Towards a search for socio-environmental commitment: Reflections on a pedagogical methodology in architecture and urbanism

Abstract

This text discusses a hypothesis on a pedagogical methodology in architecture and urbanism that is the result of many years of academic experience, whose structure is constantly under collective construction. The presentation of ethical, social and environmental principles and purposes prevails, translated by the understanding of the inseparability of theory and practice; of practice as the production of knowledge; of the necessary interaction between erudite and popular knowledge; of the simultaneously technical and humanist nature of the field of architecture and urbanism as applied social sciences; and of the balance between artifice and environment that must preside over our actions in light of the uncertainty of the human condition on the planet, in a state of social crisis and imminent environmental collapse. Universities aim to be one of the protagonists in the process of opening, debating and forging paths, breaking down walls that separate them from real life, to produce more effective action, in search of an achievable utopia. It is intended that the issues raised here may contribute as alternatives in the construction of new paradigms from the field of learning, as resistance to and a way of overcoming the conditions imposed by the unfavorable correlation of geopolitical and economic forces, in relation to peripheral dependent countries, where Latin America plays an important role.