Leaving the Classroom, Entering the City: An Educational Experience of Urban Synchronization for the Students of the Master of Architecture

Abstract

The teaching-learning process of drawing the city is too often unrelated to the social reality that requests it. The numerous databases available online (IGN, cadastre, google earth ...) mean, while an excellent and valuable source of information, a distorted digital simulation of the city. The multiple layers of information available (roads, vegetation, real estate, properties, roads, topography, ...) refer to a different temporality from the current one and, although they are presented simultaneously, they are far from meaning to the digital twin with which technology companies intend (on many occasions) confuse them. The present teaching research work assumes that, in order to draw the city accordingly, it is necessary to become aware of the temporary disconnection between urban reality and the databases hosted on our web servers. This fact (the drawing of the city is constructed by fragments of other temporal moments), analysed in a teaching context, leads us to rethink the methodology of the teaching-learning process of urban drawing, in which the theory has traditionally prevailed over the practice and in which the representation of the city has had a fundamentally theoretical component. It is with these premises that the experience developed begins: leaving the classrooms for entering the city is the first step for students to become aware of the need to first-hand contrast the information with which they work and, in addition, is evidenced as an opportunity to build a personal database, present and, above all, aware of its limitations. By analysing the different results obtained, we will be able to argue the fundamental importance of contrasting the skills and abilities acquired during the years at the university (by our students themselves) and, at the same time, being able to solve the contemporary problems that are proposed by the representation of what we call city: the set of elements (in permanent change) which make up our life in society.