Teaching Integrated Architecture and Urban Design using a Tectonic Attitude as Pedagogical Method

This paper discusses a pedagogical method based on what in this paper is introduced as a tectonic
attitude. The methodology is applied to an undergraduate studio called “The relationships between
architectural and urban space”, taught at Aalborg University, Denmark, to 5
th semester bachelor
students of Architecture and Urban Design. The studio is designed to stimulate the students’
understanding of context, and to enable their reflection on potentials and challenges in the relationships
between buildings and urban spaces.
The studio arises from a reading of the challenges in contemporary building culture, as applied to the
construction of new cities. Examples can be found across the world of such cities and urban
redevelopments, full of good intentions and sufficient resources but that are experienced as mediocre,
disjointed and made up of autonomous buildings of standardised solutions.
Theoretically the shape of the contemporary city can be understood as a set of intertwined, global, mega
trends. These trends come from a growing awareness of the city’s role in ecosystems and the
sustainability movement1 2
, an understanding of the city as the spatial facilitator of the good life
associated with the notion ‘liveability’
3 4
, and an increase in the implementation of urban technologies
and smart city solutions5 6
. But, these mega trends cannot provide an adequate understanding alone. As
with everything else, the contemporary city is entangled with economy, which among other things
includes crude speculation in the development of the city, a race for increased profit through
standardised architecture, and a maximising of returns from space available for rent or sale. If the spatial
result of this is autonomous architecture, an excess of standardised architectural solutions and prefabricated apartment blocks not defined by their context, how are we as architects and urban designers
supposed to challenge this tendency? Asteachers of architecture and urban design, our proposed solution
is to approach the challenge through the education of students. The current studio is an attempt in this
direction.
From the perspective of an architect, one of the challenges of contemporary building culture is a lack of
sensitivity towards how the city is experienced, resulting from how the city is put together and
assembled. How do we consciously shape the spatial experience in the joining of the new and the old
city, in the joining of buildings and urban spaces, and in the joining between public and private?
Historically in architectural theory, the notion of tectonics has provided an understanding of how spatial
experience is affected by the joining of architectural elements. Can this theory be re-developed to provide a new foundation for an understanding of the relationship between the experience of the city
and how the city is assembled?