Harmonics: Platonic solids basis of a didactic model for the initiation of an Architectural project

Abstract

The teaching of architecture is based on the integral formation of students through the project, in which the teaching learning process begins with an introduction to the form and to the three-dimensional space – to the human scale – as a proper matter of the discipline. In this research-action-teaching, we propose to create the basis for a new educational model for the initial workshop, taking as a reference the experience of two great masters of the 20th century: Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, based on the geometry and the primary forms as a common nature of the structure of all things in the universe. For this we propose to strategically introduce an experimental unit where students learn how to get to know and apply fundamental notions of the forms by applying bio-tools and using platonic solids as primary or fundamental forms in the sacred or harmonic geometry, which incorporates the current biological basis and a holistic approach to the process of teaching-learning. After systematizing the experience we concluded that the use of fundamental solids and the development of the geometries of the second order in the project action, which we called game of the harmonics, allow developing progressively more complex actions of perception, manipulation and combination of form, materializing abstract ideas and creating spatial patterns in a particularly way in terms of composition-scale, material-technique and use-functionality. The model also allows that each part of the game of the project refers in a holistic way to the same fundamental structure, favoring in education a reconnection of students with their own nature, conscious of being part of the universal whole.

Keywords: teaching, architectural project, initial workshop.