Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

As architecture professors at IST_ULisboa, we are currently leading the Knowledge Environments research line at CITUA, which aims to transform educational spaces into inclusive, sustainable and resilient environments that promote equity and respond to climate challenges. Through the course “Space, Society and Culture” and dissertation supervision, we involve architecture students in collaborative research with public schools, to tackle challenges within the realm of the built environment. Post-occupancy evaluations inform co-design workshops resulting in proposals adapted to each context’s educational, social, and environmental needs. The process promotes mutual learning and reveals the pedagogical value of everyday spaces. Benefits emerge across multiple levels: For school communities, it raises awareness of spatial and environmental qualities, strengthens architectural literacy, enables small-scale improvements, and fosters a sense of agency and belonging through participation. For architecture students, it places them in real socio-spatial contexts where they engage with ethical/social responsibilities of the practice, and learn to design with, rather than for, communities. For professors, it supports methodological experimentation, producing research rooted in lived experience. It also repositions the built environment within architectural education, raises the research line’s visibility, and brings unforeseen insights. Challenges include aligning with school routines, accessing diverse case studies, addressing ethics with minors, and balancing students works and community expectations. Our experience shows that engaging architecture students with educational spaces as sites of social negotiation fosters new pedagogical models grounded in environmental awareness, equity and co-creation. It transforms not only space but the roles of students, teachers and communities in shaping academic culture.