Syllabus Information

5.1. Methodological overview

The development of the design exercises is weekly guided  by teachers. The learning process is based on a continued training.  The teaching methodology is based on experimentation and personal research, logically guided and nourished with the resources provided by teachers. The creative process is not understood as a copy, it is rather thought as the continuation of exemplary projects. The student is provided with a specific bibliography directly related to the proposed topics. Each student must analyze these projects performing interpretive sketches in his personal notebook.

5.2. Learning tasks

Theory lectures, one hour per week. The lesson, addressed to all students, will be based on issues related to the proposed exercise. These classes are intended to illustrate and form the visual intelligence of the student.

Design reviews in the Workshops, individualizad on the work of each student. These critics will be conducted in small groups of 15 students, so that the student may participate in the comments, not only about his/her project, but on the other classmates.

Design critics. For the whole class these sessions are conducted referring to selected projects that can enlighten all students.

Intermediate and final jurys, involving external professors.

Visit to external centres.

5.3. Syllabus

The program is summarized in the completion of two exercises. The first one, conducted in groups of 3 or 4 students assumes the subject proposed by a Students´National Competition. In previous years it has been successfully developed the Pladur competition. Others, such as Hispalyt, may be proposed. The second exercise, to be developed individually or in pairs, refers to a limited program, either of public equipment or residential, which enables students to reach an advanced degree in the constructive definition of the project.

The program includes the following themes, developed both in the theoretical classes and in practical exercises.

1. Construction systems and architectural form
2. The constructive determination of architecture
3. The nature of materials and the idea of continuity in Wright

- The significant value of materials

4. Mies and the construction of the great form

- Construction as an essential creative act

- Equivalence of the constructive, design, and aesthetic decision

- Form as the result of a laborious destillation process

5. Material, structure and order in the work of Kahn

- Constructive syntax and radical consistency

- Sintaxis constructiva y consistencia radical

- Structure as support and creator of form

- Sincerety and coherence: the onthological nature of materials

- The sensory experience of material: light, matter, texture

6.  Alternatives and rejection of modernity

- The revolution of construction: artisanal architecture

- The recovery of material value

- The project trascends its materiality

7. Technique and project: the extensión of the discourse in contermporary debate

- Density and material minimization

- Constructive manipulation

5.4. Course planning and calendar

Each of the two exercises is publicly presented to all students in the first week. The presentation includes the reference to the main objectives.

Each project is developed in seven weeks, with weekly theory lessons for the whole group.

Students are divided in groups, as many as necessary, being optimal a maximum of fifteen students per professor.

Each exercise will have an intermediate presentation.

Final presentations will be evaluated following common criteria developed by the professor in charge of the subject.

A final jury will be conducted for the whole class.

5.5. Bibliography and recommended resources

We recommend the architectura magazine TECTONICA as well as Tribuna de la Construcción, TC, edited by Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.

Deplazes, Andrea. Construir la arquitectura. De material en bruto al edificio. Un manual, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2015.