Learning Architectural Restoration Through Cooperative Working Strategies

The theoretical, technical, and multidisciplinary specificity of the ArchitecturalRestoration education often entails the knowledge fragmentation and makesthe student lose the necessary global and complex view of the matter.In this paper we present some of the conclusions of an educational researchproject which seek to improve the architect’s ability to analyze, reflect and especiallyto synthesize during the intervention’s process in patrimonial buildings.The main education method applied is based on the objective-systemic methodto restore patrimonial buildings. This method uses as a comprehension toolthe systemic approach from Mario Bunge (Bunge, 2002), and as an axiologicalbasis the Aloïs Riegl value theory (Riegl, 1902) adapted to 21th century.The original hypothesis is that the use of a method in which the student managesthe specialized information using cooperative learning, allows the workteam to reach a wider consensus on the use of this information in the projectand therefore it helps to involve it in the development of the design proposal.The whole project consists on six case studies to be carried out in severaluniversity centers. At this moment, two out of these six cases has beencarried out in the Máster de Tecnología, especialidad en Restauaración yRehabilitación ETSAB (UPC). In both of them, four student’s teams haveanalyzed, evaluated and planned in an existing patrimonial building undera real restoration process from we had all the previous studies made. Theselected buildings were World Heritage Monuments like como the TempioDuomo di Pozzuoli (Napoli, Italia) or the Pabellón de San Manel en el Hospitalde Sant Pau (Barcelona, España).Along the whole analysis process several specialized roles has been assignedto the students: architect, historian, art restorer and archeologist. They hadto form multidisciplinary teams with one specialized student from each area.They all had their specific information and competences, and in severalclassrooms’s meetings they had cooperative learning sessions using the jigsawtechnique. In this kind of sessions they use to have a primary meetingbetween specialists to deep into the specific knowledge and then theyreturned to the basis multidisciplinary group to transfer this knowledge. Inan addition to this cooperative work they have been using during the wholeprocess a wiki site linked to each specialty.First evidences collected about the cooperative learning utility to incorporatethe specific knowledge into the design proposal are very positive,especially for workshop’s classroom attendance (98%) and the degree ofsatisfaction achieved about the utility of the process (0.81).But further than this global opinion, in a correlation analysis some of thequestionnaires variables show an important correlation in this following keyissues: the specialist’s discussion improves the consensus achievement in themain project choices (0.83) and the taken choices are much more consistentwith the previous analysis (0.86). These variables are considered crucial tothe success of the following case studios and offers good perspective.

Volume Editors
Martha Thorne & Xavier Costa

ISBN
978-0-935502-83-1