Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design

118 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy

“Arabian architecture teaches us a valuable lesson. It is best appreciated

“a la marche”, on foot, walking, moving around, where you can see that

the architectural orders are developing. This is the opposite principle to

that of baroque architecture conceived on a piece of paper, around a fixed

theoretical axis. I prefer the teachings of Arabic architecture”.

Le Corbusier

The studio should insist upon stimulating the students in the pursuit of the true
sense of spatial experience. For this purpose, it is possible to make use of the new
technological tools which nowadays are widely available, such as digital videos and
three-dimensional visualization.

Designing usually involves a number of phases where the capture of information is
acknowledged, where ideas are developed, and later the shaping of the project. How-
ever, it is possible to identify a phase prior to the process of design focused on the
idea of teaching/learning to look, so that the student can see through his own eyes,
but also in a kinetic way. For this kind of learning we need tools that are capable of
becoming instruments.
A tool only allows measurement from an external, normalized reference. An instru-
ment allows this measurement but, in addition, gives the possibility to INTERPRET,
TAKE A STANCE, and build the foundation for an internal, built in reference.
Working by hand and pencil, or equivalents of the latter, were used in the three
phases. In the teaching process of the project a particular way of teaching/learning
how to draw was assigned to each phase: Drawing sketches, drawing of rough drafts,
and rigorous, precise drawing (plans, cross sections and elevations).
Many architecture schools still do not make an explicit distinction between these
three types of drawing and their corresponding phases in the process of design. From
the first week on, pupils are obliged to present rigorous, precise drawings during the
phases in which sketches and rough drafts should be predominant.
Are we creating the same confusion with the new technological tools? If so, the
results will be far more serious. The new technological tools allow us to automatically
reach a high definition result, making the lives of students much easier since they
are excused from looking, seeing and experimenting emotions, they are exempt from
having intuitions, from conceptualizing, from thinking, and from conveying their emo-
tions...They are pushed into using the automatic pilot, looking for solutions rather
than asking themselves questions.
We have been unable to improve or exceed the most essential foundations of the
first exponents of modern architecture, and in opposition, we have seen the appa-
rition of interesting technological tools which provide us with new more efficient
representation and production formulas. History is there to be witness that changes
in representation formulas have always modified architecture.
The influence of representation formulas on the architectural production is undeni-
able. Leonardo Benévolo calls the process of “going from the Renaissance perspective
of a narrow world with ancient traditions to the wide open world of modern science“:
“capturing infinity”^1. The importance of the invention of perspective in the develop-
ment of architecture and urbanization supports the thesis of the tremendous influence