Walking in the Unknown Paths’: an Experimental Curriculum

Abstract

How can we build a sense of perception through observing the 'seen' and the 'unseen' dimensions of the city? How can we perceive the living spaces with time and space in mind and capture the hidden meanings in the unknown paths of our city? How can we have the students input the imaginary and observed findings and have them read complex relations? What images are there to find and pull out to understand the realities of the living spaces hidden in the fragments of daily life? How can the architectural visual and environmental memory be linked with the current reality? How can a course curriculum be built around these questions in mind? The paper is an attempt to present how nature/culture/city may prompt the sensual side of students in various exercises and projects during a course and to understand how knowledge can be gained through reading complex relations in living spaces. The course projects designed to have students see and read the city and to enable them to search for the relations between what is seen and what is not will be presented. The overall aim is to provide insights into possibilities in art and design pedagogy and in building creative thinking. Creative thinking processes applied in drawing design and other disciplines and the relationships between words objects and memory in mixed media drawings will be explored.