Construction or Deconstruction: Which is the Best Way to Learn Architecture?

Abstract

The actual shift of the teaching methods from teacher-centred expository methods, to learner-centred exploratory ones. The educational goals are no more the construction of a solid theory knowledge from which the behaviour is driven. It is the acquisition of capabilities and skills directly related to the professional activity. The consequence is that the teacher has the task of endowing the student not only with a large amount of documentation but also with at least suggestions of the way to use it. One of these suggestions is the deconstruction (in a literal and not philosophical sense) as a way of investigating the structure of buildings. In a first phase in order to acquire, through generalisation a systematic knowledge of the way the parts of a building (their subsystems) contribute to the global architectural organism. In a second phase in order to explore buildings of special interest aiming at mastering their peculiar solutions. An example of this method is presented, limited to the spatial analysis only both for brevity sake and for particular difficulties presented