Abstract:

In the context of the consolidated disciplinary construction of knowledge, where each knowledge areas go its own way and do not relate enough, the teaching of Architecture also separates and delimits the objects of study in such a way that students often are unable to relate ideas, theories and methods learned in the different subjects.

The contradictory processes of differentiation and integration of research within relatively close knowledge areas do not seem to give clear results towards interdiscipline. All knowledge areas of Architecture are related to each other, but we argue that History, Geography and Cultural Heritage studies are sciences and referential and close fields of study at least in the teaching-learning of Architecture students. In our Educational Innovation Plan, called "Urban(s) Heritage(s)", we use Cultural Heritage as an argument for multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary.

We understand that multidiscipline in learning is highly desirable. It is difficult to bring together students from different university degrees for common objective, so that from each discipline projected its own perspective and fields, objects of study and methods were mixed. We have been reached by means of specific seminars with students of History and Architecture.

We also understand that interdiscipline is about transferring visions, methods and successful techniques from one discipline to another, that is, to carry out a transfer work that involves collaborative work from different disciplines. Students can and should work interdisciplinary, they must know what is outside their university degree and tend to collaboration between different disciplines, in a task of opening borders and opening up to less specialized but more interesting, holistic and formative knowledge.

Working transdisciplinary, however, is much more burdensome. Trying to organize knowledge in a radically different way than usual, in the claim of transdisciplinarity it is possible to distinguish between the border of disciplines (being between one and the other), the transversal of disciplines (crossing them) and the overcoming of disciplines (looking for beyond). The first thing, learning to investigate on the border, as Febvre said thinking about History, is possibly the most plausible objective, seeking a relational knowledge. However, transcending disciplines -going through them or going further- are tasks closely linked to complex knowledge, whose imperatives we think could, in their holistic approach and their own epistemological demand, bring confusion to the architecture student. Indeed, transdiscipline and complexity are closely linked as forms of relational thinking, which, for the specific case of architecture student, is a challenge that would only be successful at the Master's and Doctoral levels. Thus, in our Educational Innovation Plan, “living on the border” is the basic effort of transdisciplinarity.

Keywords:

Cultural Heritage, Methodology, Theory, History.