VIRTUAL MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY

Abstract

In design scholarship and practice, novel cartographic systems and digital design technologies tend to evolve independently and often without regard for one another. If we are seeking an architecture of repair, then it will be necessary to mend divisions in our predominant pedagogical paradigms in order forge new connections between local and global issues at multiple scales, to address past problems and enable more diverse, resilient design futures. This paper presents an alternative pedagogical approach in which geographic information systems (often allied with the fields of urban planning & development) and digital scripting platforms (which rapidly entered art & architecture studios starting in the2000s) work in tandem to equip students with a novel set of computational tools for identifying, analyzing, and reimagining contested sites for architectural intervention within the extreme environmental and political contexts of expanding cities in the American Southwest. How can disruptive digital practices from the edge of the architectural discipline engage the intellectual and technical frameworks of urban networks and complexity in order to rethink central historical concepts, motivate fundamental shifts in the conventions of representational technique and inform expanded sets of possibilities for envisioning socially equitable and ecologically resilient solutions for the future of buildings and cities? The pedagogy described in the paper critically engages virtual and on-site fieldwork in order to reveal a thick network of narratives tied to each site within the city; demonstrating that multimodal forms of spatial, social, and morphological investigation present resilient formats for urban analysis and, in turn, are increasingly pertinent for advancing notions of site-specificity in contemporary architectural practice. Specifically, the model proves relevant for uncovering narratives excluded from traditional architectural research.