TRANSVERSAL VISION OF THE ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT MATERIALIZATION

The learning of Building Materials in Schools of Architecture should be done from in-person and non-in-person activities. The aim should be the acquisition of skills and knowledge by students such as material choice suitable with the building use in certain conditions. The proper choice must comply with technical, functional and aesthetic requirements according to the architectural project.
Traditionally materialization has been referred as a coating or a finishing touch at a later stage. In the School of Architecture of Valencia teachers of the subject Building Materials (MCO) focused teaching from the conviction that the materialization must have a parallel development with the conception of the project, and even be the starting point of itself. We have implemented a classroom activity we define as Architectural Project Realization during several years. In this paper, we present sequentially the preparation of this activity in our subject, its development in the classroom and later evaluation.
The materialization work is done during the second semester and is organized into several phases. Earlier, in the first term, the student has developed a project in PRI workshop and in MCO he has completed materials templates that allowed knowledge of an isolated material. Among other issues they have to discuss about physical, mechanical and chemical properties, costs and put into work. This involves developing in students the ability to perform tasks of search, selection and synthesis of data and dump them in a format previously created form.
The student must now develop the architectural work by himself, giving it a reasoned materialization. In this second stage we are aware of the inability of the student to develop the entire project, so we propose solutions to significant points of the project such as cladding, flooring and roofing.
In both phases, the teacher makes a tight tutorship of the work development and makes corrections before the partial and final delivery. The students present the work publicly. The assessment takes into account work and participation, initiative, innovation and attitude of the student during the same. It also implies the other students to value the work of their peers once exposed publicly in the classroom.
Effectiveness of the transversal job between ideation and realization is demonstrated on the knowledge gained by the students.
In this paper we present the conclusions of the application of this methodology for several years under different curricula.