Abstract:

The Art and Aesthetics educational unit of the School of Civil Engineering of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (ETSICCP-UPM) has developed an educational project within the framework of the Betancourt Year 2024, commemorating the bicentenary of the death of Agustín de Betancourt (1758-1824). Considered one of the most notorious civil engineers in Spanish history, he promoted the first School of Civil Engineering, and his legacy extends throughout Spain, France, and Russia.

The faculty experience in conducting innovative educational projects that combine knowledge and communication in the field of civil engineering heritage dates to 2012. In 2016, the project Looking for Betancourt was designed with the aim of bringing the figure of the engineer closer to the students. Through the series of works carried out by students, which included models, comics and board games, the extensive activity and trajectory of the character was reconstructed. They played an active role in the documentary research and in their creative proposals. As a result, the collaborative experience made it possible to offer a global vision of Betancourt that helped to update his relevance and legacy.

Celebrating the Betancourt Year, the aim of the new project is to contextualize the scientific and technical movement illustrated by the engineer. ETSICCP-UPM undergraduate students work in groups of three. Each team must analyse a Spanish public work of the 18th century of several types: roads, canals, aqueducts, dams, bridges, harbours, lighthouses, and land use plans, from a list provided by the teachers. After a process of documentation and analysis of the different works, the group must make a video explaining their importance at their construction period and the successive transformations that define their current state. Students are free to decide how to record and edit the video.

The project enables future engineers to learn about the origins of their profession, of which Betancourt remains a good inspiration. It also helps them to become familiar with the rich engineering heritage of this period, in which the aspirations for territorial transformation promoted by the new political and economic theses of the Enlightenment favoured the development of communications, trade and supplies for the new cities. Throughout the process, students should consider and reflect in their work that public works heritage goes beyond technical and historical issues to include other equally relevant cultural, social, aesthetic and landscape topics.

Keywords:

Civil engineering, public works, cultural heritage, active learning, academic research, new technologies.