TEACHING INNOVATION THROUGH THE OCCUPATION OF PUBLIC SPACE: "URBAN HERITAGE AND PLANNING" AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE

Public space is one of the ventricles of the city - the engine that drives the social relations among the citizens who inhabit it - being able to contract or expand the spatial sequence within the contemporary city. As an inherent part of society, it evolves at the rate that collective behaviour dictates, forming a relationship of vital dependency (Gehl, 2004). In this society-space symbiosis, the architect's task from a polyhedral point of view is to provide the city with a spatial network that not only fills the relationship between individuals, but also emphasizes the sense of belonging to the place and the collective. In many cases throughout history and from an international point of view, public space, specifically the square as the social agora, has been an escape route for social, political and cultural demands and manifestations.

Despite its crucial importance in historiography and social evolution, the share of this concept in the current teaching plans of the Department of Urban Planning and Territorial Planning of the University of Seville is nil, barely treated from the formal point of view in the subject "Public Space in Planning Urbanization".

Objectives of the research:
The objective of the communication is to present an experimental methodology in which the research group HUM-700 of the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Seville has been working on two courses, and which aims to be put into practice after having consolidated a broad theoretical base and having tracked similar experiences, all of them novel, in the field of teaching architecture.

It is intended to put into practice the occupation of public space from the subject of "Urban Heritage and Planning" during the next academic year 2018-2019, with the primary objective of highlighting how the different ways of occupying, positioning oneself, moving about and conquering public space are directly related to the intentions of the claims, the character of the group that calls for them and the socio-political governing system (Aláez, 2017). For this reason, ephemeral occupations of public space in the city of Seville will be proposed as practices associated with the core argument of the subject, based on experiences developed by the School of Architecture of the University of Valparaiso (Chile). Around these occupations, the gender conflict applied to the historic city will be discussed, explaining how the starting urban elements constitute favourable or unfavourable parameters in terms of security, belonging, identity and habitability.