Teaching Architecture

The dichotomy between theory and practice, notion and application, knowledge and technical skill is what defines the specificity of the architectural profession. Such rhetorical opposition triggers the discussions and agendas of Schools of Architecture, which cyclically question themselves about the specific weight of the two components, the methodologies most adequate to their transmission and the changes in the professional scene the educational path should point to in order to update its structure. Educating the young generation to architectural disciplines is an ambitious and arduous task, even more so in an age when the speed of information and the ease in absorbing a wide range of notions tend to weaken the teacher-student relationship in favour of other ways of retrieving forms of knowledge placed in other realms and in different physical dimensions. The reproduction of technical and specialist skills complicates the transmission of the action of synthesis that, by definition, characterises the task of the teacher as a source of guidance and experience. In the currently topical thematic realms that characterise the context of the teaching/learning relationship within the architectural disciplines, the teaching activity cyclically and clearly emerges as a noble and irreplaceable action – a practice that now requires a process of critical review and actualisation of its methods, even through an international discussion interpreted as a trigger of debate. Indeed, teaching is one of the oldest and at the same time most delicate practices within human activities – a strategic action for the creation of a widespread and aware culture as the foundation of a stable and progressive civilisation. “Teaching architecture”, similarly to other disciplinary realms that hinge around man and his behavioural model, implies far from common attitudes.