Learning processes in architecture have always been a complex and difficult research field; the specific qualities of architectural education from childhood to adulthood are far from to be really known. We will present some studies, some coming from works with children in primary school and some from the university level in the school of architecture in Barcelona. We will analyze with some examples how the dialogical dimensions of the knowledge of architects can be developed, underdeveloped and even destroyed in education. Some conclusions will intend to uncover how to bridge the gap between practice and theory in architectural education, and then we can immediately understand that this gap has been produced by the wrong assumption that learning and design architectural processes can develop out of their social and cultural-geographic circumstances, in an abstract and apolitical place, where the relationships between experience and reflection can never exist.
What is teaching for? Is it possible to learn? Do we learn by pleasure or by need? As time passes we waste more time trying to organize the way we teach, using new technologies, justifying what we do, but the structure of the stydy plans keeps the same. What’s the point of teaching what does not want to be learned? Is it possible to learn what we don’t need? This questions should not be understood as an argument for the petty “learning practical things”, but a proposal for universities to be able to show student the need of knowledge, of doing that which will make them happy architects. Is a necessity to have suffered learning mathematics, structures, projects or design? No. And doing so will be counterproductive while, once the exam passed, the importance of what has been left behind is ignored.
