Higher vocational education is aimed at training talents with high quality and professional skills. Its professional core courses should be constructed targetting at occupation ability training. By taking the teaching reform and practice of architecture design principle (1) in Shanghai Jiguang Polytechnic College as an example, from the aspects of teaching ideas, teaching contents, and teaching methods, the paper probes into the ways of teaching exploration and characteristic construction of architectural design major in higher vocational colleges, and puts forward that curriculum construction of higher vocational education should be targeted at occupation ability training.