Housing mock-up: relationship between design, development and execution in building design education

Abstract

This paper reports an educational experience, which allows a reflection on design education and the theoretical foundations in Architecture´s disciplinary field. It concerns an exercise, applied to first-year undergraduate students in Architecture and Urbanism at São Judas Tadeu University, in São Paulo. The exercise consists of different steps, which are described and have their objectives presented on the course of the article. The last step corresponds to the construction of 1:1 mock-ups, which allows the students to build of a complex architectonic element and to observe the space. Since the exercise aims a real construction in both aspects, the organization of space and the technical and constructive domain, the article emphasizes the implications for the student´s learning process by facing constructive aspects while designing the space. It is presumed that the mock-up building activity provides concrete material elements for the simultaneous handling of multiple prerogatives of the project, enabling experimentation and spot verification of the complexity of the structural system in its physical properties, especially in relation to scale - and modulation – of the component parts, the stability of the assembly and the shape itself. The considerations seek to establish parameters for the future development of research in teaching architecture design in regard to the relationship between matter and space, as well as the constant improvement of the construction system used to build the mockups.