Ecology and Cos (i) Mopolitics in the Drawing RoomThe Lines that Expand the Limits of Architecture

Zusammenfassung

The teaching of architecture can remain in profile, in the aseptic margin of technical learning - in particular, the learning of drawing to project architecture - or it can be exposed frontally to the context of our contemporaneity, receive its impact and be devoured. If we start from the hypothesis that the architectural as a critical interpretation of the ‘real’ world, it seems logical to introduce in the classroom pedagogies that do not disregard this condition and incorporate the social, political and, ultimately, cultural dimension to learning practices. This article reflects on the role of our teaching as a result of the experience of teaching the subject of Drawing, Analysis and Ideation (DAI) in the 2020–2021 academic year held during COVID confinement period at the School of Architecture in Madrid (ETSAM) where an articulated pedagogy was established around the book “The Baron in the Trees” (“Il Barone Rampante”, by Italo Calvino when we have the information. Both in the tone and in the conception, and in the design of each of the learning objectives and devices that were arranged in the workshop classroom, the emancipation of the students and their approach, through drawing, to an architecture, aware of the complexity and responsibility of its time. The pedagogy of ‘Cosimo climbs a tree’, like any other situated trigger, it is not accidental, but it gives an answer to the intention of cultivating a cosmopolitical and ecological vision of architecture both in its learning practices and in its expanded disciplinary interpretation.