Architecture educates more efficiently than a blackboard.  It proposes to those who inhabit it the sensible and intelligent learning of customs or behavioral habits directly related with the condition of being a citizen.

With the purpose of disseminating the notions of Architecture, City and Design, the Department of Architecture of Los Andes University and the School of Architecture and Design for children of the Diseñando Program, offer the course: "Understanding the world: Elements of architecture and city".

It is thought that the citizen's knowledge of architecture is a necessary pedagogical factor in the construction of collective life,a learning process which should start since elementary education.  It's a fact: nobody is a stranger to the space-time experience of habiting the environment in which we live; not even children.  Hence the importance of incorporating the comprehension of the environment in which we live into society's educational project.  It is an essential factor in the formation of a true citizen culture.

The contents that are developed in this course relate to contemporary habitats; the natural and built environment; and the city of Bogotá, as sceneries of collective life.  Through first-hand views, reflections, and representations of several spaces of the university's campus, as well as visits to historical sites in our city, the children develop a comprehension of the true sense of the citizen's lifestyle in terms of behavioral habits.  The exercises and contents of the course allow boys and girls to appropriate for themselves the citizen's culture and apply to their everyday experience the discovered observations: They learn to be better citizens. 

The course's main objective is to discover with the children the sense of architecture and city as a human experience essential for the construction of collective life.

Methodologically the course, "Understanding the world: Elements of architecture and city," is developed in the ways of a workshop: It proposes to the children a series of concepts (space, scale, proportion, composition, etc.) that are illustrated trough out visits and suitable exercises; It also draws conclusions that hand over the meaning of the studied contents.
In the guided visits, the children will be escorted by the course's teachers, by an assistant teacher and by students of the Department of Architecture, and they will be transported by an institutional bus contributed by the university.

GENERAL INFORMATION:
Location: Los Andes University 
Carrera 1 N° 18A 10 Bogotá, (Colombia)
Telephone: +571 3394949 - +571 3394999. Ext. 2204 
Date: February 28th to June 13th 2009
Schedule: Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 m.