home Economics” has recently started covering more practical topics such as safety and environmental issues, especially after the repeated natural disasters and COVID-19 pandemic [7].

We must teach architecture to Japanese people because they are more ignorant of their living environment than Europeans and Americans are. For example, many Japanese believe wooden houses last only for 20 years and reinforced concrete buildings for 50 years. They choose to scrap and build rather than maintain the old buildings. The construction industry has promoted this approach because it is easier and more profitable. The government supports this system through various tax laws. Homeowners do not bother about the maintenance of their houses and prefer easy-care and short-life synthetic materials over natural ones (see Fig. 1). Most believe in prefabricated semi-order homes sold by large nationwide “house maker” corporations. Others purchase ready-made homes or flats with finished interiors. They fear hiring architects and local builders, saying they do not know whom to trust. Still, those semi-order or ready-made homes hike the average mortgage to seven times their annual gross income. Growing up in such an environment, college students, including architecture majors, know almost nothing about their houses. Most students blindly believe in “Three Little Pigs” and do not even think if the story applies to Japan. They think the red-tile-clad reinforced concrete walls of their buildings are made of brick masonry.

Fig. 1.
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The upper row: traditional Japanese architecture with sustainable natural materials (Photographs by Arno Suzuki, taken in Japan, 2001). The lower row shows synthetic materials common in Japan (Photographs by Arno Suzuki, taken in Japan, 202).

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Hypothesis

The rationale for teaching architecture as general education is as follows:

  • Specialist teachers are available in universities—no teacher’s license required

  • More teaching hours can be given on architecture than in secondary schools

  • Topics are related to students’ everyday life regardless of the major

  • Problem-solving and participatory learning opportunities

  • Interdisciplinary teamwork with diverse students

  • Citizenship cultivation—learning about social capital and responsibility

On the other hand, there are concerns as follows:

  • Architects’ communication skills to teach beginners

  • Difficulties in teaching a group with different interests and backgrounds

  • Lack of students’ interest in housing or architecture

In this research, the author will investigate the last two concerns. First, she analysed students’ responses to her experimental introductory lecture and proved it is possible to interest all majors with different backgrounds. Second, she proved that few students are interested in architecture before learning it.

1.2 Previous Studies and Practices

Architecture minors and introductory courses offered for non-majors focus usually on non-practical, non-technical subjects such as architectural history and philosophy. However, architecture may be ignored if it stays within the boundaries of humanities because the field tends to be unfairly disrespected by students and institutions. Instead, hands-on courses such as design-build studios [8] and construction laboratories [9] have gained popularity. They offer interdisciplinary education opportunities.

In Japan, teaching architecture in non-accredited schools or general education programs is a new idea; therefore, there was little previous research or mention. However, in recent years, general education has shifted from the traditional three areas of liberal arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to more cross-curricular and skill development courses such as communication and computer laboratories [10].

Various researchers on secondary education have proved that students will become interested in architectural topics after learning properly in school [11].

1.3 Findings from Teaching Experience

The author taught architecture to a student group that included non-majors at a land-grant research university in the US from 2000 to 2005. The author did the same in Japanese universities, from relatively unknown ones to one of the top national research universities with student bodies of various nationalities, from 2002 to the present. From this experience and the students’ feedback, the author is assured that architecture and living environment studies can heighten interest in liberal arts and train communication and problem-solving skills. Comments such as “I did not like history at all in high school, but I found it interesting for the first time after learning about architecture that we can see” were noted numerous times at different schools. The students also enjoyed teamwork with strangers of various cultural and academic backgrounds in international education courses and small-class freshman seminars.

At Kyoto University, with academically top-of-nation students, the author conducted an open questionnaire every year from 2008 to 2019 before teaching to check their basic knowledge of architecture. The following is the summarised outcome from Japanese students, including architecture majors:

  • Unaware whether their home is built of wood or reinforced concrete

  • Unaware whether their home is priced at around 0.1 or 1 million Euro

  • Their student housing, usually rental flats, is chosen by parents

  • Ignorant of internationally famous Japanese architects such as Tadao Ando

  • Ignorant of the names of construction and fittings

  • No preference for the kind of house they want to live in, in the future

The most surprising was that almost none of the architecture students wanted to design their own house in the future. They said buying an industrialised house built by a nationally famous company would be safer.

2 Quantitative Text Analysis

2.1 Experimental Course Used for the Analysis

At Kyoto Tachibana University, the author delivered a 100-min online lecture to freshmen of 15 majors, including humanities, engineering, business and economics, and health sciences. The contents of the lecture were as follows:

Chapter 1: Introduction to Wooden Architecture

Which is the safest house: Rethinking “The Three Little Pigs” with earthquake area/The 1400-year-old wooden building in Japan/The 800-year-old wooden building standing in the sea/Difference between traditional and modern wood construction/Wooden buildings in Europe and the USA/Industrialised fake materials

Chapter 2: Structure

Traditional structure and construction methods/Columns not fixed to the ground/Fragile walls to absorb force/Flexible structure applied in contemporary buildings

Chapter 3: Materials

Material and form/Why did ancient Greek temples collapse?/Invention of the arch/The circle of climate-materials-form-function-materials/Examples of passive design

Chapter 4: Sustainability

Environmental performance of traditional houses/Biological structure of timber/Materials and function of tatami/Thatched roofs/Recyclable materials

2.2 Research Method

Taking advantage of the large student body, the author conducted a quantitative text analysis of students’ responses to the post-learning evaluation to the question “What have you learned from this lecture?” After omitting meaningless words such as particles and too-common words such as “architecture”, “lecture” and so forth, the author analysed 5,709 words from 1,596 students’ writings using KH Coder, a free text analysis application software by Koichi Higuchi [12]. All personal information was removed, except for their majors. The software shows only the frequency of appearance and relationship among words; reading the meaning depends on humans.

2.3 Co-occurrence Network of Words

The co-occurrence network visually represents the relationships among the occurring words, in which the size of the bubble indicates the number of times the word appears, and words tending to appear in the same sentence are connected by lines. Words were connected as shown in the diagram, summarising the students’ writings. For example, the contexts were: “Society in the Edo Era was sustainable with no waste” and “Traditional construction without glue and possible to disassemble and recycle” (see Fig. 2). These are the same as the lecture content. It proved that non-major students could understand architectural topics well in one lecture, even technical aspects such as structure, materials, and environmental issues.

Fig. 2.
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Co-occurrence network to summarise students’ feedback. (produced with KH Coder and traced for legibility by Arno Suzuki, 2023).

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2.4 Co-occurrence Network of Words by Departments

The co-occurrence network cross-tabulated by departments as variables shows that only a few words showed a connection to specific majors: for example, “design” in the Department of Architectural Design (80 respondents), “history” in the Department of History (100 respondents) and “architectural style” in the Department of Historical Heritage (55 respondents). Otherwise, there were no significant differences between majors. Particularly, the departments of Economics (240 students) and Business (260 students), with many students and various future career paths, demonstrated more dispersion. On the other hand, the paramedical departments for professional training in Clinical Examination, Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Paramedical, and Psychology (420 students in total) showed inclination toward environmental topics. Humanities such as Japanese Literature, History, and Historical Heritage (240 students), whose career paths seemed unpredictable, tended to show more interest in their specialization. The words “sustainable”, “reason to study”, “impression”, “knowledge”, “residence”, “traditional”, “environment”, “climate”, “common construction”, “Kyoto”, “form”, and “passive design” are connected to more than one department. It means they appeared frequently in multiple departments, suggesting these are common interests across majors (see Fig. 3).

The author also cross-tabulated interested issues with departments by coding similar or related words into categories. The associations found were paramedical students discussing environmental issues, Japanese literature students discussing their own experiences, and information technology students showing no interest in any issues.

Fig. 3.
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Co-occurrence network of words cross-tabulated by departments (produced with KH Coder and traced for legibility by Arno Suzuki, 2023).

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3 Questionnaire Survey

3.1 Purpose and Method

Some responses in the text analysis indicated that the student did not listen to the lectures. Additionally, the responses received to architecture were fewer than those to other immediately useful topics such as money, food, student life, and emergency medical care. Architecture may have seemed remote to young students compared to those other topics. To investigate this, the author and her students conducted questionnaire research focusing on housing and food. We chose these two topics because they are among the three essentials for humans (food, clothing, and shelter), and they also have some natural science aspects. Clothing was omitted because the result might be biased by young people’s strong interests in fashion. Nakawaki, the author’s undergraduate student, visited four universities in Kyoto City from June to October 2022 and conducted a face-to-face questionnaire survey. They gave the passing-by students two simple choices: architecture or nutrition, if the responding students had to take an elective course in their spare time. A response was received from 510 students; their profiles were 285 male and 225 female students; 153 were first year, 112 were second year, 123 were third year, and 122 were fourth year and older.

3.2 Results of the In-person Survey

Fewer students chose architecture (n = 235) than nutrition (n = 275). When cross-tabulated by the year, nutrition exceeded in the younger students, but the numbers almost equalized in the third year, and a slight reversal occurred in favour of architecture in the fourth. Nakawaki said, “Our interest in society increases as graduation and employment approaches, which may induce an interest in architecture, a field closely related to society.” The cross tab by major field backs up his analysis by showing more interest in architecture by social science majors. The gender difference was very clear; male students chose architecture (n = 153) over nutrition (n = 132), whereas female students chose nutrition (n = 143) over architecture (n = 82) (See Fig. 4). Nakawaki thought that the Japanese custom, or the social pressure over the gender role, may have influenced students’ choice even though “Technology” and “Home Economics” became co-educational in schools over 30 years ago.

Fig. 4.
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Nakawaki’s in-person survey results (graph by Arno Suzuki, 2023)

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3.3 Results of the Online Survey

To further investigate Nakawaki’s hypothesis, the author conducted a large-scale online survey in March 2023 to inquire about the reasons for the subject selection, which his team could not ask due to the time constraints of an in-person survey. From the 2000 responses from Japanese men and women of all age groups nationwide, the author extracted 447 valid responses from students aged 18–24 to compose a similar group to those of the previous in-person survey.

In the online survey, the author asked the respondents to choose a subject from six areas: nutrition, cooking, food safety, housing, construction, and real estate. Most female respondents (78.4%, n = 167) were in nutrition and cooking, and more than half of the male respondents (56.4%, n = 132) chose food-related subjects (see Fig. 5).

The gap between the food area and the housing area was wider than in the in-person survey, possibly because Cooking and Food Safety attracted more students. Nevertheless, an 18-year-old male respondent stated the reason for his choosing Cooking as “I want to be a good cook for my future children,” suggesting that the gender gap is narrowing in younger minds. On the other hand, few respondents think learning about their living environment was necessary for their life (see Fig. 6).

Fig. 5.
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Choice of subjects by gender (graph by Arno Suzuki, 2023).

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Fig. 6.
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Reason for the subject choice (graph by Arno Suzuki, 2023).

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4 Findings and Discussion

4.1 Students’ Tendency Confirmed by the Text Analysis

The text analysis mostly satisfied the author’s expectations and concerns. First, students have little knowledge of their living environment. They responded, “I had never heard of this before” (n = 197) and “I was surprised” (n = 560), even to some very basic information. In terms of traditional architecture, however, Kyoto Tachibana University students had a better understanding than Kyoto University students, probably because the former are mostly from areas with more historic houses remaining, whereas the latter are from big cities such as Tokyo. In addition, Tachibana students seem to have more familiarity with the on-site construction; at least 10 students stated that they had a carpenter in their family, and 40 said they knew someone in the industry. Connections with students’ personal lives help them learn.

Second, the intention of the lecture was misconstrued sometimes. For example, there were many favourable comments on plasterboard (n = 263), although the author indicated that they were not biodegradable and caused environmental problems. Students’ attention, however, was caught by the inexpensive, easy-to-assemble, fire-resistant, and sound insulation properties instead. It seemed “cheap and easy” was a value for the students. Another misunderstanding occurred when the author pointed out the loss of construction skills with the industrialisation of homebuilding. Many students thought the prefabricated housing was “safer” because it would not depend on the carpenter’s skills. This exactly reflects the recent trends in the housing market in Japan.

Third, the result indicated that safety and environmental issues are the keys to sparking students’ interests. “Disaster Prevention” and “Passive Design” interested students regardless of major. For example, “Earthquake” and “Traditional Architecture” appeared frequently and related to those two topics. Many students were impressed to learn about seismic isolation and vibration-damping principles in traditional Japanese construction with non-fastened posts and beams with deliberately fragile walls to absorb energy (See Fig. 2).

Finally, familiar topics raise students’ interest in architecture. Names of nearby locations and local events such as Kyoto (n = 217), the Kamo River (n = 51), the Gion Festival (n = 47), and Daigoji Temple (n = 21) showed up a lot, and they all appeared in favourable ways. Other than local topics, everyday issues such as soundproofing, energy conservation, and disaster prevention were frequently discussed.

4.2 Conclusions and Further Discussion

The text analysis for the post-learning evaluation showed that all aspects of architecture and building sciences can be taught to all majors. It also suggested that we might raise interest in architecture regardless of the students’ majors by discussing more critical topics, such as safety and environmental issues. Therefore, the author concluded that introductory architecture courses in general education should include more practical, natural, and social science aspects.

The questionnaire surveys revealed that students did not consider architecture a useful subject. Few people may enrol if architecture is an elective subject, therefore. Offering it as a part of a required lecture series was effective in making them listen. Another way to draw their attention and gain enrolment is to sprinkle information useful for their everyday lives, such as cost- and energy-saving. Once students are exposed to architecture, they will realise it is an interesting and important subject.