THE LEARNING OF ARCHITECTURAL CONSTRUCTION BETWEEN THE CLASSROOM AND THE REALITY

The construction of a building requires the design and execution of some elements to support and materialise other elements, which implies both a design and an execution process inherent to our speciality and to architecture, but overall requires previously a perfect understanding of the reality. Just because of this, we think that the best way for students to learn architectural construction is from the reality by reason of in there they can find the authenticity of the problems.

It is common that when people in general think and talk about learning they use to do it thinking about or referring to students sitting in a classroom paying attention to a teacher. But learning is not only that. This is by far the smallest part of the whole situation that make up learning. The fact is that much learning takes place outside the classroom or from aspects from the reality.

Learning is a complex process, much more complex than the simple stimulus-response connections. So as humans interact with other humans and with artifacts in the world and naturally and continuously attempt to make sense of those interactions, learning is a process of meaning making, not only of knowledge reception.

Besides, learning is an enterprise that occurs within purposive and integrated activity systems. Activity and consciousness are the central mechanisms of learning, but in order to think and learn, it is necessary to act on some entity (physical, mental, or social). Conscious learning and activity (performance) are interactive and interdependent since we cannot act without thinking or think without acting. Analysis of activity systems is supported by activity theory. Therefore learning objectives must include skills acquisition and the ability to apply concepts.

Inside the teaching of architecture our speciality is building construction, a matter that concerns to the reality and, therefore, to the three dimensions. The reality is three-dimensional but it normally happens that its representation is only two-dimensional, wich is sometimes difficult to understand. In order to solve this apparent contradiction and to improve the comprehension of the skills of construction, our way to teach construction is based on choosing examples from the reality and making their details in three dimensions so as to bring closer students to the fact of building design in its real materiality. In this process, new technologies are important but hand-drawing is essential because architects think about, understand, reflect on, plan, design, explain and build what they have previously sketched and drawn.

This paper will characterize learning of architectural construction as activity that happens between the classroom and the reality applying both hand-drawing and new technologies.