Abstract:

Thanks to the establishment of an academic agreement between the Department for International Relations of the Polytechnic University of Cartagena and the Veer Narmad South Gujjarat Uniiversity in India, the School of Architecture and Building of the UPCT has had the pleasure to host Indian students coming from the Shri Gijubhai Chhaganbhai Patel Institute of Architecture, Interior Design & Fine Arts during the 2014-15 academic year. An amount of fifteen Indian students have stayed in our center, where they have developed various individual research projects over a period of three months, in addition to three months long practices aimed at architectural companies in the Region of Murcia, Alicante and Barcelona.

This communication analyzes this pioneer experience through a qualitative analysis based on questionnaires made to teachers and students. The main objective is to highlight improvable areas based on the evaluation of the past experience, in order to catch the attention in those items that could be better developed, focusing the attention into the improvement of the whole program in future editions. It is also important to outline the mutual evaluation of the experience, paying attention to the remarkable cultural and docent differences. It is to analyze the benefits of the mutual exchange. This paper also sets out new improvement challenges for this project that would be extended in future academic years.

Keywords:

India, Architecture, Exchange, Educational experience.