NAVIGATING THROUGH ‘LAYERS’ AS A PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH IN ARCHITECTURAL TEACHING

Abstract The pedagogical approach presented here looks at the benefits of teaching design by encouraging the creation of layers and layers of ‘presented’, as opposed to ‘represented’, material, the navigation through which can prove to be a quite creative process. For the longest time architecture has been using a rather narrow set of media; the sketch, the diagram, the orthogonal and perspectival views, and the model were the main means through which the student of architecture followed a rather linear design process which led from concept to an architectural proposal. And while acknowledging that the use of the computer clearly offers new possibilities, the focus of the present piece of research is the way alternative ways of thinking about the setup may trigger the development of novel pedagogies of teaching design through new means of representation or communication which may in turn result in new design methodologies. The virtual is here not understood as the digital but, rather, as potentiality.