The University Courtyard as an Open Space. A didactic experience

Abstract

This paper presents a didactic experience that exercises environmental perception strategies and formal design in landscape architecture. The exercise, applied in the first period of the Architecture and Urbanism course of the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPEL), in the discipline Fundamentals of Project Practice, adopts a didactic path of initial sensitization of the student for the apprehension of a project repertory from different working methods. The preexisting university courtyard, free space chosenfor the intervention, represents a place of daily use, scrutinized from a participative interpretation by the collectives that live the university environment. The article demonstrates the methodological procedures applied to the stages of the design process for the patio requalification. it starts with the application of post-occupation evaluation techniques; apprehension of formal and composition repertoire with support of visual form reading instruments, environmental perception and reference analysis. The conception stage integrates the drawing and the physical study model to exercise compositional ability, reconciling geometric principles, formal operations, spatial organization and digital modeling at different scales. The experience represents, therefore, an initiation to the design process in the academic atelier, under the pluralistic approach of the landscaping, illustrated through the student production.