Abstract:

This paper reflects some aspects of the architect's training, research and innovation which I believe are part of the methods and teaching or Project strategies in the degree of Architecture, at the Polytechnic of Alicante (Spain). In particular, I will tell you first-hand my experience as a teacher with skills from other disciplines (graphs, structures) when I am invited to take part, since 2007 until now, teaching simultaneously different levels of Projects (core subject of the degree).
Education: has to do with opening the frontiers of knowledge traditionally awarded to a single discipline, recognizing that some complexity in the way of thinking has to do with the crossed knowledge between diverse systems (energetic, biological, climatic) rather than specific contexts; it has to do with the identification of skills that students have before starting studies, and the way that the teacher make them compatible with some other skills.
Research: Like the laboratory protocols (identification of materials, processing times, evaluation of results), our interest has to do with obtaining ability to describe processes, making-off, series, etc, as well as conceptualize and diagrammatize architectural experiences.
Communication: Charles and Ray Eames, as some other architects in the middle of the twentieth century, dedicated several years to search about the most effective and creative way to expose an idea to a particular audience, a group of experts or all the mankind (for example, in World Expos), based on innovative mediums at the time (a series of chairs, or a giant dynamic composition of screens on the inside face of Fuller's geodesic dome)… strategies that nowadays are fully applicable .
Innovation: it has to do with the recognition that processes and routines, experienced during learning time, have to be able to simulate a total action or experience, have to be expressed and developed at multiple scales and have to be performed in versatile and different conditions. In a parametric sense of thinking, I understand that it is appropriate to identify energy and information as boundary conditions that determine and influence considerably the creative process today, and that it is worth devoting teaching time to it.

Keywords:

Architectural education, transversal training, creative communication.