464 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
of experience it is time that big advances, new technologies, are incorporated, with
whatever difficulties, into the curricula of schools of architecture. I have the feeling
- let us just say that I am totally wrong – that it is also the moment we most clearly
see an institutionalisation of the new: that is, a weakening of the critical dimension
and the appearance of rigid protocols of thinking and doing inside and outside the
schools. Is this, you may be asking yourselves, the good news or the bad news? It
could be either: we observe ambivalence, you see. There was an ambivalence between
what Neil said and how he replied to the questions. Another piece of good news is
that this is the moment when we have a third revolution within the change of the
famous paradigm, in that we have passed from the computer to the network and now
to the ambient intelligence. It is a time when we no longer talk about architectural
objects, or teaching architectural objects, but we are interested in particles on all
scales; so we have something like a third change inside the big change. On the first
day Constantin raised the question of new ways of teaching related to digital tools,
and that was also Per Olaf’s proposition when we talk about tools, processes and
products. I think that this conference has tackled the very difficult question of tools
in a very rich way. What is a tool? A tool is a device that catalyses relations; it is
something that builds relations and something that changes relations. In that light I
think that we can clearly position all the papers we had in this conference; I started
to do that, but did not finish. It is very interesting that we have changes, not in the
thinking, but in the relations between the participants, in the design construction
process, in the teaching process, in the relations between the design construction
process and the connectivities they refer to, in the relations between teaching and
the professional design construction process, and in the relations between teaching
and the connectivities. This is a very, very interesting matrix, which could lead us
to some kind of new play. The so-called tool manipulates information, of course;
but I think that as relations are changing the tool is changing too, and this in my
view is the main problem facing us teachers who use this famous digital tool. We
are teaching with an evolving tool, a tool that does not even evolve by itself but
under the impact of our input. Ultimately, then, what we have to teach is change;
we have to teach students to react to change rapidly, and also to be participants
in change; we have to teach them not to be afraid of change. I will stop here with
this thought, that we have to teach them how to react to change; the change that
we provoke, and that we demand of students to provoke. We cannot be innocent and
demand students not to be.
Antonino Saggio, Rome, Italy
As usual, I have prepared some images for you, so that you will not be disappointed
this time. First of all, very briefly, we are lucky to have a built world with a multiplicity
of choices, a multiplicity of points of view; and we are not as interested as we used
to be decades ago in being right. What we are interested in is to be in projects, and
projects are individual points of view. But we must be clear about what we intend and
what we do not intend, so for me this problem of the paradigm shift that I mentioned
yesterday is absolutely critical. I do not aspire to convince anyone, but I have to
make my point; and, in order for there to be some kind of relationship here, you have
first to understand what my point is, and then you may refuse and build your own.