Teoria e didática do projeto arquitetônico: uma relação permanente

Abstract

This paper deals with the didactical character assumed by a theory of architectural design when originally thought as practical knowledge. It is built inside project practice by making its reasons explicit. At this level of "metadesign", a critical rationality is associated to the communicational rationality of the project, which is translated into an architectural rhetoric, an argumentative discourse with the objective to reveal the plausibility - the verisimilitude - of architectural decisions taken in the action of configurating an architectonic object. So, the condition of uncertainty inherent to project development from the preliminary formulation of an architectural problem (always incomplete and provisional) to an accomplished architectural proposition is accepted not as a failure, but as en essential quality of the invention of spatial compositions. The didactics of the atelier, between criticism and rhetoric, cannot be separated from the constant argumentation effort towards the closure of the project, which is not founded on the previous consistency issued from the initial conditions of work, but reveals itself progressively in the crafty composition of an explanatory model that does not prove its necessity, but convinces us about its possibility.

Key words: architectural design, theory, criticism, rhetoric.