A Focus on Pedagogy
Abstract
In the last decades, the relevance of sketching or freehand drawing has decreased in the scope of architectural education, confronted with the exponential and unprecedent development of the new forms of representation. However, some schools continue to recognize its decisive role, not only in the architectural design teaching, but in the whole of architectural training. With this paper it is intended to present the results of a research focused on the teaching practices of sketching in architectural education, taking the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP) as a case study. The main objective was to consider the influences of a formal teaching of freehand drawing on students’ training in design through empirical evidence. To that extend, a qualitative field-based study was conducted in all courses of drawing and architectural design at FAUP, using naturalistic observation, interviews-conversations and artifact analysis as main research methods. It is expected that the results of this paper may have two main contributions: first, through the precise description of the methodological procedures, to contribute by transferability to similar studies – a relevant aspect, since field-based research directed on this topic is scarce; second, considering the progressive loss of relevance of drawing in architectural curriculum plans, to understand why to continue to teach freehand drawing and how this interferes or determines the way of teaching architectural design.
Rafael Sousa Santos (1991) completed a master’s degree in Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP) in 2016 with the thesis “Life and movement: Hypothesis of urban regeneration about Porto’s Estrada da Circunvalação”. During his master’s, he participated as an intern at the Centre for Studies of the Faculty of Architecture (CEFA-UP) on the development of the Belmonte Revitalization Project (between 2014 and 2015). In 2017 he worked as an intern architect at Contemporânea | Manuel Graça Dias + Egas José Vieira, in Lisbon. Currently he is a PhD student in Architecture at FAUP, with supervisors from FAUP, Politecnico di Milano and Aahrus University, developing a research about the forms of representation and its role in architectural design teaching (since 2017). Between 2017 and 2020 he collaborated in the didactics of Economia Urbana and Urbanística 2 of the Integrated Master’s in Architecture at FAUP. Currently he collaborates in the Architectural Design in Historical Context Studio of the Master’s in Architectural Design and History at AUIC-Politecnico di Milano (since 2021). In 2021, he received a Fulbright Research Grant supported by FCT, for a six-month mobility period at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Clara Pimenta do Vale (1967) is an Architect by University of Porto (FAUP 1991), specialized in building physics and Portuguese 20th-century construction history. She holds an MSc in Building Construction by Faculty of Engineering (FEUP 1999) and a PhD in Architecture with the thesis “An urban alignment in the construction of Porto – Boavista Axis (1927-1999) – Contribution to Portuguese Construction History in the 20th-century” (FAUP 2012). Currently she is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and researcher at CEAU – Center for Studies in Architecture and Urbanism in the groups: Architecture, City and Territory Heritage (PACT) and Digital Fabrication Laboratory (DFL). She was a practitioner architect (1991-2004), and lecturer (1999-2012). She is also a photographer with several photo exhibitions. Research focus: Building Physics; Sustainability; 20th Century Construction History; Building Construction Legislation; Vernacular Architecture; Earthen Architecture; The social role of architecture; Emerging technologies applied to building construction; Rehabilitation and reuse; Architectural education; E- learning and ICT. Supervisor of 2 on-going Ph.D. theses and 45 Master’s dissertations in Architecture (6 in progress). She is the co-author of four books and the author or co-author of more then fifty other publications.
Barbara Bogoni (1970) is Ph.D. in Interior Architecture since 2003 and Assistant Professor in Architectural and Urban Design in the Politecnico di Milano since 2004. Her research interests range among urban morphology, architectural design and interior architecture. She has developed a continuous collaborative work with Souto de Moura, in the framework of the didactic, research and design activities carried out at the Mantova Campus, and with Carrilho da Graça and Paulo David, with whom she shares the activities carried out in the Design (about teaching: A scuola con Eduardo Souto de Moura, Franco Angeli, 2018).
Poul Henning Kirkegaard (1962) is M.Sc. in Civil and Structural Engineering from Aalborg University in 1988 and Ph.D in Optimal Design of System Identification Experiments from Aalborg University, Department of Civil Engineering in 1991. From 1988 to 2003 his research and teaching topics were mainly related to Structural Dynamics, Structural Reliability, Building Acoustics, Structural Identification and Structural Health Monitoring. Since 2003 his research and teaching topics have been Adaptive Structures, Computational Morphogenesis, Tectonic Form & Design and Evidence Based Design. In 2010 he was appointed as Full Professor in Innovative Design of Structures at the Department of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University. Poul Henning Kirkegaard is today Full Professor at the Department of Engineering, Aarhus University in Engineering & Architectural Design. His vision for the research and teaching focuses on bridging the engineering topics to architecture and vice versa.