Joelho #04 Ensinar pelo Projeto

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Issue 4 of the architectural culture magazine Joelho addresses the issue of architectural education through the reflections presented at the international colloquium “Teaching through Design”, held at the Colégio das Artes on September 27, 28, and 29, 2012.
This initiative was promoted by the Department of Architecture and the Centre for Social Studies, with the goal of reconciling pedagogical approaches with research into teaching methods.
The editorial e|d|arq revisits the theme of education, ten years after launching Em Cima do Joelho 2, with the theme “Building a School”. In 2000, we gathered in Coimbra international architects, such as Paulo Mendes da Rocha, to help us reflect on the path we were following.
Today, after the adaptation to the Bologna process, it is important to assess and confront the decisions made in 2008 with the pedagogical models implemented in various international reference schools.
To fuel the debate, we also held the annual TAPE exhibition - “works presented for exhibition” by architecture students -which this year took place at the exhibition gallery in the courtyard of Colégio das Artes.
While in the early years we sought to establish the course at a national level, looking to create a new polarity between Porto and Lisbon, today the discussion is at a European level, facing the challenges of mobility, research, and the sustainability of educational institutions. This challenge is clearly present in the study brought to Coimbra by Willemijn Floet, which concludes Joelho 4.
The theme of the magazine and the colloquium, “Teaching through Design,” is also a forward-looking bet, aiming to point towards a future where design, the architect’s main tool, can also be their instrument of pedagogy and research. In both the second and third cycles, it is important to recover design as an affirmation of disciplinary autonomy that strengthens the dialogue with other disciplines.
This was one of the recurring ideas evoked, both by Alexandre Alves Costa from the example of the Porto School, and by David Leatherbarrow regarding Louis Kahn's studio at Penn, or by Florian Beigel, Juan Domingo, and Elizabeth Hatz through their own work.
We thank Paulo Providência for once again contributing to the affirmation of Joelho in the competitive space of architectural culture, and Sebastião Resende for returning to the Department of Architecture with the projective drawings that form the cover.