Notion, Image, Idea. Dialectics and play in Reima Pietilä’s thirty lessons at the University of Oulu

Abstract

In 1975 Reima Pietilä published Notion Image Idea, a unique pedagogical notebook in which he brought together the thirty lessons of the course he taught at the University of Oulu between 1973 and 1979. His aim was to show his students that the architectural project could be approached as a process of systematic research, driven by experimentation and creativity, which had to be able to go deeper into reality beyond any preconceived ideas. This methodological proposal was based on a continuous reflection on his own professional experience, a critical attitude that he considered indispensable for an activity that had to meet the substantial social and cultural changes produced in the second half of the twentieth century. Therefore, and in conclusion, Pietilä invited his students to be the main characters in the construction of the new ecological culture that, in his opinion, would guide the course of the following decades. At a time like the present, in which the importance of training the architect as an active participant in the transformation of the city of the 21st century is being debated, it is important to remember experiences such as those of Pietilä, which emerged from the fruitful encounter between a reflective teaching task and a professional practice open to research, as a reference path for tackling the challenges of the future. In this context, this article analyses the proposal presented by Reima Pietilä in Notion Image Idea as an approach to the new forms of experimental learning in architecture.