Invited Workshop: a teaching space to promote the intersection between profession and training.

Abstract

This article presents a critical reflection on historical and contemporary tensions between professional practice and architectural education, based on the analysis of a design studio format implemented since 1999 at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (Chile): the Taller Invitado (TI or guest studio). This design studio format directly articulates architectural education and its professional activity by inviting architects from outside the academic field to lead a design studio, accompanied by a host professor. Through a theoretical framework that addresses the challenges of complex universities and a historical review of TI projects, different teaching profiles, methodological and thematic approaches, and certain implications for the management and development of TI are addressed. Both the historical retrospective and its analysis allow to characterize the TI as a flexible platform, capable of accommodating a diversity of approaches—professionalizing, academic, and experimental—that enrich the teaching-learning process in architecture. Finally, challenges associated with this experience are identified in relation to the diversity of the student body, formative assessment, and the need to safeguard certain pedagogical standards. Contributions are also made regarding the promotion of the necessary two-way dialogue between the profession and training, which catalyzes disciplinary updating and opens spaces for highlighting multiple disciplinary emphases. In short, the TI experience contributes to redefining disciplinary education as a field of architectural research and to renewing educational approaches in a constantly changing social and professional context.