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International Workshop

ARCHITECTURE, EDUCATION AND SOCIETYForum Research on Architecture . Barcelona May 29-30-31, 2013.

A. Educative Settings1.Childhood Architectural Education: Teaching architecture to children

ARCHITECTUREAS EXPERIENCE

Andrea Monteiro Vicente.First Graduate from Faculdade de Arquitetura, Universidade do Porto, is now a architecture PhDstudent at Departamento de Engenharia e Arquiteturaand a Master Art Education Student at Departamento de Comunicao e

Artes da Universidade da Beira Interior, Portugal.

Miguel Santiago.PhD (2005) from Universidade Tcnica de Lisboa, researcher at Centro de Investigao em Territrio,Arquitectura e Design (CITAD)and Professor at Departmento de Arquitectura da Universidade da Beira Interior, Portugal.

ABSTRACT

Herbert Read once wrote: "It seems to me one of the curiosities of philosophy that when JohnDewey later devoted himself to the subject of aesthetics (Art as experience, London, 1934) never, in

the course of an imposing dissertation, has established the connection between aesthetic and

education.(Read, 1958: 295). This paper dares to refute this claim by revisiting two books of Dewey,namely, Experience & Education (1938), and the already named, Art as experience (1934).Simultaneously, we will support an education through architecture also in an analogy with the bookEducation through Art of Herbert Read we advocate an unexpected role for a discipline oftensupposed to be focus only on the construction of the material side of reality. We see architecture as aparticular form of epistemological construction of complexity, and the architect as a privilegededucator. The statement, "The work of art remakes the maker." (Eisner, 1972: 282) expresses theemergency of its meaning, and how different authors have reinforced the relevance of the principlesenunciated by Read, on the contribution of art for social change "When our factories and our citieschange their character from the mechanistic to the humane, when they become places in which

qualitative experience is as prized us we now prize efficiency, the arts might not need the place in

schools they do at present."(Eisner, 1972: 282). This change is in progress and the utopian, peacefulbut necessary revolution, enunciated by Herbert Read remains unfulfilled. Eduardo Galeano explainsthe meaning of utopia, saying that utopia is on the horizon and therefore unreachable, I approach twosteps, it moves away two steps, (...) What serves utopia? It serves to: that I never stop walking.

Alongside with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, John Dewey is considered one ofthe founders of the philosophical Pragmatic school and during the first half of the twentieth century,

the main representative of the progressive education movement. In the book "Experience &Education" (1938), Dewey reflects on the dialectical relationship between experience and education,and how this relationship is metamorphosed in the transition of traditional education to progressiveeducation. According to this author, traditional education is focused in educating from the outside, bythe transposition of natural inclinations and for its replacement by habits acquired by outside influence.That is, the impression of an external model on the self, by the imposition of content and methods, bythe construction of disconnected experiences of its previous experiences and by the transmission ofknowledge, as a finished and unchanging product. In contrast, progressive education is focused onthe natural and singular endowments, encourages the (ex)pression and development of the selffromwithin, focusing on building experiences linked to its previous and current experiences. Can bedescribed as a progressive organization of free activity and as an epistemological construction of a

dynamic, flexible and changeable process. Thus, taking into account the primary role of experience in

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education, we are confronted with some questions, namely: can we consider all experiences aseducative? If not, what criteria can define an experience as educative?

Dewey says that some experiences are mis-educative, by the way they restrict the possibilitiesfor future experimentation, promoting hazy attitudes of indifference, callousness or irresponsibility.

"The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that allexperiences are genuinely or equally educative."(Dewey, 1938: 25). So what are the criteria that candefine an experience as educative? This author defines two fundamental criteria, namely, theexperimental continuum and the interaction with reality. First, the principle of experimental continuumadvocates the quality of experience measured in the influence or effect in future experiments and aimsfor the connection between these experiences. This connection prevents the dispersion of informationand the formation of habits of disintegration. "... the principle of continuity of experience means thatevery experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some

way the quality of those which come after." (Dewey, 1938: 35). In turn, the second criteria, defined asthe interaction with the environment, refers to the importance of contextualization of learning in socialreality and of the cooperation established between school and community. In short, an educationalexperience always tends to a progressive organization of more knowledge and more information andfor their subsequent contextualization in reality. However, this definition of an educational experienceoverlaps inArt as experience with the definition of an aesthetic experience. Dewey describes it:

...if we imagine a stone, which is rolling down hill, to have an experience. (...) The stone

stars from somewhere, and moves, as consistently as conditions permit, toward (...) an end. Let us

add, by imagination, to these external facts, the ideas that it looks forward with desire to the final

outcome; that it is interested in the things it meets on its way, conditions that accelerate and retard

its movement with respect to their bearing on the end; that it acts and feels toward them according

to the hindering or helping function it attributes to them; and that the final coming to rest is related

to all that went before as the culmination of a continuous movement. Then the stone would have an

experience, and one with esthetic quality. (Dewey, 1934: 39)

Thus, Dewey seems to understand the aesthetic experience as an educative one, because tothe aesthetic experience are intrinsic the two key criteria for its definition as an educative experience,the experimental continuum and the interaction with the learning context. And he adds: "...noexperience of whatever short is a unity unless it has esthetic quality."(Dewey, 1934: 40). Thereby welearned mainly by experience, by the aesthetic experience. In this learning process, the humanconsciousness is a mediator between the selfand the world, and is in this dialectical relationship oftensions of constraint by duty and cooperation by reciprocity (Read, 1942) that the self builds itssingular sense of ethics. Read argues, like Schiller, the existence of a common ground to the ethicsand the aesthetics. In fact, if we take de definition of ethics, as a rational articulation of goodness(Cunha, P. 1996), the aesthetics would be the intuitive articulation of beauty. If a man desires thegoodness, the beauty and the truth, these paths are parallel and convergent on the utopian line of our

experiential horizon. And in no other field of human activity, as in architecture, we can seize thisconvergence between ethics and aesthetics, art and science, between the sensitive and rationalvalues, in the construction of a holistic, systemic and complex approach to the real. And it is by thissingular perspective that we want to educate.

REFERENCESDewey, J. (1934).Art as Experience. Perigee. Social Sciences. 1 Edio. New York.Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. Simon and Schuster. New York.Dewey, J. (2002).A escola e a sociedade. A criana e o currculo. Lisboa: Relgio Dgua Editores.Eisner, E. (1972). Educating artistic vision. Stanford University. MacMillan Publishing Co. New York.Morin, Edgar.; Marques, Antnio; Coelho, Eduardo Prado; Rodrigues, Joo Resina; Jesuno, Jorge

Correia; Gago, Jos Mariano; Barreto, Lus Filipe; Jorge, Maria Manuel Arajo. (s.d.). O problemaepistemolgico da complexidade. Publicaes Europa-Amrica. Mem Martins.

Read, H. (1958).A educao pela arte. 3 edio. Edies 70. Lisboa.