Aesthetic judgment in evaluating graduation projects

Abstract

The research focuses on the importance of aesthetics as far as graduation projects are concerned, taking into consideration the fact that aesthetic judgment is the basis of the evaluation of architectural graduation projects. The research takes a look at the wider picture of the process of evaluating the academic performance of students, focusing on the background of the evaluators and the evaluative criteria involved. The theoretical framework of aesthetic judgment will be coupled with empirical research to see if specialization and experience have an effect on aesthetic judgment. The purpose of this research is to examine the role of specialization and professional experience in forming evaluators' aesthetic judgments about architecture graduation projects, as well as the development of an adjusted scale for measuring aesthetic perceptions in the context of scientific evaluation. The problem in question refers to considerable inconsistency of judges' judgments and the absence of a theoretical model which would connect specialization, the period of experience, and aesthetic judgments. For the realization of this study a descriptive-analytical approach has been chosen, based on a survey including 21 questions based on the AESTHEMOS scale. A total of 33 evaluators, who belong to the areas of architectural design, urban planning, and architectural technology, were included in the study based on five different experience levels. Reliability and validity of the scale were evaluated. For evaluating the impact of specialization, years of service and interaction between them, Levene’s test and two-way ANOVA were used. Quality instrument tests revealed that the reliability and validity are satisfactory with the values of Cronbach’s alpha = 0.746, Composite Reliability