Jornadas sobre Innovación Docente en Arquitectura

Simulating a judicial process: when analog prevails

Iñigo Lizundia Uranga — 2024-11-08

The participation of an architect in a judicial process is hardly treated in architecture schools. In many cases, these processes culminate with an oral hearing in which judges, lawyers, attorneys, experts, plaintiffs and defendants, witnesses and other agents represent, like in a play, their different roles. The exercise presented in this paper, first proposed three years ago and which has been evolving both in its wording and in its materialization, aims to rehearse all those analogical skills that an architect must show before such an imposing stage and totally distant from the digital world as a courtroom. Based on a hypothetical lawsuit for property damage, two preparatory sessions are planned prior to the third and final session: the oral hearing. This is the activity most highly valued by students in the anonymous surveys conducted at the end of the course.

Learning with Artificial Intelligence: application in an operative mapping course

Sergio García-Pérez — 2024-11-08

Artificial Intelligence has abruptly burst into the daily life of society and the reality of many sectors has been transformed, almost run over, by this technology almost without time to react, with consequences that are difficult to quantify today. Teaching is not exempt from this storm and research is needed to be able to use this powerful tool in an appropriate way. This paper presents the teaching innovation experience 'Learning with Artificial Intelligence: application in a cartography classroom', which encourages the development of personal critical thinking, of great importance for learning cartographic thinking and algorithmic logic; and introduces Artificial Intelligence in the procedural resolution of the challenges posed in the classroom in the use of GIS, giving students greater autonomy in a context characterized by uncertainty and strong changes in the use of tools and processes.

Digitally analog: simulating (digitally) what it represents (analog)

Alberto Álvarez Agea — 2024-11-08

This communication addresses the possibility of using digital representation techniques such as an operational simulation that achieves the equivalent substitution of the images recording the analog representation of a project through physical models during the Architecture degree. Through an adaptation of the procedures considered in the academic program of Representation in 3 dimensions –a semester course during the second semester of the second year of the Architecture degree and which follows Representation in 2 dimensions– the results focus on the production of digital images that simulate analog models. A method subsequently used by many students in the architectural design studios, during both the process and in the presentation —in the stages of analysis, ideation and architectural expression— and which has also been used in the professional development of architectural projects.

Climate challenge: designing for sea level rise

Daniel Ovalle Costal — 2024-11-08

This paper describes a teaching improvement experience in third and fourth year design studio within a combined engineering and architectural design MEng degree at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. The proposal was developed over the first four weeks of the academic year as an “ice breaker” exercise. The aim of the exercise was to meet three objectives: a critical and rational approximation to climate change in a context of uncertainty around possible future scenarios, involving the students in their own learning, and leaning on the materiality of their projects by asking them to build a scale prototype that floated or negotiated rising sea levels in any other way. The results of this exercise were highly satisfactory for both faculty and students. The latter got very involved in the process, and were able to build a highly convincing discourse supported by very interesting physical prototypes.

Development of a materials library within the university library: analogue and digital link

Joan Lluis Zamora Mestre — 2024-11-08

Traditionally, students entering architecture studies came mainly from families that were involved in construction. Their practical knowledge of building materials was sufficient to complement the theoretical teaching they received at university on this subject. However, the situation has changed and the family background of students no longer guarantees this prior knowledge. Society, and the university, has fully entered the era of digitalisation. This has had an impact not only on the profile and skills of students, but also on the way they consult the building materials that are prescribed in their academic projects: they have left university libraries behind, in favour of browsers and websites. Thus, this joint initiative arose to create a collection of sample materials within a university library that links the analogue experience of materials with the digital knowledge on these samples that is available in libraries. The digital knowledge associated with each sample is selected in a cooperative way by the architectural students, under the supervision of the academic staff and with the help of an intern.

Redo, not undo: insistence on manual representation in the studio

Diego Pérez García — 2024-11-08

The present text exploress analogous work exercises conducted in the Architecture Workshop I-II at the University of San Sebastián, Concepción, between 2021 and 2023. Manual techniques of model making, drawing, and painting are used to bring students closer to the physical reality of the architectural creative process. Despite the rapid transition to digital tools in the curriculum, the workshop emphasizes the importance of manual work to develop cognitive, procedural, and attitudinal skills. The exercises, ranging from drawing to the final semester assemblies, promote reflection and a balanced interpretation between analog and digital techniques. The course aims to instill in the group of students an awareness of the value of patience, reflection, and resilience in the face of error.

Virtual and Analogue Project for the rehabilitation of Siedlungen 1950-70 in Mainz, Germany

Marta Pelegrín-Rodríguez — 2024-11-08

The article summarizes and evaluates the results of the teaching program developed during three semesters with architecture students in the integration of design tools, both digital and analogue, in an experimental social housing rehabilitation project applied to case studies in Mainz, Germany. The academical objective is to integrate virtual and analogue tools in the parallel development of the architectural project and energy rehabilitation, developed at the last subject of the Bachelor's degree, and in its subsequent extension in the Master's degree. The methodology supports the contribution in each project phase (analysis, development, calculation and exhibition or transfer) of digital and analogue training, together with specialised teaching input. In conclusion, it is shown how the students adjust digital and virtual tools at each stage to the project, its abstraction level and communication capacity, and are trained in how to integrate the technological and analogue possibilities in a real case study.

Imaginability of the analogue-digital society: graphic ecosystems of urban drifts

Julián Barrale — 2024-11-08

This paper addresses the relationship between physical experiences in urban spaces and digital maps. A representation tool sensitive to people's perceptions when walking through cities is proposed. The aim of the communication is to compare the results of three drifts organized in the field of academic training in architecture schools in Madrid and Barcelona. The study process includes collective walks, questionnaires designed to generate databases and from this information, the post-productions of cartographies called graphic ecosystems. The results show the scope of the urban drifts carried out in different neighborhoods, groups and days through infographics, collective poetry and maps that collect the imaginary projections of the participants. The tests carried out impact with cartographies of traveled fragments and an applied method of urban evaluation for the analog-digital society.

The soap bubble: experimental and digital study of minimal surfaces

María del Pilar Salazar Lozano — 2024-11-08

This article presents an exercise carried out with first-year Architecture students focused on a complex geometric shape: minimal surfaces. It explains the development of the exercises, which combine mathematical and geometric knowledge with hands-on experimentation and the creative application of what has been studied. In this case, soap bubbles, created with a soapy solution, are used to gain an intuitive understanding of minimal surfaces. At the same time, it takes the opportunity to join the debate on the use of manual, digital, and three-dimensional graphic tools in the early education of an architecture student.

Methodological experience in introducing a gender perspective into the project

Emma Lopez-Bahut — 2024-11-08

A pedagogical experience is presented that addresses the incorporation of the gender perspective in the teaching of the Area of Projects through the application of a system of different teaching methodologies concatenated that bet on the analogical in the process of ideation of the project but using, at the same time, technological and digital mechanisms. It is carried out in Proyectos_3 (second year), a subject in which the student stars to design, showing the importance of the ideation with traditional tools but still relying on digital tools or environments. This experience integrates, in the traditional project's workshop format, an assembly of methodologies that have served to successfully incorporate the gender perspective. In addition, it is linked as an academic pilot of a research project focused on the definition of a comprehensive methodology to plan and regenerate rural environments by implementing a circular, social and inclusive approach.

Bricks are not digital: the tactile experience in construction teaching

Javier Arias Madero — 2024-11-08

This article explores the disconnect between the digital skills promoted by the educational system and the essentially physical nature of construction in architecture, analysing the challenges faced by first-year architecture students, who often arrive with little knowledge of construction techniques. . We defend that the teaching of construction must evolve to balance the digital with the physical, and in this work a propaedeutic teaching strategy is presented for the subjects of Construction I and II of the first year of the Degree in Fundamentals of Architecture of the ETSAVA, which advocates complementing the digital tools used in the theoretical part with physical and practical experiences where the student touches different objects and materials with their hands. This praxis is inspired by historical models such as the Bauhaus and the Chicago School, as well as contemporary approaches such as Studio-Based Learning.

The space of the body / the body of space: Physical and digital experiences and vice versa

Jorge Ramos Jular — 2024-11-08

The proposal aims to showcase the experiences, results and knowledge acquired in two workshops generically entitled ‘The Space of the Body / The Body of Space’. Both workshops, held in Venice in July 2022 and in Rome in September 2023 respectively, with a duration of one full week each, were organised in collaboration with two Italian universities, the Università IUAV di Venezia and the Sapienza Università di Roma, together with the Recognised Research Group of the University of Valladolid ‘ESPACIar’. Furthermore, these teaching experiences are part of the training programme included in a national research project whose name ‘Digitalstage’ itself illustrates its objectives on the study of the new spatialities of the new multimedia media and their relationship with the architectural space.

Drawing the Design: techniques of artistic expression applied to industrial design

Cristina Prado Acebo — 2024-11-08

Being polyvalent, adapting to changes in society and technology, and moving fluently between the analogue and the digital is the reality faced by professionals in the architecture, engineering and industrial design sectors, as well as by the professors and students in the classrooms of these disciplines. In order to reflect on drawing and representation techniques, we took as a starting point the subject of Applied Artistic Expression Techniques, the first four-month period of a second year of a School of Industrial Design Engineering, where we deepened the importance of freehand drawing, combining this classic technique with its digital application. As a result, we observed the relevance of the sketch as a fundamental tool for the design and the project, observing a progression in the graphic representation capacity of the students, who enjoy these sessions, transferring this hobby to their free time.

Reflections from Architectural Composition on AI: dilemmas and challenges

Daniel Pinzón-Ayala — 2024-11-08

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most significant technological advances of the 21st century, with a capacity for transformation that is already affecting all fields of knowledge. In the field of architecture teaching, the area of Architectural Composition, being the most closely linked to the humanities, faces a future of great uncertainty, as its application affects many of the most disciplinary concepts and methodologies. The idea of historical reference or the very contact with the architecture to be studied acquires more value in a scenario in which the digital takes on a greater role, proposing alternatives that increase with AI. The subjects in this area, and especially those in the first year, acquire greater relevance as they are the starting point for the students' learning processes, which requires the appropriate debates and reflections.

Communication strategies for architecture: from storyboard to Instagram reel

Lucía Martín López — 2024-11-08

The aim of this exercise, in the CRPA course, is to learn to use the means of architectural graphic expression as a tool for communicating and narrating the project according to its use. Through a choreography of drawings combined with transitions, the aim is to tell the youngest students about an architectural project in a dynamic way. Two instruments are used for this, the storyboard to synchronise the visual rhythms of the sequences with a narrative order and the Instagram reel that allows the approach to the kinetic world. This text presents two analytical tables of the storyboards, and the reels submitted by the students, which have a dual function. On the one hand, they help the students to be aware of what they communicate and how they communicate it, and, on the other hand, they serve as a self-evaluation rubric guiding them in the process of developing the exercise in the transition from the analytical to the digital.

From image to prompt, and viceversa: AI applied to the History of Art and Architecture

Ana Patricia Minguito — 2024-11-08

The Research Seminar in Art and Architecture History on Artificial Intelligence (SIHA-IA) aims to break down the barrier between analog and digital, fostering the development of critical skills and knowledge in university students. By working on the concepts of prompt, reference image, negative prompt and visual clipping in relation to the infrastructure of AI itself, it is possible to understand the close relationship between word-image in the historical trajectory. Through a methodology of four practical exercises —simulacrum, falsification, restitution and exquisite corpse— we delve into the presence of this concordance in three disciplines studied in the course: painting, sculpture and architecture. As a result of the reflections by professors and students derived from the activity, an “imaginary museum” of this incipient rapprochement between AI and art and architecture is built.

Visual Narratives in Post-Digital Architectural Learning

Beatriz S. González Jiménez — 2024-11-08

The post-digital approach combines analog and digital tools to address a new understanding of the architect's role within today's society. As future professionals, it is crucial for our students to focus on the social function of architecture and achieve effective and evocative communication. Post-digital images, with their open-ended meanings, capture attention powerfully and invite people to pause, observe, and engage with the project. These non-realistic representations encourage more active interlocutor participation. Similarly, the process of creating such images involves prioritizing concepts and communication over the final outcome, allowing students to explore different aspects and meanings of the architectural project.

Draw fast, draw slow: the dichotomy in learning architectural representation

Jordi de Gispert Hernandez — 2024-11-08

In contemporary architectural education, graphic representation plays a key role in student education. To translate abstract ideas into coherent visual images is a fundamental skill in architecture. While hand-drawing has been essential for developing this ability, digital tools have challenged traditional methods, changing both the tools and ways of thinking in architecture. Instead of viewing manual and digital techniques as opposites, this paper defends that they should be understood as complementary. Hybridizing these methods, rather than their strict separation, fosters a balanced approach where slow, reflective processes coexist with faster and automatic ones. By integrating both approaches, students develop a deeper spatial understanding and technical competencces. The teaching experience presented here highlights the importance of adapting to the cultural context, marked by immediacy and digital overstimulation, and emphasizes that learning to be an architect means learning to draw, whether by hand or digitally.

From analog to digital paradigm: Design of deployable prototypes

Martino Peña Fernández Serrano — 2024-11-08

The transition from the so-called mechanical paradigm to the digital paradigm is analysed by means of international workshops. During one week, prototypes are designed by students who have been taught a series of methodologies beforehand. The paper analyses the processes, using analogue and digital media, according to the formats of the different workshops presented, to determine that the digital paradigm allows the production of unique prototypes as opposed to the mechanical paradigm that produces mass-produced products. To this end, it is necessary to define parameters that help to relate and compare the artefacts generated with different systems and to establish symmetries between them

Introduction of artificial intelligence for the assessment of theory and history subjects

Martina Fabré Nadal — 2024-11-08

The emergence of ChatGPT and other generative Artificial Intelligence tools has raised concerns about their integration into the educational system, highlighting their potentialities as well as their risks and threats. Among the latter, the production of document falsification known as AI hallucination stands out. This communication explores mechanisms for introducing AI in the teaching of architectural theory and history through a specific approach: an assessment designed using ChatGPT in which response errors or hallucinations are induced to enhance students' critical thinking. The goal is to sensitize students to the potential for error without restricting the use of the tool, while simultaneously testing the knowledge acquired. To achieve this, fostering doubt as a critical engine and revaluing historical or primary documentary sources as a final verification mechanism will be crucial.

Making architecture with building services: an experience through virtual reality

Jesús García Herrero — 2024-11-08

One of the challenges for fifth-year students of the Degree in Fundamentals of Architecture is the visualization and integration of installations in buildings. This paper describes one experience developed with a BIM model of a real sports building and its systems. This model was used to complemnet the visit to the real building, allowing students to observe the layout of the ducts and equipment in their context. Additionally, a practical session was held in the classroom where students interacted with the model on a 3D platform, achieving a comprehensive view of the building with its systems. This presentation analyzes the results and opinions of the students, which were mostly positive, although the experience reveals that there are still some technological challenges to overcome.

Interdisciplinary workshops on educational space design with analog and digital techniques

Mariona Genís Vinyals — 2024-11-08

The described experience is part of the educational innovation project "New Scenarios for Learning and Educational Innovation," which emphasizes the need to integrate interdisciplinary work in early university education. The aim of this project is to create a learning environment for the design of educational spaces, collaboratively addressing both pedagogical and architectural design, with a special focus on the technological framework needed in today's digital society. Two interdisciplinary workshops, conducted with second-year students from the dual degree in Early Childhood and Primary Education and third-year Architecture students, form the key activities of this project. This communication analyzes how the use of analog and digital tools in both workshops helps establish a common language among students from different disciplines and enhances the integration of technical aspects in the project in the case of architecture students.

Analogies of a trip

Genís Ávila Casademont — 2024-11-08

The Spanish Village in Barcelona contains 117 buildings that is the largest example of ordinary and vernacular architecture of several Spanish regions. Over time, some of the original examples have disappeared or been transformed. The copy, the replica, remains its genealogy. A living document on a full scale of what was or had been. This work is the result of a trip back to some of the places visited almost a hundred years ago, which served as inspiration to reproduce, reinterpret, re-project the fairgrounds. Conclusions will be drawn about similarities and divergences between the copy and the original as well as the transformations that were made to be adapted to a new place where they all had to live together. The analog experience of the trip combines the learning of drawing in situ and traditional data collection techniques with other more advanced and invasive digital techniques.

The Digital Twin in Architecture: integrating environmental aspects into the design process

Cristian Gonzalez Torrado — 2024-11-08

The document examines the use of Digital Twins in architecture as a key tool for integrating environmental aspects into the design process. Defined as a real-time digital representation of a physical system, the Digital Twin allows for the simulation and prediction of architectural outcomes, facilitating decision-making based on complex data. This technology is particularly useful in architectural education, enabling students to experiment with and adjust designs in a virtual environment, fostering more practical and critical learning. The text highlights that the implementation of Digital Twins not only improves resource efficiency and reduces environmental impact but also transforms architectural education, promoting a more active and collaborative role for both students and educators.

Physical-digital registration of the territory: inmesirve architectural initiation experience

Valentina Galleguillos Negroni — 2024-11-08

Some questions that teachers have when planning a field trip: What happens if a student cannot go to that architectural experience? What happens if the planned time was not enough to record, measure, observe what the teachers request from the territory? And finally, hoy to verify that the information recorded in the territory is reliable to bring it to the classroom? A little explored space is observed regarding field trips, new ways of acquiring and verifying information in a more vivid way that allows an approach to the experience of measuring and recording the territory in a more holistic and immersive way. The incorporation of experiences of extended realities offering a complete vision, in terms of registration, route and measurement. Bringing the student´'s distance closer to the territory as many times as necessary to find the requested information, also to verify what has been done on the ground.

Infrastructural landmarks as triggers for the architectural project

Ignacio Loyola Lizama — 2024-11-08

The present text outlines the methodology used in the integration of two intermediate-level courses in the architecture program at the Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile, based on the valorization of the infrastructures that make up the peri-urban landscape of the city. In a context where access to reference works is limited and bibliographic review feels distant, an approach to the spatial and constructive reality of these infrastructures is proposed as a trigger for the project, through a metacognitive process that begins using analog tools for surveying, representation, and modeling, to generate new configurations of these artifacts and their parts. The workshop is presented as an opportunity to bring students closer to the complexity of the project and opens opportunities for reinterpreting the territory, postponing the review of references and the use of digital tools until the end of the process.

Design architecture: between manipulated post-production and assemblaged everyday

Ricardo Montoro Coso — 2024-11-08

For several semesters in the two initial levels of Architectural Projects in the Bachelor's Degree in Architecture, different topics, heterogeneous locations and scales of intervention have been proposed. Among this forest of accidental contingencies, it is possible to trace several Ariadne's threads as pedagogical bases. Learning by doing; projecting from the experimental, from creativity, from intuition, from what is close at hand. Last spring semester, an operation of instinctive appropriation was introduced through the decontextualisation of forty planimetries of paradigmatic architectures by Alvar Aalto. An intuitive montage of different sequences linked to the flowering of digital butterflies. Projecting architecture, between assembled everyday life and manipulated post-production.

From undergraduate to postgraduate: collective imaginaries in digital environments

David Casino Rubio — 2024-11-08

The lack of references and sustainability strategies in urban transformation projects in vulnerable fabrics highlights the need to create a good practice manual. In view of this, a pilot experience is presented whose ultimate aim will be to create a collective imaginary: a catalogue of concepts and tools for the improvement of the urban habitat in these fabrics. To this end, the experimental work carried out by undergraduate students (Projects 1 and 2) in the first four-month period will be incorporated into the Master's classrooms as intuitive approaches. The different strategies proposed, grouped into labels and applied to the different places of work (Favela Rocinha in Brazil and Barrio de San Bernardo in Bogotá), make up the sought-after manual of good practices. All of this is supported by the use of analogue and digital tools, as well as by a classroom model based on the workshop structure.

[Un]thinkable Genealogies: a digital collaborative learning method based on the investigation

David Casino Rubio — 2024-11-08

[UN]THINKABLE GENEALOGIES is a research teaching method applied to postgraduate courses that investigates the search for elective affinities between architectural practices drawn from different times and contexts. The main objective is to produce collaborative research capable of generating shared knowledge and collective intelligence. The group work of students and teachers is carried out following the inverted classroom method of research. This collaborative method is supported by interactive digital tools that make it possible to project past discourses in the present, relating techniques and concepts used by architects and thinkers of the last century with the current architectural practices of the most representative offices of the contemporary panorama.

Receptive vanguards: hybrid strategies for architecture learning development

Laura Pérez Tembleque — 2024-11-08

The case study presented consists of the students' proposing work topics to workshops for theoretical application and methods of proposal analysis during classes. The objective of the initiative was to facilitate students' own reflection on current movements in art and architecture, linking the student with his present and future through the knowledge of contemporary avant-garde, as a platform for action. The mixed work with classical projects and contemporary approaches has allowed students to approach architecture as a means of thinking, in which they combine, add and discard items to be able to continue producing, always from the ultimate criterion of the student. The use of various tools allows new ways to be explored, away from those preconceived by both the student or teacher and the discipline itself.

Of logics and [con]textual devices

María Florencia Perez Alvarez — 2024-11-08

The proposal attemps to generate a space for reflection on the relationship between language and project in the architecture’s field, enhancing the purpose of operating with the text as a tool to take a position, in an argued and referenced way, and as a project device. As teachers, it is our intention to guide students towards a possible horizon of innovation in their know-how, based on the systematization of knowledge already acquired and the appropriation of new skills wich can be incorporated in a significant way in their project work. A critical reading will reveal the contradictions, through an exercise of translation that allows to discover issues that can reinstrument the capacity to think, the power to act. While an annotated reading will activate the appropriation game, operating on the text until making it your own. Annotations can function as abstract machines, capable of producing new configurations, as transposition devices.

Estudio Paisaje: network of metropolitan agroecological actors and resources (ApS UPM)

Francisco Arques Soler — 2024-11-08

Estudio Paisaje represents a pedagogical experience that serves as a vehicle for engagement with the climate and ecosystems crises that shape our context. This "studio" is proposed as a pedagogical approach to Architectural Projects that seeks to expand the discipline's scope and operational methodologies. The aim is to provide students with the tools to co-design spaces and territories, implement multi-scale strategies, and form networks of more-than-human agents around urban agroecology. This knowledge transfer is explored in a twofold approach. On the one hand, it is developed in collaboration with the Cultural Landscape Research Group (GIPC) and the State Plan for R+D+i project, HERITAGESCAPES: Critical cartography of the metropolitan cultural landscape. On the other hand, it is transferred between teaching and society through a Learning and Service (ApS) project that brings together different social and institutional agents.

Socially situated architectural pedagogies: a repository of tools and methods

Ingrid Vargas-Díaz — 2024-11-08

Teaching in Schools of Architecture must adapt to the demands of the 21st century, connecting the teaching of this discipline with the physical, economic and social reality of our contemporaneity. The European project ‘Socially Situated Architectural Pedagogies’ (SArPe) investigates which analogue pedagogical tools facilitate this connection without losing their situated orientation after adaptation to the digital environment. To this end, the project develops an open repository of socially situated pedagogical methods and tools in Architecture.

The autopsy of the idea: the sketch as an analysis tool applied to teaching

Borja Ramón López Cotelo — 2024-11-08

"The autopsy of the idea" has been conceived as an introductory exercise to the Architectural Projects course in which students analyze a group of "case studies" previously selected by the teachers, using handmade drawing as the only tool. The whole activity is structured around three questions related to each of the analyzed works ("where", "what" and "how") that must be responded by means of the sketches. A set of "game rules" are established so as to consolidate a clear methodology and to enhance students' synthesis capability: the number of sketches must not exceed five and words or signs, if used, must be few and understood as a complement or a expressive booster of the images.

Teaching architectural theory from self-regulation: AI in reflexive thinking

Gilda San Andrés Lascano — 2024-11-08

The importance of self-recognition in a world where technology surrounds our daily life, the knowledge that the individual essence of the person exists is born from self-reflection. As part of the teaching of theoretical subjects in the architecture career of the Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil, a new teaching method was established in the relationship of identity recognition based on the study of the past, of one's own history to being able to understand and appreciate its context and thus establish a new project method for the future through the use of artificial intelligence. The result was an understanding of one's own being that was reflected in the products of their workload.

Automated Digital Photogrammetry and Initial Learning of Architectural Drawing

Pilar Moya-Olmedo — 2024-11-08

After other previous proposals for educational innovation, in which it was found that the early collaborative implementation of specific technologies related to architectural surveying led to an improvement in the acquisition of fundamental concepts related to the appropriation and graphic description of form, in a new experience carried out in this academic year 2023-2024 we wanted to deepen this approach and check whether it also leads to a similar improvement in the assimilation of graphic skills in relation to more complex architectural elements in the initial stages of Architectural Drawing.

Graphic Construction and Communication of Architecture: learning with Augmented Reality

Pilar Moya-Olmedo — 2024-11-08

Students of Architectural Drawing face the challenge of mastering a regulated drawing to know, devise and communicate architecture in a brief period, also applying it as a graphic language to articulate their architectural thinking. This process requires the integration of architectural thought and representation, a complex task that has been sought to facilitate through Augmented Reality (AR). An educational experience is presented in the first year of the bachelor's degree in architecture, in which AR technologies and active pedagogical methodologies are combined to improve students' spatial understanding and communication skills. The use of AR allows the analysis of complex architectural objects to be tackled more effectively. The incorporation of these modern technologies seeks to optimize the teaching-learning process and increase the motivation of students, as a resource for their training.

From the individual to the collective, and vice versa: architecture for coexistence

Gabriel Gatica-Gómez — 2024-11-08

Coexistence involves the agreement between two or more participants to have something in common. A dialogue where individual and collective interests of changing intensities overlap, but which foster encounters and opportunities. However, the environment we inhabit and the way we relate to each other show the opposite. The built environment is fragmented and individualistic. Thus, the communication shows the development of two design studios. One in an urban context and the other in a natural one. And, through individual and collective work, the aim is to show how in both workshops under the same methodology, but applied in reverse, the personalist sense of the project can be changed by the understanding of a common whole. In both cases, each project ends up coexisting with that of the rest of the student group.

Squares and youth: mixed co-diagnostic and co-design tools for innovation

Fermina Garrido López — 2024-11-08

The PlaYInn project, part of the New European Bauhaus, aims to revitalize the public space of Fuenlabrada through youth participation in the co-diagnosis and co-design of urban squares. The course “Social and Urban Environment” in the Bachelor’s Degree in Fundamentals of Architecture integrates these objectives into a learning experience beyond university education. Through active methodologies and digital tools, students develop analytical and social skills, addressing urban problems comprehensively. Activities include workshops, surveys, and debates, fostering interaction between participants and the community. The results highlight the importance of funding for innovation projects and updating urban analysis processes, demonstrating that youth participation is crucial for creating solutions adapted to the real needs of the community.

KLIK: activation actions as learning methodology

Olatz Grijalba — 2024-11-08

Teaching experience developed in an optional subject of the Degree in Fundamentals of Architecture, where we have collaborated with the Kutxa Foundation, following a service-learning model is presented. The objective is twofold: to tigger a change of attitude towards the 2030 Agenda through various KLICK's or specific activation actions; and to train students in the generation of future urban scenarios that take into account the diversity and real needs and in the management of the Urban Agenda instrument. Classroom work based on collaborative teaching methods is complemented by the process of co-creation and implementation of the KLIK, enabling students to have direct contact with associations and citizens. In addition, traditional techniques of participation and tactical urbanism have been combined with virtual reality techniques and analysis through big data. The results obtained show an enrichment in the acquisition of competences in the students.

AI in the teaching of art history: a Case Study

Alberto Ruiz Colmenar — 2024-11-08

The document explores the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in teaching art history in a university course. Through a practical experience, the goal is to foster critical thinking and creativity, personalize learning, and familiarize students with advanced technologies. The main activity involves students comparing AI-generated images with historical artworks, facilitating discussions on authenticity and creativity in art. The text also addresses ethical concerns related to privacy and data usage, as well as the impact of AI on art education. In conclusion, it advocates for a balanced approach that integrates technological innovations with strong ethical and humanistic considerations.

Rural Community Architects Workshop: integrating virtual and analogue

Esteban de Manuel Jerez — 2024-11-08

The lack of adequate and affordable housing is one of the barriers to retaining and attracting population in rural municipalities in a situation of demographic challenge. It is difficult for the population of these municipalities to access the services of architects. On the other hand, architecture schools do not pay special attention to the specificities of contemporary intervention in popular architecture or to training in participatory design methodologies that allow reaching adequate and agreed solutions. The Learning and Service project “Architects of the Rural Community” has allowed architecture students to have an early experience of working with real clients while providing technical assistance to the community by combining in-person and virtual, analog and digital work. The evaluation of the experience allows us to conclude that these types of initiatives have great pedagogical and service potential for the rural community.

The analogical field notebook in coexistence with the digital environment in design learning

María Aguilar Alejandre — 2024-11-08

This communication presents the teaching experience developed in the Degree of Engineering in Industrial Design and Product Development. It consists of the creation of a field notebook for three goals: the registration of the project process, the development of perception and a freely use of this tool by the students, an approach that could be common to certain areas of architectural teaching. Specifically, this work delves into this activity proposed in an analogical format but that receives incursions from the digital field. This lead the teaching team to question the convenience of expanding the field notebook to a digital format. To this end, a series of previous research tasks are proposed that raise questions of interest about the consideration that students, teachers and professionals in the sector have regarding this possible change of format.

Between imaginary and technique: graphic tools for conceptualizing landscapes

Noemí Gómez Lobo — 2024-11-08

From the study of the properties of moss to the creation of atmospheres with artificial intelligence, the first course in landscape design explores the relationship between graphic communication and project conceptualization. Starting with the translation of each student's individual imaginary to interdisciplinary references that extend the landscape and architectural field to the artistic or philosophical, the learning process begins with the abstraction of the first intuitions and their translation into a personal graphic language. How to represent the environment, to realize landscapes that trace the relationships of the living, the everyday, the experiential, the phenomenological or the invisible? These and other questions about the interpretation and definition of landscape were explored through a combination of analog and digital tools. Throughout the course, the reworking of concepts through different techniques turns the project into a non-linear process, growing as specialists through one's own skills.

Models and prototypes in design: from handwork to digital fabrication

Juan Francisco Fernández Rodríguez — 2024-11-08

This communication analyzes the teaching experience developed in the Artistic Expression subject of the Degree of Engineering in Industrial Design and Product Development at the University of Seville (2023-24), focused on the development of physical models and prototypes, through manual and digital techniques. Students are proposed to develop mandatory handwork models and voluntary digital manufacturing models as a tool associated with the design process. To do this, the purpose of the model within the design process is analyzed, as well as the phase when it is developed and the possible materials and techniques to be used. Thus, students develop handwork models in the initial phases of the design process, with an impact on decision-making at a geometric and formal level, and 3D manufacturing prototypes in more advanced phases, with a more finalist or presentation nature.

Pedagogical acts in the backstage: between craftsmen and programmers

Franca Alexandra Sonntag — 2024-11-08

Designing with and in an early 20th century theater. A pedagogical methodology in accordance with the nature of the support to be intervened. The structure of the course program consisted of three acts; with variations in each of them in terms of complexity, strategies and duration. A sequence of events as a teaching strategy to develop an architectural project. An invitation to the students to the performance where they rediscover their own interests through different strategies. A playful construction of diverse creative actions, cumulative and polyhedral instinctive performances as opposed to predictable pedagogies based on the unidirectional transmission of contents. A natural analog-digital symbiosis behind the scenes.

FFive minutes to evade it: the Final Degree Project (TFG) and academic papers in the light of Artificial Intelligence

Jose María Echarte Ramos — 2024-11-08

The Bachelor's Degree in Fundamentals of Architecture at the Rey Juan Carlos University, since its implementation, includes a subject whose objective is, among others, to prepare students to face the writing of an academic research paper and to serve them in writing, upon completion of their undergraduate studies, the Final Degree Project (TFG) in which they demonstrate the acquisition of competencies associated with their studies. The presentation analyzes the evolution of academic fraud in the subject and its adaptation to different detection systems until the arrival of ChatGPT and Generative Artificial Intelligences. These tools, which represent a differential increase in the ability to evade the controls of the evaluators, must lead to a reflection that could even lead to a reconsideration of the permanence of the final validation test that constitutes the TFG.

Challenges in creating digital educational contexts from a gender perspective

María Isabel Alba Dorado — 2024-11-08

The incorporation of the gender perspective in architectural teaching has occurred late. This has led to situations of inequality in the teaching and research field, but also to an androcentric vision of our discipline. As a consequence, it is necessary to carry out a review at all levels of teaching. In this task, digital technologies are particularly receptive to gender-sensitive pedagogy. This contribution aims to explore the main challenges that teaching faces in the creation of inclusive digital educational contexts and addresses the definition of measures that promote gender equity. As a result, the importance of training teachers in the use of digital tools with a gender perspective is highlighted, but also of reviewing the teaching-learning methods of architecture from the values provided by the reading of gender.

The digital city: new urban perspectives through Location-Based Social Networks

Álvaro Bernabeu Bautista — 2024-11-08

This proposal implements geolocated social media data and other web services to address urban phenomena according to theoretical-practical contents of three subjects in the field of Urban Planning whose contents include urban morphology, public space and landscape. The proposal consists of elaborating cartographies based on exercises that allow students to visualize and analyze data using GIS tools, as well as a final evaluation based on the students’ experience. The results reflect a positive reception of this type of sources, complementing the information obtained by other means such as fieldwork, underscoring the potential to address specific urban phenomena and highlighting its usefulness for visualizing and addressing analyses and proposals related to the city and the territory.

Expanded Intelligence: pedagogical explorations of text-image discursive design

Juan Carlos Lobato Lobato Valdespino — 2024-11-08

This study explores the integration of Expanded Intelligence in architectural design education through an experimental workshop combining generative AI with traditional methods. Inspired by Laura Lio's concept of "shelter for body and imagination," the text-image discursive design approach enabled students to develop innovative architectural narratives fusing visual and textual elements. Results show that AI amplified students' creative capacity, facilitating the generation of speculative and complex solutions. However, challenges emerged in balancing physical and imaginative aspects, and in addressing ethical issues regarding authorship and technological dependence. This study contributes new pedagogical perspectives, proposing a critical and reflective approach in architectural education that prepares future architects to face the challenges of the contemporary biodigital environment through collaboration between human and artificial intelligence.

BIP-StUDent: an innovative exchange experience for the training of urban planners

Inés Novella Abril — 2024-11-08

This paper aims to share the experience of a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) on urban planning carried out in a school of architecture in Spain (Institution 1) during the academic year 2023-24. Within the Erasmus+ framework, BIPs are exchange programmes for students and staff of European universities that are characterised by being intensive and blended. The European Commission considers these programmes to be a means of educational and teaching innovation with two main aspects to highlight. On the one hand, they are programmes that promote transdisciplinary and transnational cooperation thanks to their relatively quick and simple management. On the other hand, their hybrid format and short duration facilitate access to international exchange for a greater number and diversity of profiles within the educational community.

With regard to the teaching of architecture and urban planning, the experience of Institution 1 seems to indicate that this format is particularly well suited to these disciplines. Projects and case studies, common working methodologies in architecture curricula, are in line with the BIP approach. They allow for intensive work, i.e. work is done in a limited way, based on a contextualised problem, and the degree of definition of the solutions expected from the students can be established more concretely according to the framework and the profile of the participants. On the other hand, the very nature of architectural disciplines favours and requires multidisciplinary work, especially in the case of urban planning.

Institution 1 is the institution to which most BIPs have taken place in the whole university to which it belongs. The Department that led the experience that is the subject of this paper had already participated in BIPs and is currently involved in three exchanges of this type. The exchange programme that is the focus of this paper involved two other European institutions: one Austrian (Institution 2) and one German (Institution 3). The consortium was based on other types of previous collaborations on the part of the teaching staff, but mainly on the conviction that transnationality and interdisciplinarity are two indispensable skills in the current training in urban planning.

Institutions 1, 2 and 3 represent three different geographical contexts and also three different urban planning traditions and cultures. Furthermore, from the point of view of multidisciplinarity, each institution specialises in a distinct area within the disciplines of planning and design of the built environment. Institution 1 is particularly specialised in urban form, a spatial design approach with a strong emphasis on architecture and the composition of urban fabrics. Institution 2 focuses its training from a landscape perspective and works more intensively on territorial scale and environmental issues. Institution 3, on the other hand, is closer to civil engineering, with a focus on constructive and technical aspects.

The profile of the three institutions shaped the theme and approach of the programme. The consortium proposed an exchange focused on mutual learning through interdisciplinarity and multiculturalism. To this end, a three-year horizon was designed in which each institution would lead a call and be responsible for the general design of the programme and for hosting the rest of the consortium in its city during the face-to-face exchange phase. Institution 1 led the first edition based on a 3.5 ECTS programme combining a week of face-to-face exchange in the city of Valencia and three online seminars.

During the months of October, November and December 2023 the students of the three institutions worked on different issues and through different tasks. Each institution began by studying the main urban planning frameworks of their cities and regions with the aim of familiarising themselves with the urban planning regulations and strategies in their context and also in the rest of the consortium. Subsequently, a district of the city of Valencia was chosen, which would constitute the working environment for the rest of the exchange, both during the face-to-face phase and in the remaining virtual seminars. This work was carried out in groups made up of students from each institution (mixed groups) in which each student contributed their knowledge and skills to a common project. These projects had to propose an urban improvement solution that had to respond to the parameters of sustainability, focusing on some of the most relevant issues for the neighbourhood scale: housing, local facilities, green infrastructure and active mobility.

The results of the first edition of this BIP have been very positive. The students improved their skills thanks to the exchange with students of different profiles and were able to develop a quality project in reduced time thanks to the intensive format. The students' evaluation concludes a high degree of satisfaction and learning, not only with regard to their training as future urban planners, but also on a personal level. The second edition of the programme is currently being planned and will be coordinated by Institution 2 in autumn 2024.

The Viewing Machines: Pedagogical Explorations at the Dawn of Immersive Technologies

Gonzalo Carrasco Purull — 2024-11-08

This article presents a teaching experience for the course Ancient Architecture and the Classical Tradition, where methodologies based on immersive technologies were implemented. Through the concept of Viewing Machines, the critical possibilities of optical devices and architectural representation were explored, using the teleorama to analyze images produced by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Paul-Marie Letarouilly. The students worked on identifying depth planes and constructing devices that reproduced the original perspectives. The methodology encouraged the use of digital technologies and critical reflections on the impact of images in contemporary architectural education. The results highlighted the need to propose new ways of understanding images within architectural teaching.

Projective cartographies as a tool to rethink operational landscapes

Silvia Ribot — 2024-11-08

In the historical context we live in, where urbanization is a process that affects the entire territory and not only urban areas, and where natural resources are increasingly limited, but a critical reflection on operational landscapes is necessary from a perspective that considers both the natural and social environments. Contrary to the traditional approach that assumes an understanding of the landscape as something opposed to city-building, the theory of planetary urbanization asserts that infrastructures and productive territories have become part of the urban condition and therefore must be studied, planned, and designed. Thus, in this Landscape Planning course, the methodology established is based on projective cartography as a tool to rethink the territory, generating new perspectives and solutions to address contemporary challenges in land use and landscape management.

BIM Modeling in Residential Design: Parametric strategies of Digital Architecture

Ghyslaine Romina Manzaba Carvajal — 2024-11-08

The present study analyzes the pedagogical transition from traditional techniques to digital architecture through the implementation of BIM methodology in social housing programs in Ecuador. Based on digital surveys, the materiality of these housing units is examined using advanced tools in Revit, carried out by undergraduate students from the BIM and BIM II courses in the Interior Design and Architecture grade. This approach enables the simulation of multiple sustainable scenarios, conducting a systematic comparison through the parametric analysis of architectural and construction design. The implemented pedagogical strategies promote collaborative and dynamic learning, integrating advanced simulation technology to enhance design comprehension. This work contributes to the development of proposals that maximize sustainability and adaptability in the lifecycle of residential projects, as part of a Competitive Research Fund Project promoted by the educational institution.

The creation of a virtual learning environment around contemporary living architecture

María Isabel Alba Dorado — 2024-11-08

In recent years we have witnessed a multitude of changes that make it necessary and urgent to rethink and redefine both the limits of the architectural discipline and those of its teaching. It is inevitable that the teaching of architecture in Spain must position itself in relation to the new approaches, services and considerations that society demands regarding the concept of living and, specifically, in relation to housing. This contribution aims to make known the results of a training proposal that has contemplated the creation of a virtual learning space through the use of new teaching methodologies and instruments that allow the teaching currently provided in architecture schools to be adapted to the professional situation that future architects will have to face in order to respond as a group to what society demands regarding contemporary living for this century.

Analog to digital, round-trip journey

Ignacio Loyola Lizama — 2024-11-08

The present text covers a year of academic work and exposes the teaching methodology used for the first architecture workshop course, which is carried out entirely online. The study program is aimed at incorporating students whose ages range between thirty and sixty, who come from different locations in the country, and who complement their studies with work life and family responsibility. This reality allows us to think on teaching in adults with previous training in other disciplines, through the unavoidable intersection between the analogous operations of architecture in the initial courses and its necessary adaptation to the virtual condition of the study program, through the manual work with everyday objects by students, and the translation and transmission of their results to the virtual environment of the architecture workshop, through a playful approach.

Touching architecture: experience and analog drawing as a design tool in architecture

Ana María Estrada Gil — 2024-11-08

The research The State of the Question in Architecture Education explores two central issues. The first concerns the experience as a tool for learning how to design, with an emphasis on analog drawing, particularly in the first course of future architects' training. The second focuses on students' perceptions of this tool as the central element of the proposed methodology. During the literature review, as well as in the implementation of the Proyectos 1 course “Loadbearing wall domestic architecture” taught by the authors, the impact of hand drawing and model-making is analyzed as ideal instruments for the thinking process process. Conversations with students delve into their experience and perception of these pedagogical tools. The question of the relationship between the student's perception and the teacher's intent is the main inquiry that motivates this text.

A Projects I Course: scaling project, classroom, and learning

Eusebio Alonso García — 2024-11-08

Due to a departmental reorganization, we assumed the coordination of the subject of Projects I in 2022. This text describes some strategies implemented in teaching to increase student loyalty to the subject, encourage individual and collective involvement with the proposed topics, guarantee the continuous development of the proposed projects and increase the success rates of the subject. In addition to the statistical data that support the success of the above, and the summary tables of different aspects, we will provide images of some of the projects carried out by the 2nd Year students in their first course of Projects. Access to all of them is available in the blogs of the subject of these years which, like other data, we will hide for the moment to maintain anonymity. Aspects such as contents, objectives, programs and methodology will appear only partially and when required by the development of this text, the objective of which is addressed in the subtitle.

Application of AI in theoretical frameworks: challenges of the Architectural Thesis Plan

Cinthya Lady Butron Revilla — 2024-11-08

The elaboration of theoretical frameworks for thesis projects constitutes an important basis in the academic world. The need arises to unify criteria in the literature review process, and to establish a guide for its formulation. The pedagogical experience proposed is based on the methodology of Creswell (2018) and is applied in the thesis plans of 24 students of the subject Research Workshop 1 of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU). The applied methodology allows students to elaborate a database taking bibliographic bases as a source and subsequently improve them with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the ResearchRabbit program for the elaboration and improvement of their bibliographic map. The results show a change in the number of documents consulted, in the strength of the argumentation and in the conceptualization.