An Agenda for Education: On the Relationship between Architectural Design Education, Technology of Architecture, and Information Technology

The chapter aims to present some considerations about the relationship between architectural design education, technology of architecture and the expectations that can be reasonably placed on the innovations brought about by information and communication technologies (ICT). The starting-point cannot be information technology itself, but rather the problematic nodes of architectural design, in order to explore and measure the impact and opportunities that information technology tools can have on design education. To this aim, we find the distinction between method-oriented and case-oriented architectural design made by Roberto Gabetti particularly interesting. It is important to plan for possible mutual contributions between method-oriented and case-oriented education. A synthesis between method-oriented and case-oriented education, between the design studio and the lectures , the École Polytechnique and École de Beaux-Arts has been attempted several times since the nineteenth century, initially by the reform proposed by Viollet-Le-Duc, later applied in the School of Berlin, then with the innovative teaching of Bauhaus, Ulm, and recently in the experiments with the “second design studio” . Today this synthesis has received a further boost from educative theories -constructivism, learner-centered teaching and Goal-Based Scenario - and the tools developed by the research, above all in the field of artificial intelligence. We hope that this synthesis will provide the education in architectural design and technology of architecture with methodologies and tools to meet the needs for specialist competencies and permanent training and, at the same time, to provide an answer to the increasing fragmentation of knowledge, which is ever more torn away from any methodology or “cultural” interpretation.