Landscape Sensitizing through Expansive Learning in Architectural Education

Abstract

Expansive learning is a teaching–learning method adopted by the Department of Architecture of Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexico, to introduce architectural students to the field of landscape sensitizing. This approach has been especially valuable considering the particular cultural and natural values of the Mexican landscapes. In it, architectural students are introduced to co-configuration strategies along with co-working methods with the participation of specialists and local stakeholders and community on the “barefoot” bottom-up basis. The community of Tochimilco, Puebla, was selected as a case study through which students can learn how vulnerable rural landscapes and their natural environments can be protected, constructed, and developed. Therefore, studying natural landscape and environmental conditions of Tochimilco through data collection, fieldwork and student workshops was carried out to reinforce the understanding of landscape features, values, semiotics, and meanings in a Socio-Ecological System of landscape (SES) framework. In this context, the expansive learning processes revealed the potentiality of architectural students to become environmental facilitators for future design and planning projects to trigger sensitizing and comprehensive approaches. In these terms, architectural education prepares students to recognize and be aware of natural values, landscape narratives and the “barefoot” relationship between the landscape and the human being occupying and cultivating it.

Urban Modeling in the Global South and Sustainable Socio-Territorial Development: Case of Puebla-San Andrés Cholula Urban Binomial, Mexico

“…Thus, this area maintained its character as a low and middle-income district. On the other hand, the 1993 Angelópolis Plus-plan exposed the economic potential of the Western bank of the Atoyac for the urban expansion of the city of Puebla [19,20], with the ultimate inconvenience that, according to the colonial Royal Certificate and the official municipality limits, it belonged to the neighboring rural municipality of San Andrés Cholula. Puebla's aspirations to extend its territory beyond the Atoyac river triggered a political controversy and a legal struggle in federal courthouses over the ownership of this potentially lucrative urban land between these two municipalities.…”