Opening Session 21
This is not the first event that we have organised in the framework of the Network of
Teachers of Architectural and Urban Design. Our very first activity, at the beginning of
this Project, led to the publication of two volumes containing a collection of different
teaching paradigms or examples from different schools of architecture around Europe.
After that, we organised in Hania, in Greece, a workshop where we discussed the texts,
the proposals, that appeared in those volumes. This is the third activity we have organ-
ised in the framework of this Network; and the reason for the title of this event was
that something very surprising to us emerged from our discussions in Hania, and that
was that most of the texts that had been submitted to these volumes made little or no
reference to new technologies. So we considered that something had happened, and
we wanted to promote a discussion on this issue. The fact is that there are significant
changes occurring around us in our everyday life which influence our understanding
of the world and therefore of architecture, and when we have different understandings
of architecture it is not possible to have the same pedagogical strategies and the same
teaching approaches. So that was the main question that we wanted to raise at this
event: what, in other words, should the new teaching approaches be when we have
such significant changes as the ones we see around us, and specifically in the way we
understand architecture, in the way we think about architecture, and of course in the way
we are doing and designing architecture. This is the question we would like to explore
and which we addressed to you in our invitation to this workshop, and we are delighted
that 90 people responded to our invitation.
I see the academic quarter of an hour has become an academic twenty minutes,
which admittedly is not very bad for Mediterranean Europe. I feel obliged to move as
fast as possible to the first keynote speakers, because the time schedule is very tight.
As you may have noticed, we considered that it was more useful to allow more time for
debates than for presentations. So I would like to continue immediately with the first
keynote speakers, Kas Oosterhuis and Ilona Lenard. I would like to thank them for their
eager acceptance of our invitation. We had the opportunity to have Kas and Ilona in
Hania at the Meeting of Heads three years ago, and it was very interesting for us to see
their work and their way of understanding and thinking about architecture. I am sure
that you know that they are in the centre of the architectural avant-garde, producing
not only new architecture but also new ideas about architecture, and we considered
that their presence here in Lisbon would be a very inspiring way to begin this event. I
would like to thank them very much for coming and I invite them to come up and give
the opening keynote lecture. Thank you very much.