EAAE Annual Conference Proceedings

Colophon and Contents

ETSAB — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The annual conference in Barcelona marks the 50th anniversary of the EAAE coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the School of Architecture in Barcelona. This volume brings together the abstracts of contributions responding to the theme Transhistorical Pedagogies, and is copublished by the ETSAB and EAAE.

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Roberto Cavallo — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In a world marked by uncertainty, instability, and sudden upheavals, architecture – especially architectural education – is compelled to lead the way in addressing the profound questions confronting our society and built environments. In this context, the mission of our network association, which fosters dialogue, innovation, and collaboration to advance the quality of architectural education across Europe and beyond, assumes paramount importance. The themes of this year’s European Association for Architectural Education Annual Conference, Transhistorical Pedagogies, invite us to challenge the traditional boundaries of architectural education. Through topics such as Architecture as Synthesis, No Demolish, Learning from Archives, and Skills and Crafts, we are encouraged to strike a balance between tradition and transformation, explore sustainable approaches, cultivate critical thinking and craftsmanship, challenge prevailing conventions, and embrace novel perspectives in pedagogy and research. Together, we have the opportunity to reimagine architectural education as a catalyst for innovation and critical reflection – a space where the next generation of professionals can engage with both the past and the future in meaningful ways.

CHAIR’S WELCOME

Félix Solaguren-Beascoa del Corral — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Barcelona School of Architecture approaches architecture not just an academic discipline – but as an ongoing dialogue with the world. Like many European architecture schools, ETSABUPC thrives on a profound and evolving relationship with the practice of architecture. Here, teaching is not a simple transfer of knowledge, but the dynamic fusion of thoughtful critique and hands-on experimentation that meets society’s ever-shifting demands.

TRANSHISTORICAL PEDAGOGIES

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As we navigate the complexities of contemporary architecture, four key themes emerge as guiding principles for a more conscious and responsive practice. Architecture as Synthesis challenges us to reconnect with fundamental architectural principles while adapting to an ever-evolving world. Learning from Archives explores how historical records shape our understanding of architecture, offering fresh interpretations of the discipline’s past, present, and future. No Demolish urges us to reconsider the environmental and social costs of construction, advocating for sustainable, regenerative practices that prioritise reuse over destruction. Finally, Skills and Crafts reaffirms the importance of slow, handson learning, countering the mechanised efficiency of contemporary production with a renewed focus on human-centred design. Together, these perspectives encourage a critical reassessment of how we teach, build, and create in the 21st century.

Unstable State of Drawing as a Critical Agency

Anđelka Bnin-Bninski — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Architecture as a discipline and drawing as it’s primary craft are often considered as a solution-providers, offering stable responses to spatial demands. These ‘architectural solutions’ are highly conditioned by the building industry’s quests for speed, financial efficiency and investor’s benefice. This common practice is resulting in simplifying the overall capacity of architectural creative thinking and doing. Can we use the unstable state of drawing as critical agency for asking questions instead of providing solutions?

Here presented approach suggests the design research domain as a field of action towards the ethical and mindful architecture. This paper elaborates on the design-driven research processes within the educational context of the second year of Master studies at the Faculty of architecture, University of Belgrade (2024/25).1 The inquiry is founded on the methodology of liminal drawing (2) and related experiment in the teaching course Tactics of the design-driven research.

Bnin-Bninski defines liminal state of drawing based on the notion of preliminary (3) as a design research critical tactic confronted to the long-term established routines and procedures in the architectural design.

The starting premises for this course include the awareness and emphatic relation between the spaces we inhabit and the spaces we project.4 The discussed results are the individual student works of hanging mobile structures (strings and folded paper) of spatial segments arranged in the unstable state of relational constellations.

1. Anđelka Bnin-Bninski. “Tactics of the design-driven research.”
2. Anđelka Bnin-Bninski. “The role of architectural drawing in the dynamics of living space partition.”
3. Andrew Benjamin. “The Preliminary: Notes on the Force of Drawing.”
4. Claus Pedersen et al., eds., CA2RE+: Strategies of design-driven research.

The Polyrhythmic Studio: Time, Space, and Structures in the Educational Architecture Studio

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Education takes time. Studio-based learning recognises this and provides a pedagogical environment that can afford a slower, more immersive, deliberate experience.

This paper presents previously unpublished research from the Studio Properties research project. It explores how daily patterns, project cycles, varying intensities of the studio, and designing alongside others are time-based architectures that structure learning in the studio. However, the difficulty for educators is that such architectures are often invisible, tacit, and assumed, meaning they can be easily dismissed under resources and cost pressures in contemporary higher education contexts.

The Studio Properties book makes tacit and explicit the properties of studio for educators, giving them tools to examine, surface and articulate the value of studio in the face of increasingly commoditised higher education environments. In particular, it recognises the value of studio as offering: the time and place for immersion and the long durée of a studio experience; the textures of activity in studio as rhythms acting as curricular entities; student agency to create their own learning spaces.

Studio Properties challenges reductive ideas of education as immediate, standardised, or transactional and instead argues for the value of studio as a deliberate, polyrhythmic pedagogy.

The PopUp Workshop, learning with material

Hani Buri — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The PopUp Workshop is a prototyping space where students can experiment with projects and their implementation
on a one-to-one scale using real materials. The workshop promotes an interdisciplinary and experimental pedagogy in which learning by doing is central. This article presents four pedagogical approaches used in the PopUp Workshop:
* Verification and Modification. Students learn to verify and develop theoretical teachings through physical experimentation. They test the feasibility of implementation and assembly design in full-scale realizations. Based on observations and difficulties encountered, variants are developed.

* Learning through Play. Students discover design principles, such as ruled surfaces or reciprocal structures, through playful exercises. Developing several variants simultaneously highlights their expressive richness.

* Thinking with materials. Designing with materials turns the project process upside down. Form is determined as much by the interaction between the designer and the material as by other parameters, such as location or function.
The goal is exploration rather than knowledge; experimentation and failure drive research. The focus is not on mastering a technique, but on establishing a research method and discovering creative potential.

* Design, build, inhabit. Working on projects in public spaces gives students the opportunity to not only build a project but also live in it and test the developed concepts. Dialogue with clients, collective work, coordination, definition of common objectives, and consultation with craftsmen are all valuable experiences.

The PopUp workshop provides an opportunity to develop a greater sensitivity to materiality, as well as to collective and transdisciplinary work. Students must learn to handle the unknown and seize the opportunities that arise during the project’s development. The method itself is more important than working with materials: working directly with matter makes us more observant, attentive, and accepting. It leads us to welcome inspiration from what’s already there.

Buri, Hani. “La matière qui pense : table ronde sur “l’enseignement à l’atelier PopUp””. Revue Tracés n0. 3543 (2024) 30-33
Ingold, Tim. Making : Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2013.

Crafting Knowledge: The Manifold Possibilities of Fragments-Models for Architectural Design Pedagogy

Alberto Calderoni, Marianna Ascolese, Luigiemanuele Amabile — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Working with physical models involves craft as a form of ongoing research – through gestures, through both physical and intellectual acts. Among the tools of architectural design, models most vividly reveal time as fundamental to architectural quality. The haptic and reflective process of model-making fosters a unique, irreplaceable form of spatial knowledge.

This paper examines the performative and heuristic dimensions of model-making in the design studios the authors lead at the University of Naples Federico II. Methodologically, it draws on complementary case studies, such as design studios projects in undergraduate courses, and exhibition installations based on the reinterpretation of notable architectural examples. In each, the design process begins from fragments to construct imaginary reference points, thereby generating unforeseen spatial scenarios.

The pedagogical objective is to re-center manual practice amid a broader trend toward the dematerialization of digital processes. Through attentive ‘care’ in making, students acquire tacit knowledge of material potentials: they learn how fragments articulate possibilities and, in turn, how design can remain open-ended rather than merely representational. This counters the challenge in contemporary pedagogy of privileging abstract workflows over embodied making. Work- ing with physical models in design studios involves craft as ongoing research – through gestures, physical and intellectual acts. Among design tools, models best reveal time as the key to architectural quality. The haptic, reflective process of model making builds unique, irreplaceable spatial knowledge. Composing fragments suggest a practice rejecting traditional completeness. Rather, it is understood as a process carried out through partial elements that generate perspectives and allow the viewer to contemplate shapes under light and the possible futures of the projected design idea.

By situating fragments at the heart of studio pedagogy, this work introduces a new perspective on architectural education: design proposals become non-rigid schemas, modifiable in response to emerging conditions. The architect and architecture student thus inscribe themselves within a transforming world, re-activating the generative power of formal configuration as a means to envision – and enact – alternative realities.

Form and Strategy: Three Urban Design Learning Experiences for Intermediate Cities

Álvaro Clua — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To what scale can the architect’s design operate today? This paper presents the outcomes of recent teaching experiences carried out in intermediate cities in Catalonia, contexts where conceiving the city as a project is still a field of work for architects, and where it is essential to explore new ways of planning amidst an increasingly dynamic and complex context. These experiences stem from the final- year urban design studios of the architecture program at ETSAB, which focus on the development of complex urban and territorial projects.

The paper shares three pedagogical approaches focused on redesigning the urban backgrounds of intermediate cities. These are hidden, vacant, or expectant areas behind the dominant ‘figure’ of the city, where the biophysical ground remains evident and which can be strategic in providing coherence and cohesion to urban form. The first approach explores an inverted scalar method, beginning with small, singular fragments and leading to strategic planning: from form to systems. The second emphasizes experiential read- ings of these spaces through walking and immersion, helping students sense their beauty and potential in person. The

third centers on learning from references using cardboard study models, allowing students to grasp spatial qualities by touching, rebuilding and comparing valuable urban projects.

The paper concludes with a reflection on the role of urbanists in the improvement of intermediate cities, empha- sizing the need for an approach that integrates a renewed appreciation of the long-tradition of artisanal skills in
urban design with a more strategic vision aimed at guiding open-processes.

Aureli, Pier Vittorio, ed. The city as a project. Berlin: Ruby Press, 2013.
Clua, Álvaro, ed. Urban Backgrounds. Projects for the green belt of Igualada. Barcelona: Laboratori d’Urbanisme de Barcelona, 2023.
De Solà-Morales, Manuel, et al. El Projecte Urbà: Una Experiència Docent. Barcelona: UPC, 1999.
Juel-Christiansen, Carsten, ed. Transitions. Space in the Dispersed City. København: The Architectural Magazine, 2000.
Parcerisa, Josep. Forma Urbis: Cinco ciudades bajo sospecha. Barcelona: LUB, 2012.
Parcerisa, Josep, and Carles Crosas, eds. Barcelona Enllaços. Barcelona:
LUB, 2013.
Riboulet, Pierre. ‘La Ville Comme Oeuvre’. In Conférences Paris d’architectes. Paris: Pavillon de l’Arsenal, 1994.
Russo, Michelangelo, et al. Transitional Landscapes. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2023.

Intensity versus Efficiency: Research Walking as a Method for Learning Architecture from the User Experience

Angelika Lasiewicz-Sych — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores the possibilities, techniques and advantages of using the research walking method in architectural education. This modern visual method generates new knowledge based on researchers’ direct experiences and findings. Its use in architectural education is grounded in a rationale of progressive pedagogy, which fosters critical thinking and meaning-making. It’s also about teaching methods based on the multiple intelligence model and the importance of spatial skills in logical thinking, as well as new ways of understanding space that are intuitive and creative. Research walking enables architectural spaces to be considered not as abstract, algorithmic products, but as complex multimodal environments whose elements are meaningful places rather than buildings. Walking methods diverge starkly from walking data (whether through the use of GPS or an emphasis on mobility); they are qualitative, highly engaging methodologies frequently employed in participatory design and environmental research. Rather than empathising with users, the rationale is that researchers become users themselves for the duration of the walk. Walking and noting impressions provides a distinctive ethnographic viewpoint, blending time commitment with careful observation and discussion.

The observations in this work were largely based on teaching experience with architecture students. A mixed, partly structured walking methodology was employed, combining techniques such as walking observations, interviews, photo stories and transect walks, while analysing selected buildings for public use in Cracow. This methodology involved repetitive walks employing different modes of action. On the one hand, there was more aimless walking, focusing on its stimulating nature and incorporating photography and group discussions. On the other hand, there was more structured research walking, involving the use of
a questionnaire and observational notes to take an inventory of the analysed space. The reflections gathered during the latter were transformed into specific data on contextual relationships, accessibility, clarity, responsiveness and human scale. Overall, the observational information gathered during these walks revealed unexpected contexts for spatial and social interactions, offering students the chance to communicate their positionality and acknowledge their context.

Developing Students’ Drawing Skills with the Use of Real Projects at Architectural Faculties

Beata Makowska — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The increasing requirements regarding the level of education of architecture students and their competences necessary for their future work are a constant challenge for academic teachers. Curricula are constantly being transformed to reconcile the tradition of architectural schools with the complexities of the present. This paper discusses examples of new topics for freehand drawing courses, taught to students of Landscape Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture Cracow University of Technology (CUT) in Poland. They used real projects and teamwork (Project Based Learning, Problem Based Learning). An example of such activities is participa- tion in: (1) the plein air drawing and painting in Hrubieszów carried out as part of the research project “Local develop- ment of Hrubieszów: from participation to implementation” financed by the “Local Development Programme” under the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area; (2) the competition on the occasion of 80th CUT anniversary; (3) the poster competition that engages students in the search for innovative visions of the entrance to the Krakow metro.

The article is based on the latest scientific research on implementing Project Based Learning and Problem Based
Learning in architectural education. It also uses the observational method based on many years of pedagogical experience and the experimental method.

The aim of the article is to show that the implementation of authentic projects (close to real challenges in the future profession) and topics based on cooperation during freehand drawing classes contribute to greater engagement (seeing the specific purpose of the work and its meaning, students are more motivated), development of soft skills (communication, teamwork, negotiation), better assimilation, and long-term memory of experiences. It prepares them better for the future work of an architect, in which problem-solving and creative thinking are very important.

The article concludes that drawing skill becomes an antidote to the dehumanising effects of artificial intelligence and mechanised learning. The engaging process of drawing becomes a pretext to meet one’s own thoughts and confront peers. Involving students in solving real problems, during the pleasant drawing process, teaches them independence, cooperation, and communication. This method is more effective and increases learning outcomes.

Artisanal Intelligence as an Architectural Project Methodology: From line to pixel.

Andrés Ros Campos — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In contemporary architecture, design methodology is in tension between the rise of new digital tools and the persistence of the artisanal creative process. While computational resources offer immediacy, precision and unlimited formal exploration, the artisanal process, ensures cultural roots, conceptual depth, creative intuition and critical thinking.

A reflection on how to integrate both approaches without renouncing a committed and identitarian architecture is essential. The adoption of tools such as artificial intelligence or parametric design has led to a digital immediacy that threatens the intellectual rigor of the architect.

This contribution offers a critical analysis of these dilemmas, which challenge the foundations of the discipline, opening a dialogue between the design tradition and contemporary digital culture. What does it mean to design in an environment intervened by algorithms? The key lies in enabling the project to emerge from a coherent negotiation between memory and present, local and the global, artisanal and computational. In The Craftsman, Richard Sennett defends the value of the artisanal process, developed through meticulous, patient and iterative practice. The craftsman – and the true architect is one – is guided not only by efficiency, but by an ethical commitment to excellence in making. Creativity arises from the constant dialogue between hand, eye and mind, especially through trial and error.

This intellectual reflection finds concrete application in the framework of the European project The Use of AI Tools in Interior Design to Create Aesthetic, Inclusive, and Sustainable Built Environment, involving Krakow University of Technology, Politecnico di Milano, RISEBA University of Applied Sciences, AGH University of Krakow, and CEU Cardenal Herrera University. This European project works as an active pedagogical laboratory, exploring the integration of architectural knowledge and emerging technologies. Thus, artificial intelligence has been incorporated into project-based subjects, prioritising the creation of models or sketches and encouraging thinking. These are subsequently digitised, processed by AI, and post-edited using other tools. Results from student work suggest a hybrid strategy, combining traditional sketching with AI tools throughout the design process, preserving artisanal dimension in the act
of designing.

Designing Contemporary Architectures for the Revitalization of Traditional Hamlets in Lessinia, Verona

Gerardo Semprebon — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The paper investigates the role of traditional materials in defining local architectural identities and the potential for their integration into contemporary design and architectural education. The study is based on initiatives carried out at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies and the School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering, and articulates along two main trajectories. The first involved an international design studio engaging foreign students in field-based learning activities in Lessinia, a mountainous region north of Verona. The second includes three ongoing master’s theses developed within the Architecture and Urban Design program. The research focuses on the architectural heritage of Lessinia, where the use of local limestone has historically informed settlement patterns and construction techniques, resulting in a vernacular architecture characterised by a specific material culture. This tradition demonstrates a coherent constructive logic, with a recognizable tectonic language developed through the skilled use of available resources (Magagnato et al., 1982; Turri et al., 2003). The study questions how such legacy can be meaningfully referenced in contemporary architectural practices, avoiding stylistic imitation or reductive application of preservation norms. In addition to design and material considerations, the study addresses broader socioeconomic processes – such as depopulation, tourism-driven transformations, and seasonal use – that impact the conservation and transformation of this built heritage. The two educational formats have generated different interactions with the territory, combining fieldwork with collaborations involving local institutions and stakeholders. The paper aims to contribute to ongoing debates concerning the role of traditional building cultures in contemporary design processes, and their relevance in architectural education. The case of Lessinia offers a critical framework for exploring sustainable and culturally informed approaches to rural revitalisation, with implications at both local and international levels (Lin and Devabhaktuni, 2020).

Lin, J. and Devabhaktuni S. As found houses: experiments from self – builders in rural China. Applied research + design publishing, 2020 Magagnato, L., Pasa, A., Zorzi, F., Pavan, V., Muscarà, C. Architettura nei monti Lessini. Taucias Gareida, 1982.
Turri, E., Pavan, V., Trincanato, C. B., L’architettura di pietra in Lessinia. Un incontro con la pietra, la cultura, l’ingegno, a ritroso nel tempo. Numero Uno Design Book, 2003.

Design-build Projects: New Urban Experiences through Short-term Spatial Experiments

Dina Suhanova — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Practical urban research and new spatial experiences in the form of short-term experiments, hands-on construction, informal atmosphere, and co-learning define the approach of architectural summer schools. These non-formal, design- build programs have evolved into a distinct pedagogy, often implemented by architecture, design, and art schools through institutional partnerships. Back in 2008, architects and educators J. Anderson and C. Priest launched the Live Projects program at the School of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University and co-founded the Live Projects Network that promotes this approach in architectural education and practice and currently it serves as a catalogue and wide reference base for such projects. However, integrating these hands-on learning experiences into formal curricula remains a challenge for many universities.

Formal architectural education often lacks engagement with real-world needs and users. Students do not acquire enough practical construction skills and knowledge of current materials and techniques, and remain confined in the classroom. These observations led to the establishment of the Summer School of Ephemeral Architecture and Spatial Design in Latvia. Titled FestivaL’and, it has been running since 2018 in collaboration with the Summer Theater Festival and the Municipality of Valmiera. FestivaL’and explores contemporary, short-term architectural and spatial design interventions as catalysts for rethinking city spaces. During the camp, participants gain knowledge, skills and experience in the process of design creation, from research, ideation, tectonic experimentation to hands-on 1:1 scale timber construction techniques. Interventions often take place in abandoned buildings, underused spaces, or inactive peripheries. These are approached through cultural-historical analysis and participatory design methods, with the goal of proposing temporary architectural solutions that activate the sites and help evaluate their future potential. The interventions function as placemaking pilots that test spatial possibilities, foster inclusivity, and engage the local community. The structure of the summer school allows for flexibility, experimentation, and immediate public feedback. The paper will reflect on FestivaL’and’s six cases striving to bridge informal education with formal curricula, learning and envisioning urban transformations.

Not Knowing their Treasure: Tatami Endangered in Japan and Adapted in Europe

Arno Suzuki — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Traditional Japanese tatami, 6x3 feet rectangular mats featuring a compressed rice straw core covered with woven rush, have been highly regarded by European visitors from the 16th to the 20th centuries for their beauty and cleanliness. Initially, many Europeans found sitting or sleeping on tatami mats uncomfortable. However, owing to its biodegradable and vegan materials, an increasing number now choose tatami for practical reasons such as health benefits, space-saving in densely populated cities, and sustainability.

A survey conducted with over 900 non-Japanese individuals (439 in 2020 and 463 in 2023), and interviews with users and vendors in cities like Barcelona (2022) and Torino, Rome, Bologna, and Paris (2023), revealed that European tatami buyers and sellers highly value natural and organic materials. They appreciate the scent, texture, and sustainability. Authentic natural tatami can last for centuries with proper surface replacement – a maintenance practice unfamiliar to many European users and vendors.

There is a growing international demand for high-quality, made-in-Japan tatami; however, the supply is currently inadequate. Tatami rooms have become less common in modern Japanese homes, and the number of material producers has drastically decreased from over 10,000 in 1972 to only 260 by 2025. Consequently, most tatami sold in Europe is manufactured in China, but this supply may soon diminish due to high labour costs and low profitability. Without intervention, tatami could disappear from the market.

In Japan, domestic demand for tatami has declined since the 1970s, coinciding with the rise of concrete housing. Despite its proven antibacterial and insect-repelling properties, misinformation regarding mould and pests has contributed to this decline. The shift towards artificial tatami-like mats is also notable: currently, only 10% of Japanese tatami uses traditional rice straw and Japanese rush; the majority is made from polystyrene foam, synthetic rush made from plastic or coated paper, or Chinese rush. There is potential for international trade to help bridge this supply-demand gap. Educating users on the practical value of traditional materials and craftsmanship is also imperative.

Designing with Communities. Pedagogical Framework for Resilient Architectural Education

Alisia Tognon — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In an era overwhelmed by a culture driven towards standardisation and efficiency, DIY stands out as a cultural and political reaction. It is not only a construction method but also a social and educational device that places not only space, material, and time at the centre but also the human body and the community.

This essay explores the pedagogical and territorial value of self-construction as a shared design practice between architecture schools, students and inhabitants. This approach could generate new forms of local resilience and collective awareness. Several references around the world use self-building as a pedagogical way of teaching and conceptualising architecture. Examples include Rural Studio (USA) and Chaal.Chaal.Agency (India), ConstructLab (Europe), BASEHabitat (Austria), and many others, ..., although with different languages, treat the model of research by design and design-driven approach. The link with the university spheres allows them to define a methodology applicable both at the pedagogical and research levels. Furthermore, these ‘associations’ employ a multidisciplinary team: architects, builders, sociologists, graphic designers, educators...This shared vision of interdisciplinary, collaborative working combines creativity and practice by doing.

The present proposal aims to reflect on some DIY experi- ences activated in the AUIC School of the Politecnico
di Milano courses with international students. The contexts were fragile areas (urban outskirts, remote mountainous zones, etc.). These experiences are not only defined as ‘technical building sites’ – where learning how to build by ‘recovering’ from ‘waste’ – but also as ‘social projects’ – where working with different ethnic and generational groups.

These workshops demonstrate how acting together – with the crafts, in the long process of listening and trans- formation – brings meaning back to the project and creates caring links between students, territories and the local community to investigate co-design scenarios for experimentation and visions. The DIY workshop is conceived as a civic and pedagogical activator, producing light and symbolic infrastructures and tools for holistic education.

Freear, Andrew, and Andrea Oppenheimer Dean. Rural Studio: Samuel Mock- bee and an Architecture of Decency. Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. Stavrides, Stavros. Common Space: The City as Commons. Zed Books, 2016.

Concreteness and Carcass in Architecture and Education

Tom T. Veeger — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A most effective way of learning is to intrinsically motivate students by challenging concrete tasks; this paper describes as a case study the seminar Concreteness, in which students work with concrete as a material. We deliberately chose this material as the central subject of our seven-year research project in the seminar Concreteness, part of the master’s programme at the School of Architecture at Eindhoven University of Technology. The use of concrete in post-war architecture has had a lasting impact on the urban landscape of the city. Concrete buildings and structures have become iconic symbols of the city’s history and culture. It is essential that all architects, designers and engineers have a good understanding of the inherent properties of the materials they use. This understanding must go beyond simply appreciating the aesthetic qualities of the materials and include a thorough understanding of their physical and structural properties. Furthermore, it is essential that these professionals develop a nuanced understanding of the production processes and systems used when working with the selected materials. This understanding must go beyond a theoretical basis rooted in quantitative data and visual examples and extend to the practical handling of the materials, including tactile experience, operational observation and reflection on the results of physical tests.

Our mission was to unravel the power of a distinct concrete structure as the foundation for the architectural identity of a building. Each year, we focused on a specific city and visited projects by architects who were at the forefront of the local architectural debate and recorded this in interviews. The seminar places great emphasis on the meticulous study of existing buildings and design principles, while also using a wide range of exploratory, investigative and technical techniques. The seminar is not only theoretical; it also includes an extensive practical component in which students get to know the material intensively in various hands-on workshops.

Western architecture is perpetuated through the medium of education, wherein knowledge and skills coalesce. Architects’ narratives and words are transmitted to successive generations; this process is an enduring facet of our cultural heritage.

Growing from What Remains: Reuse at the Center of Practice and Education through the Carrier Bag Theory of Architecture

Sevince Bayrak — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents a case study of a repurposed swimming pool to introduce the Carrier Bag Theory of Architecture – a framework advocating for the reuse of existing buildings rather than their demolition and reconstruction. Evolving from Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, this theory reimagines architecture not as a heroic act of creating from empty plots, but as a relational and collaborative process that flourishes through existing structures.

The focal case is a transformation project in the Florya Atatürk Forest, a significant landscape project established
by Atatürk in the 1930s. After years of forestation efforts, bureaucrats occupying the forest for private use constructed villas and a swimming pool in the 1990s. Following a political shift in 2019, when a new mayor committed to reclaiming the forest for public use, the private villas were converted into offices for the Istanbul Planning Agency, and the swimming pool was repurposed into a public event space. In this context, the modest pool becomes a powerful tool for reclaiming public land and fostering collective engagement.

While the paper begins with this case study, it expands into a discussion of the 14 principles of the Carrier Bag Theory of Architecture, as exhibited in the Venice Architecture Biennale, in 2023. The theory critiques the construction industry’s addiction to building – often driven by economic reasons rather than spatial necessity – resulting in an excess of unused structures. This excess calls for reuse-focused strategies in both practice and education.

Although adaptive reuse has gained traction in recent decades, architectural education largely remains fixated on designing new buildings. When studio projects involve existing structures, students often struggle, as if architecture’s value could only be measured in novelty or scale. Yet, existing structures are relational; they introduce complexity, messiness, and resistance – qualities that, paradoxically, make architecture more robust.

This paper asks: can the transformation of existing structures take center stage in both the construction industry and architectural education? Writing as the designer of the pool project, the author of the Carrier Bag Theory, and an educator working to restructure the architectural curriculum, I offer a multi-layered perspective on the possibilities of prioritizing reuse over destruction.

Urban Erosion in Lieu of Demolition

Alessandra Como — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Within the no-demolish approach, the proposal introduces a new design strategy based on a process of urban erosion for the areas in need of urban transformation. Observing in particular the vast areas born through the building boom of the 1960s, where the city has grown out of proportion, saturating green and common spaces, the proposed strategy becomes an alternative to total demolition, envisaging a process of progressive erosion which follows the characteristics of Benjaminian porosity.

The term porosity, the pivotal theme of the text Naples by Walter Benjamin and Asia Lacjs (1925) has had a profound effect on architectural culture. Porosity has become a metaphor aimed at understanding urban space, characterized by complexity, stratifications, variations in volumes and voids, and processes of continuous transformation. Along this terms it could be possible to intervene within the urban fabric in concrete construction.

The structural independence between the grid of pillars and beams and the horizontal surfaces of the floors, as well as between the façade walls and the internal partitions, makes it possible to insert voids on the ground floor as well as on the upper floors, with limited constructive and economic difficulties.

Roles of the Everyday: Potential Impacts of Architectural Recycling as a Key for the Transition

Silvia Di Mauro — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Addressing the diffuse city from a perspective of ecological transition1 allows us to broaden the horizons of heritage adaptation to an interpretation of everyday architecture (2) as a resource.

The contribution investigates recycling projects (3) that enhance their resources out of the building’s borders, proposing a vision in which the building stock plays a key role. The classical approach to transition, assessed by technical parameters, is challenged to reflect on new life cycles that propose attitudes with systemic potential and a long-term perspective.

To face the contradictions between consumption and abandonment, is now necessary to develop approaches driven by broad objectives that translate global intentions into local impacts. Looking at the deep re-interpretation proposed by recycling projects (4), new possibilities can be found in tackling buildings as possible drivers for a city’s creation (5) based on available resources. Projects such as the Zinneke in Brussels, Luise 19E by Undjurekbrüggen, and Peveril Garden and Studio by Sanchez Benton architects outline three ways of dealing with the contemporary need for urgency and durability according to different targeted effects on context.

Through the analysis of the case studies, however rare in the panorama, we will extract replicable principles and actions capable of having a direct impact on the environmental context and also a didactic potential based on the possible repeatability of the approach and contextual declination. The aim is to identify research perspectives based on realism and pragmatism that can be translated into widespread practices, connecting environmental culture and communities.

1. Bennett, John W. The Ecological Transition: Cultural Anthropology and Human Adaptation. AldineTransaction, 1976.
2. Harris, S., “Everyday architecture.” In Architecture of the Everyday, edited by S. Harris, D. Berke, Princeton Architectural Press, 1997.
3. Ciorra, P. and Marini, S. (edited by), Re-cycle Italy. Strategie per l’architet- tura, la città e il pianeta. Electa, 2011.
4. Bocchi R., “Recycle”. In Recycle theory. Dizionario illustrato / Illustrated dictionary, edited by S. Marini and G. Corbellini Quodlibet, 2016.
5. De Carlo G., “È tempo di girare il cannocchiale.” Spazio e società, no. 54, (1991): 4-5.

It’s Time to reUse! Explorative Design Strategies to Inhabiting the Built City

Carlos Dias Coelho, Sérgio Padrão Fernandes — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Contemporary times present us with challenges that we sometimes fail to predict. Some that we can consider extreme, such as climate events, military conflicts, and intense migratory flows; others that result from altering the behaviour of our societies, such as tourist pressure and digital nomadism, manifesting in the lack of affordable housing or refuge spaces, which should make us all consider different living strategies.

Through an innovative pedagogical experience at FA.ULisboa’s Summer Schools, over three years, based on a design explorative approach, we raised awareness among the students on the fundamental topic of “reUse the built city”, understanding it as a process of appropriation, transformation, resignification, and even transgression of preexisting built structures.

Considering demolition outdated, existing built structures can be transformed into affordable, updated inhabitable spaces that preserve resources and even collective memories of urban spaces. Methodologically, each year, we selected different case studies to test design-based solutions to similar problems: ruined and abandoned built structures in 2021 (fortresses and city walls of Setúbal); decommissioned urban fabrics under transformation in 2022 (eastern riverfront of Marvila in Lisbon); underused buildings with recognition of high heritage value in 2024 (Convento de Cristo in Tomar).

Bearing in mind that these intensive experiences bring together students and professors from different European schools of architecture, design procedures, from concepts to their materialisation, were held through alternative paths.
The results of each workshop become an exhibition that provides each place with a new critical view of itself, based on a comprehensive model that gathers the design studio projects. Each design studio builds a piece of the common ground, representing a proposal for inhabiting built structures. Each proposal is based on an integrated vision of the preexistence and an articulated relationship with the projects and with each of the groups. In this sense, all the outputs from each design studio become fragments of the collective proposal. The goal of each design immersive experience in inhabiting existing buildings is to constitute a working manifesto for the reuse of the city.

Avoid Demolition: How Can Architects Foster the Preservation of Buildings?

Daniela Konrad — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Demolishing existing buildings poses significant environmental, economic, and socio-cultural challenges worldwide. In Germany, reforms to the building code in the 1990s replaced the requirement for a demolition permit with a simple notification procedure. This shift has made it easier to demolish non-protected buildings, conflicting with the European Green Deal’s goals for resource conservation and climate protection. While the preservation and continued use of existing buildings make a significant contribution to the conservation of grey energy, architects still have only marginal influence on demolition decisions, as these are often made before they are commissioned by building owners and investors.

Against this backdrop, questions arise as to who the key players are in demolition decisions, how architects are currently contributing to reducing or avoiding demolition, and what tools are available to them to influence these decisions.

This study examines these dynamics through a research-oriented elective module at the School of Architecture Bremen (SoAB), led by the Chair of Sustainable Planning and Building in Urban Contexts. Advanced Bachelor’s and Master’s students participated in the module, analyzing real-world projects at risk of demolition. Employing methods such as media research, stakeholder mapping, and SWOT analysis, students investigated the motivations, communication strategies, and key actors involved in demolition processes. Through thought experiments, students developed proposals for the adaptive reuse of threatened buildings, showcasing the potential for innovative solutions.

The findings highlight the need to equip not only architects and planners, but also developers, investors, and policymakers with the knowledge and tools to prioritize building preservation. Early involvement of architects, beginning in Phase 0 (the pre-planning phase), and the reintroduction of demolition permits are identified as crucial strategies for aligning the built environment with sustainability objectives and safeguarding buildings for future generations.

Learning from the Existing: Spa Settlements as a Pedagogical Framework for Environmentally Sensitive Spatial Futures

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper promotes a value shift in architectural education – from tabula rasa design toward reimagining inherited spaces as resources for future transformation. Spa settlements are framed as living pedagogical contexts for anti-extractive, regenerative approaches to the built environment. The study is situated within the SPATTERN project, which advocates an educational shift placing existing spa settlements at the core of integrating spatial history, environmental systems, and socio-cultural dynamics.

The paper reflects on five studio-based curricula at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Architecture, engaging spa settlements – often in fragile ecosystems – as bases for developing no-demolish pedagogies. These challenge extractive logics and promote care-based spatial futures. The curricula range from undergraduate studios on adaptive transformation of urban heritage through critical mapping and scenario design (1) to master-level studios exploring spa heritage reprogramming (2), hybrid naturalities, and multisensory well-being.

Students were encouraged to work with, not against, inherited spatial fabrics – treating heritage as dynamic and shaped by environmental, social, and experiential forces. Through methods like site diagnostics, speculative programming, behavioral mapping, and environmental storytelling, these frameworks redefine the value of the already-built and propose new typologies rooted in care, circularity, and climate sensitivity.

Spa settlements, with layered materiality, health infrastructure, and entwined histories of landscape and architecture, offer fertile ground for pedagogical innovation. These studios promote a future-facing view of heritage aligned with education grounded in place, history, and speculative imagination.

1. Djokić, Vladan, Milica Milojević, and Mladen Pešić.2021. “Design Studio 06U.” In Review: Best Practices in Educating Sustainability and Heritage, 174–179. Belgrade: University of Belgrade – Faculty of Architecture.
2. Ristić Trajković, Jelena, Aleksandra Milovanović, and Ana Nikezić. 2021. “Reprogramming Modernist Heritage: Enhancing Social Wellbeing by Value-Based Programming Approach in Architectural Design.” Sustainability 13 (19): 11111. https://doi.org/10.3390/su131911111.

Who Owns the Sstreets? The Case of the Zollo Alley in Bilbao

Íñigo Onzain, Maria Oliver, Ivan Cabrera, Alicia Llorca — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most relevant roles in architecture professional practice and, consequently, one of the most relevant issues to be taught in schools, is that of social leadership. In this will, almost duty, to guide society on the way to improving its quality of life and ensuring progress, architects have not always found the support of political and economic establishment and, occasionally, they have become developers of their own proposals. There are many buildings that have survived to the present day whose cost was totally or partially covered by the architects who designed them, in their eagerness to see them completed. And the current trend of refurbishing public spaces and buildings is no exception.

In the Basque Country there is a deep-rooted tradition of meeting in small public or semi-public spaces called txokos or txakolines. In 1955 the Txakolin Zollo was built in Bilbao, one of the most popular of these places. However, two decades later, the commercial and bourgeois development of the two important streets connected by this alley led to an apparent divorce with the surrounding neighborhood. Given the lack of interest from the municipality, its neighbors decided to paint the walls and to treat the space in an experimental way, giving it a strong personality and turning it into an icon. But commercial activity decreased even more and with it came the progressive abandonment of this alley that reached the 2000s in very poor condition.

In the early 2020s a young architect bought one of the premises and initiated a series of legal, but mainly architectural and social, actions that have made it possible to recover this space for the Bilbao citizenry and visitors. Aware of its value, its demolition was never an option.

Commercial and public spaces have been refurbished and recovered, giving it back its own traditional activity but from a contemporary perspective. Newly inhabited by artisans and artists, the alley now has a presence on social media, hosts different kinds of events and enjoys a vibrant activity and a second chance as a commercial street thanks to the conviction and sponsorship of a young architect.

Typological Strategies for reUse: the Bullring as a Catalyst of Urban Transformation in Santarém

Sérgio Padrão Fernandes, Carlos Dias Coelho, Luís Carvalho, Joana Malheiro — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Santarém is a medium-sized city in Portugal where the bullring and the fair defines an emblematic urban space. However, the symbolic importance of this public space does not correspond today to a materialized and recognizable form. The gradual collapse of the activities in the Campo da Feira and the spatial vagueness of the space surrounding the arena building, along with the urban imprecision in defining the city’s limits, are emerging challenges that the city has faced since 1994, then began a process of gradual abandon- ment associated with the relocation of the National Agriculture Fair to the outskirts of the city.

This communication aims to highlight an innovative intervention strategy that has made it possible to formulate hypotheses for the reuse of the bullring and the consequent transformation of the old urban space of Campo da Feira in Santarém. It describes the process of applied research, the result of collaboration between the Lisbon School of Architecture and the City Council of Santarém, which, using the tools of urban design and urban morphology, sought to design a diversified public space formal program for the former Campo da Feira, aimed at multiple modes of use and appropriation, both permanent and transitory, or even inter- mittent, but which was rooted in the historical continuity of the city and which valued the pre-existing buildings, adapt- ing them to intense public use.

Methodologically, the work was essentially organized into two phases: an initial phase focused on the morphological study of the city, and the main phase, thinking on design, used a series of hypotheses to promote debate and involve the municipal executive and the population in the search for a solution for such an important area for Santarém.

The results we propose to present reveal the complexity of the process in design terms and political terms, which led us to opt for a design-based methodology based on typological strategies for reuse and transformation. These strategies are based on four design scenarios that formalize possible, plausible and distinct hypotheses, which allowed us to support the discussion, the political choices to be made, and the main project options to be materialized, rather than a closed project that expressed one final and finished solution.

Hrubieszów House with a Climate: Resilient Living Environments Inspired by Genius Loci, Tradition and Nature as a Local Response to Global Challenges

Izabela Sykta — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Renowned architect and educator Professor Wiktor Zin (1925–2007) promoted heritage and landscape preservation through his TV series With a Pen and Charcoal and by inspiring lectures that often referenced his hometown, Hrubieszów. His legacy inspired the project Local Development of Hrubieszów – from Participation to Implementation, which included the Hrubieszów Climate House (Hrubieszowski Dom z Klimatem) section, led by the CUT Faculty of Architecture. The project documented disappearing traditional wooden houses and gardens to strengthen cultural identity, promote heritage preservation, and develop climate-resilient, tradition-based housing. Using a research-by-design approach with fieldwork and surveys, it applied transhistorical pedagogy and bionic design to creatively address present-day challenges.

One of the key goals was to introduce students to Professor Zin’s vision of architecture – rooted in the native landscape – seen as a harmony of beauty, function and care. He believed buildings evolved from life and not just design, and praised wooden houses and gardens for their organic vitality. Field research, including at Zin’s family home – an archetype of a Hrubieszów homestead – deepened this understanding. The outcome was a set of projects dubbed 10+1 Hrubieszów Climate Houses and Gardens (10+1 Hrubieszowskich Domów i Ogrodów z Klimatem), created by students and academic teachers. These projects reinterpret local traditions using low-tech, nature-based, and circular design to build resilient, community-driven habitats. Rather than following standardised, design-catalogue – based solutions, they respond to the place and to people – proving that continuing tradition is not nostalgia, but a vital, locally rooted answer to global challenges.

Sykta, Izabela, and Anna Staniewska, eds. House and Garden in the Landscape of Hrubieszów. History, Tradition, Spirit of the Place; House and Garden in the Landscape of Hrubieszów. Design in Harmony with Tradition and Climate; Gierbienis, Marcin, and Agnieszka Greniuk, eds. 10+1 Hrubieszów Houses and Gardens with a Climate. Design in the Context of Place and Time. Oficyna Wydawnicza Atut. Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe, Kraków – Hrubieszów, 2024.

Continuing the (un)finished: A Dialogue with the Painting

Malinde Valee — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Contemporary architectural education often prioritizes originality over continuity, even in adaptive reuse. This mindset reduces layered spaces into geometric abstractions – mere volumes awaiting intervention, rather than acknowledging them as lived spaces with their own identity, memory, and atmosphere. This paper challenges the tendency among students to view existing buildings as empty shells, advocating for a pedagogical approach rooted in sensitivity and slowness.

Drawing on Pérez de Arce’s idea that the built environment evolves over time through the gradual layering of elements. This incremental process confirms and reinforces a space, imbuing it with collective experiences, and socio-cultural and spatial values.(1) Erasing this accumulation means losing something meaningful and qualitative. The question arises: what does it truly mean to continue a lived space, and how can it be taught?

This contribution discusses an exercise of the research seminar Genius Loci, coordinated by Koenraad van Cleem-Poel, in which students engage in a nuanced dialogue between theory and practice through the in-depth study of a painting. By interpreting an artwork’s visual, emotional, and symbolic layers, students cultivate a sensitivity that informs their own translations – soft interventions and personal interpretations that maintain a respectful dialogue with the original.

Through qualitative analysis of student projects, the paper demonstrates an approach that fosters sensitivity towards existing conditions and promotes a design language rooted in continuation rather than demolition. The research advocates for an open-ended approach, refined by an attitude of sensitivity towards the lived space and its thoughtful reuse. In this process of reflection and redefinition, the painting serves as a metaphor for the lived space, encouraging interaction to continue rather than to erase.

1. Pérez de Arce, Rodrigo. “Urban Transformations & the Architecture of Additions.” Architectural Design 48, no. 4 (1978): 237–266.

Repairing Architecture Schools

Şebnem Yücel — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The practice of architecture stands at the threshold of a major paradigm shift. The longstanding model – rooted in Enlightenment ideals that equated development and progress with new construction – is increasingly being questioned. In its place, alternative practices are emerging that promote new sensibilities, attitudes, and mindsets.

As Enlightenment ideals give way to new materialist perspectives, a once-marginalized vocabulary – centered on care, repair, and empathy – is regaining prominence in architectural discourse.

Restoration, once primarily associated with historical and cultural monuments, is now being reconsidered in relation to all existing structures. This shift reflects a growing sense of necessity and ethical responsibility on the part of architects toward the planet, cities, and communities.
The architectural profession is moving away from the image of the white, European, male architect – portrayed as a prophetic figure – toward a more grounded vision of the architect as a specialized and responsible citizen.

This alternative paradigm calls for a redefinition of architectural education as well. The culture of architecture schools must be critically re-examined, making space for concepts such as care and repair within curricula. This re-evaluation should encompass the types of courses offered, the nature of design studio projects, and the pedagogical approaches employed. Furthermore, the imperative to care for the planet must be extended to caring for students themselves, beginning with a reconsideration of the jury system.

This paper explores how integrating practices of care can contribute to repairing the institutional and pedagogical structures of architecture schools.

The Archive as Project: Rethinking Pedagogy through Arch/ves

Joana Bastos Malheiro, João Carrola Gomes — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In a context where the preservation and transformation of modern architectural heritage demand interdisciplinary approaches, the role of archives gains renewed centrality as a critical and operative device mediating between memory and design. This article reflects on the Architecture, Urbanism and Design Archives of Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon – arch/ves – as a strategic infrastructure reshaping architectural education, research, and culture. Comprising over 86 archival collections from architects active between the 19th and 21st centuries, arch/ves holds a diverse programmatic, technical, and ideological legacy that both traverses and problematizes the Modern Movement in Portugal.

By making this heritage accessible and open to interrogation, the Archive transcends its preservational function and becomes an epistemological and pedagogical platform for the critical reinvention of design processes. In this light, initiatives such as the From Arch/ves to Project design studios, and graduate research projects demonstrate the Archive’s role as a true laboratory of modernity. Through the analysis of collections such as those of Carlos Ramos, Francisco Conceição Silva, and Pancho Guedes, the article explores how modern legacies can be critically reactivated as contemporary design tools, rooted in the material and intellectual memory of the 20th century while addressing today’s cultural, social, and environmental challenges.

Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of the Archaeology of Knowledge, the Archive is interpreted as a discursive field in which disciplinary genealogies are deconstructed and new project-based epistemologies are activated. Beyond its pedagogical dimension, arch/ves is examined as infrastructure for architectural and urban reuse through actions such as exhibitions, seminars, masterclasses and publications. Case studies like the Modern Football Stadiums of Lisbon reveal integrated methodologies of archival research, morphological analysis, and tectonic critique. The article concludes that, when articulated with teaching, research, and critical curation, the Archive emerges as a space of convergence between memory and innovation, permanence and transformation – a critical horizon for 21st century Architecture.

Digital Curation and Intersectionality: Diversity in the Dissemination of Architectural Primary Resources

Marianna Charitonidou — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Taking as its starting point the increasing importance of the role of digital curators within institutions holding architectural archives, the project aims to elaborate tools coming from intersectional theory and practice in order to produce an understanding of how women and black men are represented in the digital curation of architectural drawings in cultural institutions. More specifically, the project aims to apply concepts and tools coming from the theory of intersectionality in order to examine how aspects concerning gender and race can be taken into account when establishing digital curatorship strategies. The project is based on the hypothesis that visualisation strategies can show the evolution of the role of women and black people in architectural discourse. An important factor for this project is that the aforementioned institutions are situated within
a context having the following characteristics, which are contradictory to a certain extent: on the one hand, they hold in their collections archives of architects that are para digmatic of the dominant discourse given the fact that they wish to acquire the fonds of architects that influenced and are significantly influencing the dominant discourse, but, on the other hand, they are called to shape interpretative models based on perspectives able to take into account diversity issues. Drawing upon Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work, and on the impact of the theory of intersectionality on digital humanities and digital labour studies, the project aims to shape a method of digital curation able to conjointly address issues of race, gender, class, ability, sexuality, or other categories of difference while interpreting the primary sources that are disseminated through online platforms. Particular emphasis is placed on the fact that the intersectional perspective is the endeavour to interrogate its own positionality and the very processes of knowledge production, the project also explores how visualisation strategies can show the evolution of the role of women and black people in architectural discourse.

Learning from the Past: ARCHIVES and the Development of Housing Projects at the Lisbon School of Architecture

Hugo L. Farias — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The ARCHIVES – Archives of Architecture, Urbanism, and Design of the Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa (FA-ULisboa) have existed since 2021, with the mission of preserving, organizing, studying, and disseminating documentary heritage related to Architecture, Urbanism, and Design, with a particular focus on the Portuguese context. Through modern archival practices, the ARCHIVES ensure the accessibility, conservation, and integration of this heritage into teaching, research, and outreach activities. The ARCHIVES are composed of collections and funds of patrimonial, historical, artistic, and documentary value, including: academic records and documents from alumni of the Faculty; materials from architectural studios, received through donation or on loan; and documentation from exhibitions. Currently, the ARCHIVES hold over sixty collections and estates from architects and designers, mostly alumni of FA-ULisboa, who developed their professional practice throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. This article focuses on the use of resources available in the ARCHIVES as a foundation for the development of architectural design projects within the context of FA-ULisboa, particularly in the design studio courses of the 3rd and 4th years of the Integrated Master’s in Architecture. In these academic years, the theme of housing architecture is central – first through an understanding of typological-morphological dimensions, the relationship between modes of living and dwelling models, and the proper integration between residential architecture and the urban context. Then, through the development of project proposals that should be historically, culturally, and disciplinarily informed and substantiated; and, should seek innovative solutions that respond to the needs, aspirations, and desires of contemporary housing, within the current social, cultural, and economic context. The ARCHIVES – and particularly the numerous highly relevant case studies that can be found within them (it is worth noting that the collections include works by some of Lisbon’s most notable 20th-century architects) – represent a wealth of information that should be explored by students in their quest for a deep understanding of residential architecture and in the subsequent development of innovative projects for the present and the future.

From Archive to Imagination: Narrating Layers of Time in an Architectural Workshop

Ewa Stachura, Amos Bar-Eli — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents a methodological inquiry into the creative use of archival materials in architectural education, focusing on their potential as both sources of inspiration and visually operative tools in design processes. Using a one-week student workshop titled Belt. Gate. Narrate., held in Cracow, Poland, as a case study, the paper explores how narrative design can serve as a framework for engaging with historical documents – particularly maps – to generate site-specific, time-sensitive architectural proposals.

The workshop centred on Planty Park, a 4-kilometer green belt that encircles Cracow’s Old Town, where medieval fortifications once stood. Rather than treating the park as a neutral perimeter, the methodology recognised it as a transformative and liminal space – a layered urban threshold between the historical core and the city’s later expansions. This in-between condition, both spatial and temporal, positioned the park as a fertile site for narrative interpretation, one charged with historical memory, ambiguity, and potential.

At the core of the pedagogical approach was the superimposition of archival and contemporary maps, used not simply as references but as design catalysts. These layered cartographies invited students to read the city as a palimpsest, where traces of the past can be reactivated to shape new spatial narratives. Through this technique, archival material became a generative device – capable of revealing hidden continuities, ruptures, and moments of transformation.

Students responded with high-quality conceptual urban and architectural intervention projects that unfolded as multimodal narratives – visual “stories,” large-format anecdotal drawings, and short interpretive videos – combining analogue and digital media, hand-drawn and AI-generated imagery. The plurality of formats encouraged poetic, open-ended expressions, allowing for deeply personal interpretations of site, history, and transition.

This paper argues for a methodological shift from archives as static repositories to active instruments in design pedagogy. By recontextualising historical documents through narrative strategies and situating them within liminal urban conditions, such as Planty Park, architectural education can cultivate new modes of spatial thinking – ones that are historically informed, critically imaginative, and emotionally resonant.

Our Archives as a Treasury in Architectural Education; the Potential of Institutional and Personal Archives in the Development of Creative Practices

Sally Stewart — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What did you look at when you developed a design? What did you go back again and again to inform your thinking and drive your designing (and designing your teaching)?

This paper considers the tacit and explicit role of archives generated and held both by institutions and individuals in the development of architectural and creative practice, and the shaping of the teaching programmes that support these trajectories.

Working within a school of architecture that has had autonomy over the archives it creates has allowed our archive to develop over time, reflecting and representing the forms of materials that have been values and prevalent. While our collecting or gathering has focused on quality and been selective form the output of our students, the range of materials it has accumulates is seldom used as the focus of teaching, either to inform the consideration of programme, technology or context.

This is quite different to the use of our institutional archives, which collect from across a range of design and fine art practices, and whose collections are often seen as a treasure house, a resource and a tangible and valuable asset.

Through considering the development of a personal archive, and the teaching of tactics to recall, reveal, organise, use and value our research sources, the paper describes how these can become active sources of our creativity, rather than passive records of a previous time.

Operational Criticism and Architectural Archives: Connecting Research and Teaching; Blurring Boundaries between Past, Present and Future of Design

María Candela Suárez — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

More than two decades ago, critic and ETSAB professor Carles Martí Aris pointed out that the weakening of architec- tural thought and the shortcomings in architectural academic research were largely due to the uncritical adoption of extra-disciplinary frameworks. These approaches have led to a diminished understanding of the architectural project’s potential to become a rigorous and objective research sub- ject. This issue is particularly pronounced among architec- ture students, who are increasingly overwhelmed by technol- ogy and inundated with excessive information, often before they have developed the necessary skills to filter, process, and critically integrate that information into their education.

But the architectural project itself is a potential source of knowledge. In this sense, architectural archives reveal their significance. Combined with concepts like “operation- al criticism” (“crítica operativa”)1, architectural archives are essential for developing design theory and creating a “micro-history of buildings.”

The integration of archives and “operational criticism” greatly enhances teaching by seamlessly connecting three traditionally separate areas of pedagogy: Design, History, dnd Theory. The research seminar “Le Corbusier and the Loucheur Houses” at Fernando Pessoa University of Porto exemplifies this interconnected approach’s effectiveness and educational potential. It immerses students in architects’ archives, offering theoretical and practical perspectives on the project being studied. Thus, through profound observa- tion, asking the right questions, and engaging in reflection, students can uncover the project’s latent information.

This paper outlines the seminar process, the challenges encountered, and the outcomes achieved to illustrate the educational potential of working with architectural archives. It explores how archives can help reactivate a nonlinear narrative of architectural design, “re-witness” the past, and bridge the gap between architectural research and teaching. The seminar’s central theme, focusing on minimal and flexible domestic spaces, engages students in a timely discussion that blurs the boundaries between design’s past, present, and future.

1. A term coined by Carles Martí Aris to describe the study of architectural works and their creative process (La cimbra y el arco. 2a ed, Fundación Caja de arquitectos, 2007, 18).

The Value of Memory as a Didactic Tool: “Art of Making Buildings Laboratory” at the Politecnico di Milano.

Maria Pilar Vettori, Andrea Dechamps — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Starting from the academic year 2022/2023, Renzo Piano has been teaching a course at the AUIC School of the Politecnico di Milano, titled “Art of Making Buildings Laboratory”.1 This course offers students a design experience grounded in the knowledge of built works, promoting a methodological approach aimed at developing the synthesis capacity that historically characterizes the architect as both a builder and an intellectual.

The methodological and conceptual foundation of the course lies in the archival documents concerning the architect’s over sixty-year career, preserved by the Renzo Piano Foundation in its Genoa and Milan offices. Through the observation and analysis of graphic works and models from various phases of the design process, students are encouraged to critically reinterpret completed works.

This approach aims to stimulate students to develop design proposals that address contemporary social, environmental, and economic demands.

The Renzo Piano Foundation’s space at the Politecnico di Milano plays a key role in this educational experience. Sketches, plans, sections, diagrams, and models from the archive are fully available to students, becoming active tools in a design process that starts from built memory to address the needs and challenges of contemporary architecture.

This contribution aims to explore the method and content of this educational experience from within, highlighting the didactic role of built works. It finds its genesis in the archival documents of the Renzo Piano Foundation, serving as a paradigm for the educational role of constructed works.

1. Renzo Piano has been a professor at the ABC Department of the Politecnico di Milano since 2022, holding a direct teaching assignment as an “expert of high qualification.” The activities of the “Art of Making Buildings Laboratory”, which he leads, are supported by a group of professors from the same department, coordinated by Maria Pilar Vettori.

Architectural Drawings: History, Present, Future

Maria Jolanta Zychowska — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The history of the teaching of architectural drawing can be traced back to the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, where drawing played a key role in the architect’s toolkit. Over time, the Academy became a model for architectural education in Europe and, until the 20th century, freehand drawing was afforded special significance.

The present day is a period of digitization, of a fascina- tion with new means of graphical presentation, and it would appear that the role of freehand drawing is losing its impor- tance. The impressive capabilities of computer-aided design programs suggest that the contact hours of teaching students the manual skills of the art of representing designs can either be decreased in number or outright reduced to zero. On the other hand, the final decades of the 20th century saw an exceptional appreciation for freehand drawing as a form of conveying ideas, intents and ambitions of architects and architectural adepts. It thus appears that the task of teachers in today’s architecture schools is to include methods of illustrating the design process via the use of digital media, drawing and traditional modelling in their curricula. This is because the future is full freedom to create either traditional images or digital projections, including AI-assisted ones.

Shared Spatial Education: The Role of Architectural Co-design in Permacrisis Scenarios

Francesco Airoldi — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The urgency of a reflection on the teaching of architecture and, more broadly, on the role of research in the spatial education of users and general public, is realized in the complexity of contemporary challenges. Global changes emerging with much more rapid and unpredictable times and ways than in the past make it necessary to widen the architectural debate in terms of both themes and audiences.

Disciplines dealing with space are now forced to face the uncertainty to which territories and communities are subjected, catalyzed by issues such as climate change and environmental crises that often lead to overlapping hazards drawing multi-risk scenarios. This results in the need to investigate alternatives in architecture1 that consider as a starting point the permacrisis context characteristic of the risk society. 2

The contribution proposes a vision of spatial co-educa- tion as a fundamental component for adaptation to uncertainty, in the direction of risk reduction and mitigation. In this sense, a design-driven research methodology based on participatory practices is proposed for a shared knowledge construction around the complexity of places. In order to understand it as a real co-design tool, however, participation must be thought of outside traditional patterns3, understanding it as a transformative4 process shared among designers, students, users and the public.

Exploring Architectural Education from the Resilience Perspective: After the Pandemic Experience

Zelal Cinar — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In recent decades, the world has witnessed numerous disastrous events, including natural disasters such as tsunamis, droughts, heatwaves, forest fires, and earthquakes. Moreover, societies have faced significant challenges such as economic collapse, pandemics, social conflicts, poverty, the gradual depletion of global resources, the impacts of climate change, terrorism, and war. Amid this era of crises and disruptions, there is a growing need for resilient systems capable of coping with such disturbances.

Resilience is a concept that emphasizes a system’s capacity to absorb shocks and continue functioning amidst change and disruption. It has been applied across various disciplines to understand the behavior and characteristics of complex systems under stress.

The global health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted numerous sectors, including architectural education. Most educational institutions worldwide temporarily closed, leading to the implementation of “emergency remote learning.” This abrupt shift highlighted the necessity for higher education systems to be flexible and resilient.

During the pandemic, new tools, methods, and approaches were adopted, and it is anticipated that some of these will be retained. This adaptive response aligns with the concept of adaptive resilience. In this context, the pandemic provides a real-world example of how architectural education adapts to major disturbances.

To support and guide the transformation of architectural education, it is essential to analyze the current changes. Although there are several studies evaluating the effects of the pandemic, it is still important to discuss if this experience has ever changed or improved architectural education – such as the curriculum, tools, learning environments, and modes of interaction.

A literature review is conducted to examine how educational systems have responded to disruptions. Architectural education before and after the pandemic will be evaluated in the light of this framework. Then the pandemic experience of the Department of Architecture at TOBB University of Economics and Technology is analyzed to provide data for developing strategies to enhance the resilience of educational systems.

Homo Ludens and Recreational Open Spaces: Enhancing Social Interaction Among University Students

Rümeysa Demirel — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The concept of Homo Ludens, introduced by Johan Huizinga (1938), identifies play as a fundamental element of culture and human interaction. Within this framework, play is not merely a leisure activity but a societal function that fosters connection, creativity, and social bonding. Huizinga emphasized that incorporating play into urban life nurtures the spirit of freedom, encouraging individuals to socialize in open and inclusive environments. However, the design of university campuses often overlooks the importance of dedicated play areas within recreational open spaces. This study investigates the main campus of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, focusing on the role of play in fostering social interaction among students. Using the Homo Ludens theory as a conceptual framework and employing a qualitative case study method, this research analyzes how existing recreational open spaces facilitate or limit playful interaction. Findings reveal that although certain areas promote informal socialization, structured play opportunities are minimal and underutilized. As a result, the study argues for integrating purposeful play elements into campus planning to support student well-being and social connectivity. These results contribute to a broader understanding of how architectural design can synthesize educational, social, and recreational functions within the university context.

Speculation and Iconicity in Chicagoan Skyscrapers: A History of Back and Forth

Ivan Cabrera, Ernesto Fenollosa, Maria Piqueras — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The skyline of many Chicagoan streets is being progressively disrupted by the appearance of a new generation of buildings whose shape, far from striving for an adequate composition and a balanced urban landscape, only aims to get the maximum number of square meters to other for sale or rent. The massive and occasionally peculiar silhouette of new building developments or extension of pre-existing premises is increasingly present in well-known neighborhoods such as Magnificent Mile or the Loop, where the high demand for housing has led developers to seek to optimize their earnings by maximizing the profitability of a given plot of land.

Behind us is a whole generation of skyscrapers with a strong iconic quality, attained not only through the maximization of the number of stories, but also and fundamentally through their form and materiality. The three towers of the St. Regis designed by Jeanne Gang after the meaningful success of her design for the Aqua Tower, also in Chicago, seem to be among the last examples of a gilded age of which the Willis Tower and, mostly, the John Hancock Center, both by Skidmore, Owens and Merrill, and Fazlur Kahn and Bruce Graham, are the most prominent examples. All these buildings gave the city of Chicago an unmistakable skyline of great personality and unquestionable interest, capable of attracting visitors from all over the world to a city whose greatest tourist attraction is the architecture it has been able to produce at different periods of its history.

However, this struggle for square footage is nothing new in the history of this American metropolis. In fact, it is at the genesis itself of the skyscraper typology, born precisely in Chicago mostly as a consequence of the fire which devastated the city in 1871. The new layout of the downtown streets made them wider, reducing the size of the resulting plots and requiring an increase in the number of stories in order to restore to the owners the surfaces they owned before the fire. Hence, buildings renowned as the nowadays disappeared Home Insurance Building by William Le Baron Jenney, relying on the technological development of means and materials, only aimed at restoring the profitability of the premises or even increasing it.

Forma Terrae. Learning from the Ground: Towards a New Architecture of the City.

Adriano Dessì — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The paper relates to the teaching experience of the final laboratory in Architecture, City, and Landscape at the School of Architecture in Cagliari, titled FORMA TERRAE, as an interdisciplinary moment and the construction of a cultural posture in architectural projects.

This teaching experience flows into the PRIN Research Project TEArch - Towards a Terrestrial Architecture, conducted with the Universities of Naples, Bari, and Catania, addressing the fragility of southern Italy territories and the role of architecture concerning natural balances, earth forms, water, vegetation, and landscapes of mining abandonment.

FORMA TERRAE interpreted the theme of transhistorical teaching in two ways: * studying the city of Cagliari not for its urban forms, monuments, or infrastructures, but for its original relation- ship to the earth, through the activity of excavating and depositing soils and rocks to build the city. The complex system of urban quarries since the Phoenician-Punic foundation has shaped the city’s history, with contemporary issues(stability, water flow, biodiversity, connections) still tied to this ancient system; * developing a methodology for continuous comparison between landforms and urban forms, hypogeal and epigean systems, ground structure and surface ecologies. This allowed the development of skills and knowledge in geological, hydrological, botanical, and petrographic disciplines, with ongoing comparisons with experts. It aimed to develop the capacity for synthesis and elaboration of the project from these sciences.

The paper will present laboratory results to outline a profile of architects capable of addressing the crises of the contemporary stratified city. The projects have been partly presented in international workshops and conferences and constitute an expanding body of experience.

A further result will be the definition of a new mapping of the city seen as a large terrestrial form (Aït-Touati, Terra Forma, 2022) and as an anthropogeographic landscape (Gregotti, Il territorio dell’architettura, 1966).

The Climate HubLAB: Experimental Education Activities Fostering Environmental Imagination in Climate Adaptive Design

Luca Finocchiaro — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Increased awareness about environmental implications of human activities has required architecture schools to revise their curriculum in a way to include methods and tools for reducing environmental impact of buildings. In 1955, referring to structural design, Pierluigi Nervi stated that architecture education should limit itself to “correctness”, equipping students with the ability to properly dimension structural elements. However, Nervi himself recognized that the ability to creatively conceive a structural system, is “as aesthetic sensitivity, an essentially personal aptitude”. A poor imagination is often responsible for unhappy buildings (Gio Ponti) and only when adding “something extra – a dream, a desire, an imagine” architecture moves from pure construction to something extraordinary (Renzo Piano). Question is therefore how much numerical concerns can be embedded in architectural education while still ensuring that students’ creativity and imagination is fostered.

Courses in Climate and Built Form at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have been structured as a sequence of pedagogic modules where students are trained

in the line between environmental control and environmental imagination. Teaching and learning activities have been planned in a way to let students correctly solve numerical issues for climate adaptation while using results of their analyses for imagining new architectural scenarios. In 2024, an experimental intensive design workshop was developed with the purpose of letting students solve environmental design issues based on a series of experimental design activities. Experimental physical models were built in different scales to let students grasp theory behind solar design and understand boundary conditions for the development of their projects. Abstract experimental models were later used as the basis to define their projects on the basis of a process of synthesis.

This article will describe teaching and learning activities in the workshop with a particular insight on tools and processes used for translating the result of numerical analyses in architectural scenarios. Reflections will be related to experimental learning theories and discuss how creative experimental form-finding processes can be used to serve processes of synthesis.

Open Space Design for Resilient and Sustainable Territories: A Teaching Experience in the Synthesis of Architecture, Urban Planning, and Landscape

Joan Florit-Femenias — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In recent times, various theoretical and practical contributions have called for a closer synthesis between nature and artifice, or between architectural and urban design and the landscape, in response to the current climate crisis that cities must address. At the same time, landscape architecture curricula are becoming increasingly consolidated and autonomous from traditional architectural education programs across Europe. Within this context of tension between specialization and transdisciplinarity, the education of future architects must experiment with the need for synthe- sis, turning design projects into laboratories for integrating knowledges and demands from diverse disciplines and contexts.

This paper presents the pedagogical approach and results of a Public Space and Landscape Design Studio for fifth-year architecture students, developed during the first semester
of the 2024-2025 academic year at the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB). The studio involved professors from different departments and proposed an integrated approach to public space and metropolitan landscape design. The territory of El Maresme (Barcelona), characterized by fragmented urbanization alongside open spaces of high socio-ecological value, served as a laboratory for interventions aimed at mitigating dysfunctions in the urban fabric while enhancing the environmental values of unbuilt land.

Awareness of flood risks encouraged an approach where water is conceived not as an enemy to be expelled, but as a resource to be managed, leading to proposals that are sensitive to the territory and its natural dynamics. Strategies developed include design as the initiation of evolving ecological processes, the compatibility between urban functionality and active natural systems, among other reflections that will be presented and analysed during the session.

Building on the strong tradition of public space design in Barcelona, the experience emphasizes the need to incorporate nature-based solutions, sustainability requirements, and landscape management into the definition of future metropolitan public spaces.

The Shifting Logic of Computational Design Pedagogy

Pia Fricker — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Computational design has reshaped architectural education over the past five decades, yet its current trajectory reveals a conceptual drift. Early experiments, from the spatial analytics of Warntz (1965) to Negroponte’s vision of the Architecture Machine (1970), treated computation as a means to model complexity and support human-environment interaction. These initiatives engaged systems thinking, anticipating today’s imperative for adaptive, ethical, and context-responsive design approaches (Bertalanffy 1969; Meadows 2008).

This paper argues that the pedagogical crisis facing computational design is not primarily technological but epistemological. While recent curricula emphasize scripting, automation, and parametric formalism, they often neglect deeper questions of agency, scale, and systems integration (Cantrell and Mekies 2018). Drawing from both archival analysis and contemporary teaching experiments, the paper traces a shift from cybernetic and ecological paradigms toward reductive tool-based training, and calls for a renewed synthesis that reconnects design methods with critical thinking and spatial reasoning.

Landscape architecture’s legacy of geospatial layering and dynamic modeling (McHarg 1971) offers valuable but underutilized strategies for architecture education. Reintegrating these with computational tools can open pathways for design to operate as a reflexive system, capable of engaging climate, society, and technology not as abstract data points but as co-evolving conditions.

This contribution outlines a framework for rethinking computational pedagogy as a field of synthesis. It advocates for education that prepares architects to shape the future through systems awareness, rather than just operate within existing ones.

Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. New York: G. Braziller, 1969.
Cantrell, Bradley, and Adam Mekies. Codify: Parametric and Computational Design in Landscape Architecture. London: Routledge, 2018.

McHarg, Ian L. Design with Nature. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. Meadows, Donella H. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Edited by Diana Wright. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.
Negroponte, Nicholas. The Architecture Machine: Toward a More Human Environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970.
Warntz, William. Macrogeography and Income Fronts. Philadelphia: Regional Science Research Institute, 1965.

The Synthesis of Reality as an Architecture Principle: Architecture and Society.

Ligia Nunes — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents a pedagogical model based on over a decade of collaborative teaching experiences involving universities and non-academic entities, including governmental and non-governmental organizations. The initiative seeks to foster a sustained dialogue between academia and society through a dynamic integration of critical and experimental thinking, aimed at addressing the complex and evolving needs of contemporary contexts.

Grounded in the premise that the future must be informed by both a reflective engagement with the past and a rigorous understanding of the present, this approach emphasizes shared methodologies and collaborative diagnostics. These are seen as essential for developing complex, yet contextually grounded, educational models that promote social relevance and transformative practice.

At the core of these initiatives is Architects Without Borders, whose partnerships with academic institutions have helped shape educational frameworks aligned with the principles of cooperative architecture. This includes real-world exercises designed in close collaboration with communities, thereby simulating practice-based learning environments. The model emphasizes proximity architecture – an approach that prioritizes co-creation with end users as a critical strategy for producing socially responsible design.

This experience highlights the potential of transdisciplinary collaboration in architectural education to produce more engaged, responsive, and contextually attuned professional practice.

In this paper are explored programs such as “ Territorios Colaborativos” (cooperative territories) promoted by the university ISCTE in Lisbon and “Arquitectura e Sociedade” (Architecture and Society) promoted by FAUP in Porto.

Nunes, Ligia, A. Paio, e David Leite Viana. “Territórios colaborativos: nuevos desafíos en la educación universitaria.”. Arcadia5: Architecture and Cooperation for Development Congress, País Basco, Espanha, 2018. Silva, Ligia da. “Escoles d’intervenció i treballs de cooperació sobre el Patrimoni.” Jornades Internacionals sobre La Intervenció en el Patrimoni Arquitectònic, Barcelona, 2015.
Smith, John, and Maria Gonzalez, eds. Emerging Perspectives on Teaching Architecture and Urbanism. New York: Routledge, 2023.

Learning from What Already Exists: POE-Based Design Education across Disciplinary Boundaries

Işıl Ruhi-Sipagioglu, Sena Kuday — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In an era of ecological precarity and disciplinary fragmentation, architectural education must renew its commitment to synthesis – not merely stylistic, but as an integration of environmental, social, and spatial knowledge. This paper presents a comparative pedagogical study of two educational contexts employing Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) as a design and learning tool: a monodisciplinary course with architecture students, and an interdisciplinary workshop including students from architecture, mechanical engineering, psychology, business, and industrial design, both evaluating the Foreign Languages Department building at TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Türkiye. POE remains underexplored in architectural curricula despite its value in assessing building performance and user satisfaction, and interdisciplinary learning settings are notably scarce. In the monodisciplinary course, architecture students conducted the POE themselves, applying quantitative, RIBA-based methods to evaluate thermal comfort, indoor air quality, and spatial optimization. Their retrofit proposals emphasized technical solutions like façade insulation and BIM-based energy simulations, framing the building primarily as an object to optimize. In contrast, the interdisciplinary group was provided with the earlier POE findings as a point of departure. Their emphasis was on qualitative user experiences and practical comfort. The resulting solutions prioritized ergonomic furniture, acoustic comfort, spatial flexibility, and everyday usability, informed by collaborative ideation and experience sharing rather than computational simulations. This comparative analysis reveals distinct educational outcomes: the architecture students’ value metrics and physical optimizations, while interdisciplinary teams prioritize spatial agency and practical usability. Nevertheless, both groups reframed the building as a resource for thoughtful transformation, suggesting a combined technical and user-centered approach could enrich architectural curricula. By situating students in critical dialogue with existing structures, POE-based pedagogy fosters an ethic rooted in user care, highlighting reuse supported by evidence. Integrating quantitative technical assessments with qualitative user-focused insights thus emerges as a promising strategy for enhancing architectural education.

Towards a Participatory Pedagogy: Possibilities and Limitations of Participation as Methodology within Architecture and Design Education

Teres Selberg — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A participatory approach to planning and design is no longer only the activists’ way to produce space but is today recognised as appropriate methodology to work together towards a sustainable urban development by formal decision bodies on municipal, regional, national and international level. There is however an embedded conflict in this approach in relation to pedagogy. Visionary architecture and design investigation create inevitable expectations within the involved communities. Even if most students of architecture and design want to get involved in the ’real’ world, already in their studies, this is further also complex in relation to economic aspects as well as the different timespans of course curriculums and appropriate urban development projects.

This paper aims to explore possibilities and limitations of participatory involvement of architecture students feeding into already ongoing projects run by local organisations in the Global South by drawing experience from the freestanding learning programme Challenging Practice – Essentials for the Social Production of Habitat run by ASF-International, and particularly the workshop series In Situ Studio run by ASF-Sweden. These workshops reflexively investigate alternative models for affordable spatial and physical solutions together with communities, different stakeholders, and local professionals, and create cross cultural learning experiences between local and international professionals and students.

Furthermore, the paper explores creative examples of participation from the organisation Dansbana! (run by the architects Anna Pang, Anna Fridolin and Teres Selberg), to visualise a playful participatory design process while creating public spaces for dance with young girls as focus group. Embracing the notion that we as architects, are “as experts, a special kind of people, and accept also, that everyone out there, are also a special kind of expert”1. This attitude leaves architects and designers, working with participatory methods, with the ability to stay creative and dare to propose spatial outcomes unimaginable for the participants, something that this paper states, is also most fruitful for the involved communities and their built public environment.

Making Present the Invisible: Accounting for Synthesis and Integration in Final Design Thesis, Recognising the Complexity of our Practice

Sally Stewart — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper considers apparent ambiguity between the ambition for our students to be able to synthesise and integrate withing their creative work, and the increasing pressure within professional accreditation to identify and measure core skills, knowledge and abilities through the testing of discrete and often disconnected element of competence.

The paper considers how the demands for high levels of synthesis and integration between the parameters of design, technology, theory and professional practice expected within the Masters Final Design Thesis can mask the range of fundamental considerations and design challenges engaged with and responded to, the complexity of the task chosen and the degree of dificulty overcome to realise this. The paper also considers how we can ensure that students recognise their ability to integrate and synthesise at all levels within their work, and are conscious of and confident in this key criteria for operating successfully within the architectural profession, an ability distinct from the expectation on other graduates and other disciplines.

Integrating Data Analytics in Architectural Education: A Research Study on Mapping User Experience

Başak Uçar — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In response to the significant transformation of knowledge, society, and culture brought about by digital capabilities, architects are increasingly focused on creating, preserving, and interpreting knowledge while utilizing computational methods to read user experiences. With the advancement of digital tools and data analytics platforms, we can effectively interpret and communicate complex data, analyze spatial relationships, reveal connections, and gain deeper insights into user experiences. By visualizing user experiences and relating our research to the networked information age, we can review existing research practices and provide new perspectives on experience, as well as alternative modes of knowledge production. As architecture continues to incorporate technology in design and analysis, engaging with data analytics has the potential to stimulate innovative pedagogical approaches in architectural education. This emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary learning and the integration of advanced digital tools and methodologies. Such a progressive approach fosters critical thinking and creativity, equipping future architects to address the complexities of contemporary society with data-driven insight.

This proposed paper aims to explore the potential of data visualization in reading complex data, analyzing spatial relationships and patterns, revealing connections, and providing insights into research processes and outcomes. The research was conducted in an undergraduate architectural course that examined the user experience of an archaeological museum. This museum houses artifacts from various periods, each with its own material and cultural significance. The specific objectives of this study are to present a fresh perspective on the museum experience, uncover new relationships within the collection, and introduce a new layer of information based on user experience data. By situating this research within the context of the networked information age, it seeks to establish a global, trans-historical, and transmedia approach to knowledge and meaning-making. This research study aims to facilitate an exploration of both the visible and invisible aspects of a museum collection and its user experience by promoting comprehensive research on data visualization.

More than a Collage

Pablo Villalonga Munar — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Mallorca is a landscape of contrasts, desires, and contradictions. This island harbors a hybrid architectural ecosystem, nourished by constant external inputs and internal dynamics rooted in the optimization of local resources. This makes it an exemplary setting for a tense contemporary context, where architecture and its teaching must rise to the challenge of responding to contingencies and extremes in constant dialectic.

This contribution to the congress presents a reflection on how to carry out a critical and propositional architectural synthesis in a context of contemporary controversies. Through the first edition of the intensive undergraduate elective at ETSAB-UPC entitled Mallorca Collage, this paper focuses on the teaching methodology applied, the key historical references behind its planning, and the pedagogical potential revealed through the resulting material. In this course, the Balearic island is used as a multifaceted field for student exploration and learning. Over one week, students work collectively – visiting, researching, and drawing fragments of the island’s architecture – to construct a precise and intentional architectural collage.

The objective is to generate reflection through the development of a utopian, graphic and critical proposal of the present reality, as well as a speculative path toward alternative realities. Aquaecopark, Villa Camper, Lujo Bunker, Hotel Colmena, Más que Marès... are some of the course topics that act as catalysts and narrative threads for research into contemporary island issues such as water management, rural environments, tourism saturation, luxury housing, or construction resources. All the information gathered becomes a shared database. Aware of their realism, surrealism, and romanticism, each student’s proposal is a hybrid space shaped by collaboration, encounters, and explored places: a fragment of a Mallorca of Mallorcas, an architecture of architectures.

From Italian Caprici, Alejandro de la Sota in Esquivel, Learning from Las Vegas, Made in Tokyo, the art of Akira Yamaguchi or the literature of Agustín Fernández Mallo, the course builds on a landscape of key references to revisit, from a contemporary lens, a synthetic, critical, and propositional view of architecture and its context through experimental means.

De-hermetizing Architectural Education

Dorota Wantuch-Matla — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Modernity teaches architecture a lesson in humility and makes it occupy an integral place in the hierarchy of global values, but nevertheless one of many important links in the chain of interdependencies affecting the condition of our world. This is not a degradation, but rather an opportunity to bring it back to reality and an order; to take a self-critical look in the mirror of its historical evolution (Heynen, 2024, 100005). Never before in history to such an extent has architecture had to confront its works with such an onslaught of research from disciplines seemingly distant from it, e.g.: environmental engineering, health sciences, environmental psychology etc., as it is today. A contemporary architect must not only be a visionary, but also a social negotiator for the value of architecture. The system of architectural education, despite its efforts, has not kept pace with the scale of these challenges. The speed at which new or long-standing and neglected problems are growing indicates that the transfer of knowledge should be based on a clear message – contemporary narratives are not given once and for all or necessarily universal. They are merely the currently available output of a transhistorical process constantly updating itself against changing needs and the availability of resources. In the context of subject of the future of professional education for architects, this abstract advocates: first, adopting the formula of problem-based knowledge transfer as paramount in the course of teaching, and thus opening students to analytical approaches and new dimensions of interdisciplinarity. The introduction of a course almost identical to the title of the conference – Transhistorical Experiences, which would problematically and comparatively analyze contemporary issues against the backdrop of the chronology of past lessons already learnt and non-architectural conditions. Thirdly, the introduction of mandatory interdepartmental courses in which students from different disciplines would collaborate on a design task. Finally, to ‘de-hermetize’ architecture schools through the mandatory introduction of design courses with the authentic participation of invited social groups, as well as the mandatory courses on social communication and mediation of architecture.

Heynen, Hilde. 2024. “Architectural history today: Where do we stand? Where do we go?”. Review Article. Perspectives in Architecture and Urbanism 1 (2024) 100005