— The Ideal School

This is another publication that comes, quite rightly, to subsidise the study of school architecture in Portugal. Its relevance stems from the way it expands – and then refocuses – the concept of school building in contemporary times, highlighting its role as an educational “agent”, highlighting its specificity, naturally mirrored in its architectural expression and in the corresponding spatial, formal and constructive grammar, raising clues and opening space for further research.

If the school building, beyond its symbolic role of representing a basic social function – education – is an instrument for its realisation, it is therefore up to the school architecture to reproduce the ways of conceiving education and the ways of teaching and learning. This means assuming that it is also up to the architect to follow the evolution of learning theories and teaching methods. Only in this way can he find the meaning of these transformations and understand their implications in the school space where he will act.

(…)

Teresa V. Heitor, CiTUA CERIS, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon

— BIM IS MORE

BIM IS MORE is a periodic publication that disseminates new ways of designing and building Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) through the use and integration of new digital information and communication technologies. It is especially oriented towards the methodological aspects of the theme of Innovation applied to this sector that integrates the aspects of the art of creating, building and inhabiting spaces in contemporaneity.

The idea of creating a publication on this innovative but essential subject for the future of the sector, making known the results and the application of new ways of designing, building and living, is also the objective of the Research Group of the Centre for Innovation in Architecture and Ways of Living (CIAMH) of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP), collaborator of this issue, which has been, since its formation, studying and disseminating information and knowledge on new practices of design, design and construction applied to architecture.

The aim of the journal is to remain open to different and unusual areas of knowledge, not fixing itself in any particular one, despite having in its base the architectural culture as a matrix for its deepening. To that extent, the publication will address some of the most relevant research work and pursue the development of new ways of approaching Architecture, Engineering and Construction, exploring new processes, new work methodologies and therefore new results, both in the field of ideas and achievements.

Each publication will integrate a different theme, presenting a theoretical body with texts by invited authors, projects and works built, interviews and, sometimes, an in-depth case study on the application of the theme in a given company or institution.

— NOVAS QUESTÕES SOBRE O ENSINO DA CONSTRUÇÃO

This book get to know the report, programme, contents and methods of theoretical and practical teaching of Construction Curriculum Unit 2 of the Integrated Master Course in Architecture, presented for access to the academic title of aggregate in the branch of knowledge of Architecture by the University of Oporto. It’s not a full version, as all the collection, research and comparison works sent to the annex are absent and this publication doesn’t include by merely editorial criteria, as well as it removes the detailed summary of the lesson and the other documents required for the exam, focusing only on the items addressed to the teaching/learning issues of a Curricular Unit at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Oporto.

The research that is published in this text, rather than trying to achieve an exclusive vision about the construction of a Curriculum Unit in a duly consolidated Integrated Master of Architecture as is the FAUP, intends to explore some scientific issues on the subject, address other pedagogical perspectives and discuss the complex relationships between practice and teaching of Architecture. In a world in permanent and rapid mutation, where the problems of Construction, Project and its Teaching/Learning are more and more interdisciplinary, the demand for new and competitive abilities to the new architect to understand, act and build in the complex world where we live is evident.

— The ideal space

workshop at FAUP

— Conferences

— Workshop

— Instalation

— Student Works

— CONSTRUCTION 2.0

This work is the result of a practical exercise developed in the course unit Construction 2, with students from the 3rd year of the Integrated Master of Architecture (MIA) of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Oporto.

It presents all the work done during the second exercise, with an exploratory and experimental character, and seeks to portray, without filters and without any kind of selection, the processes and results achieved by all the groups that were dedicated to this project.

The exercise is part of a more comprehensive global programme and is developed in conjunction with other curricular units. It is oriented towards the acquisition of skills in the field of construction technologies and, above all, the acquisition of skills in analysis, design and problem solving based on the properties of materials and aspects relating to the understanding of building physics.

It is, however, a specific work oriented towards the production of a model, on a scale considered convenient, capable of analysing, interpreting and communicating a process or construction system of an architectural work, at the students’ choice.

The process of building the “model”, the objectives and results obtained, as well as the associated pedagogical process, encourage experimentation, debate, execution, and develop in a proper time and record.

Here we try to recover and update certain practices – close to the old ways of designing and doing architecture, which here are (re)invented, (re)produced, and (re)oriented towards the construction sciences – leading the students to think with knowledge and creativity, to solve problems, making decisions, and collaborating as a project group. In the end, they reproduce the true essence of architecture as collective art directed towards Construction.