Notes of a Professor

he dialogue between theory and practice, between the knowledge sphere and applied action, between immaterial knowledge and technical competence is what defines the specificity of the architect’s profession, a figure that has always been appealing due to its position between the reasons of thought and the building demands. This rhetorical antithesis fuels the debates and agendas of the schools of architecture, which periodically have to question the specific weight of these two components and the consequent methodologies suitable for their transmission, in light of the changes in the professional landscape that the educational path must aim for to update its statutes. Educating new generations in architectural disciplines is an ambitious and challenging task, especially in an era where the speed of information and the ease of absorbing a large amount of knowledge tends to weaken, or even radically alter, the teacher-student relationship, favoring the practice of obtaining knowledge in other realms and different physical dimensions. The art of teaching is one of the noblest and most delicate activities that mankind can undertake: within this world, techniques must strive to formulate new pedagogical models that respect the social and cultural context of reference. Teaching architecture – Ernesto Nathan Rogers already stated this in 1959 in a famous editorial – represents an action that, like other disciplinary fields that place humans at the centre of their work, involves uncommon attitudes, capable of combining, with balance, wide-ranging competencies, rarely just specialised, accompanied by particular knowledge transmission qualities. Thus, the education architects, understood in their broad role as social actors, intellectuals, and technical figures, calls for deep and radical reflection on the foundations of study paths, the relevance of teaching models, and the learning tools of the art of building and the reasons for architectural projects, interpreting the latter as a synthesis of performance requirements, stylistic canons, established spatial poetics, and social needs. The distinction between means and ends, and especially the uncertainty in founding the latter on a project exercise of often merely instrumental nature, represents one of the evident criticalities to clarify and resolve regarding the nature and ultimate aim of the university structure, which must mediate its existence by maneuvering between cultural intellectual demands and reasons concerning the employability potential of architects in training. Fostering a debate on the architecture didactics of the future means laying the foundation for solid certainty in creating a class of new architects capable of conscientiously facing the crucial challenges that the future already reserves for us.