Double Space-Time Loop in Drawing Learning: From Atelier to Urban Fieldwork Practices

The teaching strategy of the course ‘Drawing, Analysis and Ideation’ taught in the first year of the Degree in Foundations of Architecture demands an active role for students that goes beyond the consumption of didactic content, to take on the role of producers of graphic material accompanied by critical reflections. The proven importance of the physical space where teaching takes place encourages the promotion of experiential learning outside the classroom whose vocation of reality explores the everyday urban environment and counteracts the excessive abstract bias of the conventional approaches of other subjects in the degree. With these premises, the pedagogy that accompanied the 2021–2022 course under the title ‘Alicia goes on tour’ (Alicia se va de viaje) structured an atlas of weekly statements that rehearsed a double learning loop based on iteration inside/outside (the classroom), based on the analysis/project cycle, and where the asynchronous development of each weekly practice favored among the students a work rhythm with more involvement and quite surprising responses. The results obtained improved academic performance and corroborated the training of the learning community in the face of creative uncertainty, helping to develop contextualized, situated, integrative and relational knowledge, as well as to investigate the understanding of the complex ecology that underlies the city where, for the most part, they will have to carry out their professional work as architects.