New article in Engramma - La tradizione classica nella memoria occidentale

It was a pleasure and a privilege to receive the invitation to participate in a special issue of Engramma magazine on Toy Architecture.

I took the opportunity to finally tidy up the many ideas, concepts and content that I had developed over the last 12 years that I taught the Architectural Toys course at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto.

Number 213 of June 2024, on top of that, has a group of authors of the highest quality, all around a theme that has gained space and robustness over the last few years until reaching a worthy epistemological status.

The article is written in Italian, but being online it is easily translatable into several languages.

Enjoy the reading!

https://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=5556

"Construction toys make better boys" - Article for the Magazine Dinâmicas

Here is the last number #3 of the Magazine Dinâmicas from the Industrial Design Course at Soares dos Reis School of Arts in Porto. This time is in portuguese language and it is surrounded by other very interesting articles about several issues around teaching and design processes. 

The edition is quite good both in the contents selection (you can find my article between the pages 38 and 45), and in the design layout. 

Please enjoy your reading.

The link: http://issuu.com/dinamicas_easr/docs/dinamicas_3_easr

Educating children in Architecture. XXth architectural narratives troughs toys design

ETSAB building

My article, presented at the  International Workshop COAC-ETSAB Barcelona 2014 in Barcelona, Spain is finally available on line.

Abstract: 
Teaching processes are, since renaissance, created and supported in order to develop specifically skills for a small part of the society. Otherwise, education can be considered as a larger type of processes that, according to E. Morin, “preserves, memorizes, integrates and ritualizes a cultural heritage of knowledge, ideas, values; it regenerates while re-examines, updates and transmit; create knowledge, ideas and values that return to the heritage”.
In this theoretical framework toys are considered as educational devices and a part of a materialistic culture that contains educational, artistic and ideological values. Through toys it is possible to map which part of each culture wants to be preserved and transmitted to the following generation.
From this point of view architectural toys are quite fruitful because represent not only architectural paradigms as languages and technics but also dwelling models and habits or, in some examples, urban design or territorial organizations.
This article attempts to organize the narrative lines that exist in the background of architectural toys production and design during the XXth century that are, according to the author, quite coincident with the architectural production changes. 

Please enjoy your reading!

Download the full article here.

Crafting the future - 10th European Academy of Design Conference - April 17-19 2013 Gothenburg

During the last week I have been in Gothenburg participating in the 10th European Academy of Design Conference - Crafting the future. There I presented an article about architectural toy design (Design education through toy design. Old and new paradigms in architectural toys design) and it was quite good because the feedback I received from the audience. Sincerely, and someone told me the same, the presentation was much more rich and clear than the paper, both because the paper was written in September (almost 8 months ago) and since that my research advanced a lot in several directions and because I could transmit my really passion for the issue. Indeed it was a really important effort in order to organize a little more this huge field of knowledge.
Anyway, the interesting thing was that during the final lecture the keynote speaker Otto von Busch from Sweden (Co-craft and The Capabilities of Industriousness) spoke also about the main importance of toys and craft activities in the educational processes. So I felt really “on the edge”!

You can find below the slides of my final presentation.