The education of the architect in the XXI century: psychosocial new findings and environmental sustainability challenges

Abstract

The Relationships between Architecture and Education have been analyzed in recent years with increasing interest. The environmental challenges to human sustainability such: as climate changes, environmental impact upon children health (Unicef Indicators, 2012) and impact of the computer in urban planning, are some of the reasons for this growing interest in order to improve architectural education. This paper will start with a “state of the Art” of the field from a dialogical psychosocial view point. In a second chapter, it will analyze the fundamental interactive link between physical forms and social behaviour, thanks to the study of the dialogical models of cities built by children. These sociological sociophysical models of cities allows to a progressive better evaluation of the specific feed-back between physical environmental transformations and social intersubjective behaviour that exists in each place, regarding different research scenarios, such as educational, design studios or urban planning research settings. These findings go far beyond children education, and take into account the urban planning new theories and also the environmental impact upon children’s mental, physical or social health. Finally the paper shows some examples of architectural education in universities pointing to a new ethical and social answerability of education, in front of the environmental sustainability worldwide challenges of today.