Didactic imagination

what do we teach when we teach ?

Abstract

We guide and train students based on didactic knowledge, but essentially on a specific and personal knowledge that, linked to "doing," is not reduced to simple knowledge that includes doing, but is defined as a specific and personal architectural knowledge that determines an artistic, technical, and also social conception of architecture. This notion is not univocal; it is problematic. And when we consider the ambitious generosity of content proposed by our teaching practice, we realize that we are facing a philosophical problem, not a merely didactic and technical one. Architecture as thought and experience transcends the simple resolution of technical problems and becomes present as a form of knowledge and as a mode of relating to the architectural profession and culture. Turning the question of teaching architecture into an ethical and philosophical problem also modifies the traditional sequence of architectural didactics, which prioritizes the "how" to teach, instead placing interpretation and understanding of what to teach first. The "what?" It involves a reflective stance towards architecture that is directly linked to what to teach and how to teach.