Joelho #04 Teaching through Design

In the early years, our goal was to establish the course on a national level, creating a new polarity between Porto and Lisbon. Today, however, the discussion has shifted to a European context, where we face the challenges of mobility, research, and the sustainability of educational institutions. This challenge is clearly reflected in the study that Willemijn Floet brought to Coimbra, which concludes JOELHO 4. The theme of the journal and the colloquium, Teaching Through Design, is also a forward-looking approach that seeks to define a direction in which design—the architect’s primary tool—can also serve as a pedagogical and research instrument. At both the second and third cycle levels, it is crucial to reclaim design as a means of asserting disciplinary autonomy, enabling a stronger dialogue with other fields. This idea was repeatedly invoked—by Alexandre Alves Costa, drawing from the example of the Porto School; by David Leatherbarrow, in reference to Louis Kahn’s studio at Penn; and by Florian Beigel, Juan Domingo, and Elizabeth Hatz through their own work. We extend our gratitude to Paulo Providência for once again contributing to JOELHO’s presence in the competitive landscape of architectural culture, and to Sebastião Resende for returning to the Department of Architecture with the projective drawings that shape the cover.