Economic and cultural value, urban and built heritage, architecture education: the active role of stakeholders

Innovation in architecture education is increasingly oriented towards the analysis of real problems considered in their multi-dimensionality and the active involvement of the stakeholders. In learning processes, it is useful to face real case studies so that students acquire disciplinary tools and technical knowledge for the definition of sustainable projects, closely linked to the territorial reality, the socio-economic context and the needs expressed by the different stakeholders involved. With an approach of students’ inclusion and involvement in the process of knowledge and definition of the problem under study, they are responsible for their project, collaborate with each other and with external stakeholders and become active in the community of reference. For the students this implies competences in engaging with stakeholders establishing consistent vocabularies, and facilitating participatory research and decision making in collaboration with experts from academia, industry, government, and civil society. Assuming these premises, the aim of this paper is to highlight how the active role of the stakeholders can improve the economic and cultural value of enhancement projects developed in Architecture and Planning Schools, focusing on the potentialities of the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach in addressing sustainable and effective design processes. For this purpose, a three steps methodology based on PBL approach is presented in order to facilitate the active involvement of the stakeholders in improving the economic and cultural value of complex building heritages at the architectural and urban scale, starting from real problems and developing sustainable and feasible projects. Each step of the proposed methodology was applied during the atelier “Heritage Preservation and Enhancement”, carried out at the Politecnico di Torino and implemented as a module within the Erasmus + EU project “Citylab. Engaging students with sustainable cities in Latin-America”, co-funded by the European Commission. Specific results were achieved for each step through the interaction among stakeholders, teachers and students and the application of evaluation tools. In particular, the steps and the related findings mainly regarded the context and the main problem definition, the knowledge acquisition and management and the development of feasible and sustainable projects. This experience highlighted the learner’s role in defining problems and alternative design solutions, focusing not so much on the intended result (project) as on the path to get there and so start the transformation from a project-based approach to a PBL one.