There is a holistic scientific evolution in our times. The Social Science, Cognitive Science and Physical sciences work together in order to build a better future for the humanity. The climate change is a good example, but there are other situations. The architectural research group GIRAS has been working in the last twenty years, to analyze how architecture and urban research produce retroactive research impacts

Ameli Najafabadi, Rasoul

Beltran Borràs, Júlia

Calvet de Magalhães, José

Martínez Gómez, Josué Nathan

Molarinho Marques, Sara Cristina

Muntañola Thornberg, José

Saura Carulla, Magdalena

English

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65A R Q U I T E C T O N I C SCritical Pedagogies and The Design Methods in Architecture and Planning: Their Retroactive Research Impacts on the Social and Natural Sciences Jointed EvolutionMuntañola thornberg, Josep; saura Carulla, Magda; beltran borràs, Júlia; Martínez góMez, Josué nathan; aMeli naJafabandi, rasaul; sara Molarinho Marques, José eduardo Calvet de MagalhãesSynopsisThere is a holistic scientific evolution in our times. The Social Science, Cognitive Science and  Physical scienc-es work together in order to build a better future for the humanity. The climate change is a good example, but there are other situations. The architectural research group GIRAS has been working in the last twenty years, to analyze how architecture and urban research pro-duce retroactive research impacts.Key words: Critical pedagogies», «Education in Archi-tectural», «Architecture, social science and children»Critical Pedagogies and the Design Methods in Architecture and PlanningFollowing pioneers in this interactive field such as Lewis Mumford (1995), Paul Ricoeur (2003), Bill Hillier (1995) and Rainer E. Zimmermann (2017), GIRAS has pub-lished hundreds of books, PhD Dissertations and arti-cles related to interdisciplinary ways from three different and interconnected scenarios: The educative class-room, the professional production in studios and the 66 A R Q U I T E C T O N I C SARQUITECTONICSparticipatory urban planning processes. Since 1990 in-ternational conferences and an interrupted series of books have analyzed these developments. Here we will point out to the state of art in one of these scenarios, the educative one (Muntañola J. 1973, 2012).From the view point of retroactive research, the links between the recent work by the mathematician and philosopher Rainer E. Zimmermann and the work by the known Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget are signifi-cant. Space and more precisely the evolution of the spatial competences of the human beings, is what makes the scientific advances in mathematics, in social sciences and in mental sciences, new and innovative. Theoretical recent developments on the mathematic systems of categories in »Cognitive Metatheory in Ar-chitectural Design« and «Topos of Virtuality: From the Neumann-Nave Topos to the Explication of Social Space» (Zimmermann, 2008), explain the topological physical and social  systems of our human life in a new surprising way, where the architectural design process-es are the kernel of it.However the work on children spatial competences analyzed by our group GIRAS (Muntañola J. 2012) and the important advances by Bill Hillier (1995), are the core of a better understanding of why space is a key dimension of socialization itself, just as professor Silke Steet (2016) defines quoting the sociologist PL Berger and Th. Luckmann: «The individual is socialized to be a designated person and to inhabit a designated world» (PL Berger and Th. Luckmann 1966).Diagrams I and II show the development of the spatial competences of children that summarizes the retroac-tive impact of architectural research on the social, the physical and the mental research is based upon. The objective of the researches is to understand how physi-cal space impacts our social life, in relation to how time 67A R Q U I T E C T O N I C SDOSSIERfollows a narrative. It is significant that Emmanuel Kant intended to solve this same problem with his last book written in the last fifteen years of his life. When he died in 1805 the book was a mess of pages, was unfinished. Opus Postumum (Silvia de Bianchi 2010) was published almost one hundred fifty years later and never fully un-derstood. The aim of this last work was meant to be the «Philosophical Transition» from metaphysics to the physical word, with also material objects, as buildings, cities and the rest of urban settings.Thus the retroactive impact of architecture and urban design research comes from the fact that in space, the social and the physical qualities of life are simulta-neous and synchronic in real space and time  and not only in more or less virtual space and time textual structures. Of course the understanding of the tempo-ral narrative of the writer and the spatial narrative of the architect are dimensions of the same human life, in a holistic or generalist way, but the role of each nar-rative it is not the same, as diagram III by Ricoeur (2000) shows.However, for this retroactive power of architecture and urban design to work, some conditions need to be sat-isfied. First, that architecture should be both social and physical. Second, the architect is not only a scientific or a technician but also an artist and a politician in the way Aristotle forecasted it, that is, with the possibility of act-ing with or without practical wisdom. And the third con-dition, is to analyze the act of design (to project) in all its complexity, and not only as a biogenetic or a sociolog-ical act. The design processes link the biogenetic and the sociogenic dimensions of human life together in such a way, that the specific and useful retroactive as-pects of architecture and planning can be rooted. When this link disappears, the retroactive power of ar-chitecture and planning in research processes disap-pears too.Taking into account the late definitions of Kant about «Space, as a system of forces of any kind that you want to define it, it is always a possibility of experience, and nothing more than that, Zimmermann claims that: «Systems, multivariate, parametric or other can never go farther than to say something about the reality, they will never be the reality. So the aesthetic and political dimensions of these systems, as the act of design shows, are intimately cofounders of architecture and planning, and they retroactively help social, mental and natural sciences to provide the key role of space. Some spatial dimensions such as their synchronic powers, the impact of scales of representation and so on, famil-iar to architects, can have a retroactive impact in other sciences and help them understand human behaviors. Only when the act of design is analyzed in a fully and holistic way, and not as a product of a-priori sociologi-cal, psychological or mathematical system, it can play this important role.In all, in the act of design (or project) architects and planners recover their full human powers, in science in art and in ethics and politics. Then, their retroactive powers will increase. But if this act is just a media scenario, or a oriented act only to business, or to a pragmatic free act without any ethic content on it, their retroactive powers become inexistent and limit-ed. The success or the failure of cities and buildings hide, not only a message for architects in new build-ings, or cities. They teach social scientists, mathe-maticians and experts on natural sciences, in order to understand the mental, physical and social behaviour of individuals. As Zimmermann (R. E. Zimmermann 2015) defines it, all the human systems have a spatial foundation. 68 A R Q U I T E C T O N I C S69A R Q U I T E C T O N I C SDOSSIERDiagram I. Monological Cities.Diagram II. Dialogical Cities.70 A R Q U I T E C T O N I C SARQUITECTONICSBibliographyHillier, B., Space is the machine, Cambridge Press Lon-don, 1995.Mumford, Lewis, Lewis Mumford and Patrick Geddes : the correspondence / edited and introduced by Frank G. Novak, Jr., London: Routledge, 1995.Muntañola, J., La arquitectura como lugar, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1973.Muntañola, J., & Muntanyola, D.,«Architecture in the Wild. Architectural Research in a Digital and Global World», R. Hayes, & V. Ebbert (Ed.), International Conference on Architectural Research, The place of research / The research of place, Architectural Re-search Centers Consortium (ARCC) and European Association for Architectural Research (EAAE), 23-26 June, 2010 (pp. 318-326), 2012, Washington: Archi-tectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC).Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The social construction of reality, Penguin Books, 1966.Diagram III. Architecture and writing (according Paul Ricoeur).71A R Q U I T E C T O N I C SDOSSIERRicoeur, P., La Memoire, L’ Histoire, L’ Oubli; Seuil; Paris, 2000.Ricoeur, P., «Architecture et Narrativité» Arquitectonics, vol. 4, 2003, (pp 9-29).Silvia de Bianchi. PhD dissertation, University Sapienza in Roma «Questioni Epistemologiche nella Scienza della Natura nell’Ultimo Kant». 2010.Steets S, «Taking Berger and Luckmann to the Realm of Materiality: Architecture as a Social Construction» CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY 2016. Sage Editions.Zimmermann Rainer E. und Wolfgang Hofkirchner, «The Topos of Virtuality, Part I: From the Neumann-Nave Topos to the Explication of Social Space» 2008.Zimmermann Rainer E. Metaphysics of Emergence: Part 1: On the Foundations of Systems, MoMo Berlin Phi-losophische Kontexte, Band 6, 2015Zimmermann Rainer E., Kanelia Koutsandrea, Topogra-phy of Generically folded Spacecapes. Towards a Cognitive Metatheory in Architectural Design, Arqui-tectonics Vol. 30, Barcelona 2017.BiographyJosep Muntañola Thornberg. Doctor Architect since 1968 by the School of Architec-ture of BarcelonaDoctor Honoris Causa since 2005 by the Lusiada Uni-versity of Lisbon72 A R Q U I T E C T O N I C SARQUITECTONICSAcademic number of the Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts of Sant Jordi since 2002.President of the international association of space semi-otics between 1995 and 2004President of the international association of space an-thropology between 1998 and 2005.Director of the ETSAB (Barcelona) between 1980 and 1984.Director of the Desigh Department of the School of Ar-chitecture of Barcelona between 1985 and 1990, 1994 and 2000, and 2004 and 2010Director of the international magazine Arquitectonics (Mind, Land and Society) published by the Polytechnic University since 2001 at a rate of two annual volumes (indexed in Ulrich, PROQUEST, Avery, Francis, DICE, LATININDEX, ISOC, ANVUR (Italy), etc.

Critical Pedagogies and the Design Methods in Architecture and Planning: their Retroactive Research Impacts on the Social and Natural Sciences Jointed Evolution

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Critical Pedagogies and the Design Methods in Architecture and Planning: their Retroactive Research Impacts on the Social and Natural Sciences Jointed Evolution

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