Abstract:

This article covers the first results of a research on an academic activity in the last semester of an Architecture and Urban Planning course in Brazil, in the workshop of physical models. It questions whether both experimentation and the understanding and mastering of the languages of various means of expression and representation in the process of design actually bear a significant role for students in their graduate studies.
In an increasingly appealing globalized virtual world, the academic environment in this teaching and learning context appears to be suffering from its choice directedness, massification, pattern determinism, and confusion between information and knowledge. Uncertainties, doubts, experimentation and discovery, proficiency in languages of various natures, all appear to have been neglected and lost space in tutors’ agendas, despite being inherent to the process of design, where human capacity is challenged to propose solutions to concrete non-anticipated problems. In opposition to Technical Rationality, the article contends that students’ attitude should be active, exploratory. They should be able to open up their design’s negotiating space, developing their ideas through trial and error, in reference to other experiences, within a socio-historical perspective. The artefacts produced, never neutral, are enunciations to be interpreted beyond their explicit material form, expressing sensations and intuitions, revealing multiple creative commitments of the future professional. Their languages allow for the communication through the use of particular signs as real elements of discourse, material reflexes of conscience and intention, full of new meanings and creative possibilities. In other words, students should be allowed to discover for themselves. The intention of the research was to put this understanding to the test, providing students with a voice in this respect.
The article singles out a few among 135 reports, in order to answer qualitatively the question above. At the end of the semester, out of a critical reflection experimentations and languages were appropriated by students, who advanced in their professional formation, significantly improving their design decisions. The research concluded that experimentation and grasping languages involved in this area are critical for the valuable exploration of creative abilities in Architecture.

Keywords:

Experimentation, languages, model making, materiality, discovery.