Teaching architecture as a subject of study: The case of the Master´s in Project Didactics (MADPRO)

Abstract

The Master's in Project Didactics has its origin in the Project Teaching Seminars taught since 1996 in Valle las Trancas de Chillán by the professor emeritus of the Catholic University of Louvain and co-founder of the European Association for Architectural Education (AEEA/EAAE), Jean Francois Mabardi; which, subsequently taught in the form of a diploma course, spontaneously gave rise to the program.
Inserted critically in the context drawn by the new paradigms of higher education —of which it is the direct effect— and pioneer in Latin America since 2005, the opening of the program is in itself a big hypothesis: the teaching of the project and, therefore, the training of competent architects, is possible. The efforts made since then and the logic proper to the educational system have suggested that the training of competent architects presupposes the existence of competent professors and that the existence of the latter presupposes, in turn, two basic teaching skill first, knowledge of Architecture (theory and practice and, second, knowing how to teach Architecture.
The absence of one or the other would explain a phenomenon of common occurrence in our schools: a good teacher of architecture does not make a good architect, and a good architect does not make a good teacher of architecture. It follows that the teaching role - like that of the architect - is not an investiture, it is a conquest. Facing these important challenges, MADPRO has become consolidated as an enclave of research in the arca of teaching and project didactics, adopting as method and object of study the contemplative observation of the teaching experience itself.