16.7.2014 – Issue 17 - Pedagogy – Mateo Josep Lluís – Videos, Studio

On Teaching

by Josep Lluis Mateo

Our mission is, of course, to teach people to design: to imagine in physical terms a new reality and, further, to be able to make it possible, to build it.

My interest is more methodological - abstract, instrumental - than stylistic and is situated between awareness of the student’s freedom of choice (we, the teachers, ask the questions; they, the students, have to answer them) and the need to provide the instruments and the appropriate framework for their action.

As I see it, the practice of architecture centers on the idea-matter dialectic. In architecture, the two terms are intrinsically interrelated in a very specific way. Accordingly, our students are faced by the task of introducing solid matter into ideal abstraction, or using the logic of the supporting structure as the principle of order of the project, or of imagining light as a material for constructing space. Relating the physical world of sensible experience to the abstraction of the idea. In this process, it is also important to highlight both the need for pragmatism and the fire that emanates from its apparent opposite: the anticipatory delirium of the constructor of the future. Without this fire, architecture loses its value.

And, finally, one of the things it is possible (but difficult) for the teacher to transmit is enthusiasm, a lively interest in knowledge and discovery.

This is what we try to do.