Architectural design course is a basic content of the teaching of urban and rural planning specialty. After urban and rural planning has become a national first-class discipline, the teaching content and methods of architectural design should be improved to meet the needs of talent training of urban and rural planning specialty. Taking the second-year design course of urban and rural planning of Northern University of Technology as an example, this paper concludes the problems in the students’ design process, such as insufficient environmental analysis, lack of overall design concept and insufficient training of logical analysis ability, and puts forward the reform direction of strengthening process teaching focusing on the cultivation of holistic thinking. The course establishes the holistic design concept with the spatial form design as the core and the analysis of natural environment and humanistic environment as the starting point. On this basis, the course refines the teaching theme, improves the topic setting, and carries out teaching around the core elements such as environment, behavior, function and spatial design. At the same time, in order to cultivate students’ logical thinking ability and scientific analysis ability, the course adjusts the teaching process and organization methods, clarifies the teaching main line, strengthens the phased and hierarchical teaching organization form, and applies a variety of interactive communication modes to the teaching process.