Abstract:

This congress paper presents a singular teaching experience that involved three different courses that shared a common objective by means of practical, service-centered and challenge-based learning. The common objective was to develop the first design of waste-based façade solutions that could improve the sustainability performance of obsolete existing school buildings. This first design is the first task of the project Waste-based Intelligent Solar-control-devices for Envelope Refurbishment (WISER) with the reference TED2021-130155B-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union “NextGenerationEU”/PRTR.

The three courses held were from different schools of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-Barcelona Tech and involved international 76 students from different levels, disciplines and backgrounds. These courses were “LOW3: Living Zero!”, “Materiality and Project” and “Building technologies and materials with low environmental impact”, all of which have 5 ECTS. “LOW3: Living Zero!” is an undergraduate elective course of the Grade in architecture of the School of architecture of Vallès. “Materiality and Project” is an elective course of the line “Contemporary Project” of the master “MBarch” of the School of architecture of Barcelona. “Building technologies and materials with low environmental impact” is an elective course of the line “University master in advanced building construction - MUCAE” of the Barcelona School of Building Construction.

Students from “LOW3: Living Zero!” and “Materiality and Project” developed three 1:1 prototypes in each course plus its graphical and technical documentation, the performance of which was studied by students from the third course. This activity lasted one semester, during which students learned following a challenge-based learning methodology to solve a façade that will solve the problem of a primary school. First, the students grouped in three developed initial designs to be defended in a first review seminar with multidisciplinary experts. From this first seminar 6 proposals were selected, which were developed and presented in a second review seminar during which interdisciplinary experts commented the proposals and gave them feedback, so student groups could improve their projects for the final delivery. Meanwhile the students from MUCAE started working on a proposal of evaluation criteria, based on related technical literature. When the 6 final proposals were defined, MUCAE students focused on different aspects of the evaluation, developing a role of expert in specific subjects, as well as a consultant to whom the design teams could rely on. The final delivery included recording a video for the community of the primary school, in which students explained the advantages of their solutions.

This experience has been highly interesting, positive and productive for the involved academic community. Improvement options have been identified for future similar experiences regarding grouping and coordination aspects. The highest satisfaction is related to the students’ engagement and personal and collective experiences. Also, to students’ learning about sustainability, developing new designs and specialize in specific topics of facades technological behavior and performance, as well as the experience of mock-up and 1:1 prototype construction in a very short period. Moreover, the resulting proposals have satisfied the first phase of the aforementioned research project.

Keywords:

Circular economy, innovation in teaching, multi-schools learning, CBL, learning by doing.