SCHOOL THAT WE HAVE vs SCHOOL THAT WE SHOULD HAVE

“Some schools continue to train students with the same attitude of the band on the Titanic. The ship is sinking and we continue to play as if everything was normal. In the past, the work of teachers come to the classroom. The project, the problem was the matter. There was a time a very direct relationship between professional practice and discussion of architecture. With issues such as specialization, hierarchies, the Masters and PhD degrees was reached to think that the production of articles was more important than the production of architecture, of knowing how to do, of design and knowledge of reality itself: “Talk about” in instead of “to talk of”… And that are a problem that can make us lose everything (…)

This is not just think that the architect owns the ideas… Everyone has ideas. That only the architect can draw… Everyone can draw. The architect has to be another figure. The school has to notice the signs of change. This requires reformatting the idea that teachers architecture only have to produce books, writing texts and walk around to confer without making architecture. Our universities, in general, took a problem that was not part of their practice (…)

You need to get a sense of what is taught. We may teach only working method, approach, theory, history that is crucial but it is also essential to know the means and production techniques, strategies, know that there is a process to make the architectural design… This is something that we tend to forget (…)

The architecture school could be the start of this global vision, of the strategic cultural unity that Portuguese architecture needs in order to develop and grow. We have so many great architects, but we don’t have the capacity to impose ourselves either collectively or individually, either inside or outside. We’ve been making some mistakes (…)”

Nuno Lacerda Lopes, Archinews ed#29