Arquitetura e Educação: Atividades didáticas para compreender, interpretar e representar o espaço

Abstract

Architects and institutions connected to architecture from different countries have been developing works with the intent of familiarizing kids and young people with architecture. A great part of those activities takes place in an institutional context, such as museums and art centres. There have also been given incentives to the creation of companies and institutions that dedicate, exclusively, to the development of projects in the same feld of activity. In Portugal, there have started to emerge some works with the same purpose, associated, mainly, to the educative services of certain institutions, such as the Casa da Arquitectura and the Museu de Serralves. After the study of projects done in this area, analysing the contexts and objectives that motivate them, we propose an action sequence to raise awareness of architecture, to be implemented in the classroom. With this activity, we intend to work competencies so that the children acquire concepts related to architecture, becoming capable of understanding, interpreting and better representing the spaces which surround them. With the implementation of this exercise, we also wish to evaluate the importance that this kind of activities can achieve in the divulgation of the architecture to a wider public. Additionally, we want to determine the possibility of its articulation with school education, becoming complementary to the child's development. It is verifed that the children participating in the study show great receptiveness to the participation in these activities, not only through the reaction to the diversity of the proposals but also through the interest shown for the themes of architecture. As a result of this intervention, we demonstrated the contribution to the global development of the students. The analysis of the works shows that the students understood the various concepts approached, having been capable of applying them in the fnal exercise. It is noticed that the children have gained new tools to express themselves in more effcient ways. Being the familiarization with architecture the goal of this dissertation, we consider the implemented activity to be effective. It was even capable of embracing a larger group than that with which it intervened.