Changing the ways of teaching architecture to prevent placelessness architecture type, in our copy-paste generation

Abstract

If it’s easy to admit that the modus-operandi of doing architecture can be universal, somehow its form and expression should be different if it aims to respond to its genius loci. However, nowadays, everything it is about the same everywhere. We’re producing buildings that can be placed anywhere. In other words, this global sameness shapes Globalization. Here, what is at stake is the question of the identity and character of today's Architecture. The problem is no longer related to making architecture-per-metre but its dissemination and contagion-per-second. Everything is just in a distance of a click, or of a simple touch on the screen. Concerning Architecture, what is done today, worldwide, is available online in a blink of an eye. Consequently, influence is inevitable. Thus, in a copy-paste generation like ours, how can we stimulate the original creative process in a student? How can we avoid sliding into such placelessness architecture type? How to prepare a student to face the “ills” of Globalization? Moreover, when AI is already available, which came to facilitate even more the thinking process, (like ChatGPT) optimizing language models for on-line dialogues which provides detailed responses, how powerful/risky these tools can be in the hands of a student? What has to change methodologically, from the educational point of view? What will be the real role of a teacher? The goal of this paper aims to rethink some pedagogic methodologies, by revealing my personal experience at EAAD (Portugal), in order to address some solutions to these problems.