Lagoons, oases, and meanders: spaces for reflection in alternative learning about Architecture

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to highlight meaningful architectural learning experiences for students, which are brought together and linked in an active and autonomous dimension of the general processes that define the corresponding course programs and curricula. This kind of non-literality, understood as an opening, allows us to refer to academic activities or explorations in which the outcome of an action, in the broadest sense, triggers a reflection that transcends learning. Embodied in first-year workshop exercises, an annual course with a modular organization, it allows for successive and diverse spaces for exploration. The methodology consists of asking a question and thereby promoting an insertion into a research topic based on a triggering experience, whether spatial, material, or phenomenological. The development of the exercises depends on the progress of the students' discoveries.