USE OF THREE HOUSING CONSTELLATIONS TO INNOVATE WITHIN THE DRAWING CLASSROOM

This text presents the findings resulting from a teaching innovation experience that begins in the 2021-2022 academic year, continues in 2022-2023 and extends in 2023-2024. The experience, carried out during the fourth semester of the degree in fundamentals of architecture at the University of Alicante and through an architectural drawing subject, consists of blurring the boundaries between the profession and the academic world through the collaboration of the intervening agents, namely students, teachers and Spanish architects of recognized prestige. Thus, starting from a series of meetings and interactive intersections in the form of conferences, round tables and interviews, a working methodology is proposed in which the student, aware of his active role in understanding and interpreting the graphic, has the opportunity to synthesize the skills and abilities acquired in a format that, although exclusively graphic, in most cases exceeds the starting content. Three housing constellations, one per academic year, will be the vehicle to put into play constant self-evaluation, active participation, the search for radicality or conscious innovation by the aforementioned agents. Always around an element common to all contexts: the image.


INTRODUCTION
In an area of intentional excellence and necessary innovation, the constant updating of the contents of our graphic subjects is, more than necessary, essential.The first of the starting hypotheses arises precisely from this fact, and is this one: linking the academic world with the professional will guarantee that our efforts to provide meaning and validity to what we learn in the classrooms are not in vain (Juan and Navarro 2023: 308).The students will have the opportunity to verify the relevance of what they have learned as part of a real and professional process.
The second hypothesis that supports this experience highlights the opposite direction and recalls the mediating role of the University; that is, it allows us to open a way of communication and interaction with architects through their drawings.
The memory of the graphic as an instrument for thought (compared to the reality of its role as a tool for construction) will enrich the readings and enhance its usefulness beyond its identification as a piece of the building process.

WHY CONSTELLATIONS?
"A constellation is the construction of a figure by formal analogy, the formation of an arbitrary object by the connection of elements dispersed by a folding of space and time.Some motifs appear that we will call Orion, Lion or Ursa Major, effects of an act of the imagination on reality.It is a semi-onaut work, a term with which I have tried to identify this thought of dynamic articulations: an artistic gesture that consists of uniting, to create a form, a multiplicity of dispersed signs or the gestures that make up a behavior."(Bourriaud 2015: 78).
The constellation is a figure of intellectual navigation developed extensively by artistic curator Nicolas Bourriaud.Reflecting on the effective way to confront the superabundant world that surrounds us, in terms of the immense amount of knowledge and content available around us, Bourriaud defends the use of the constellation as a graphic way of joining unprejudicedly dispersed points.The connections that occur do not aim to create paradigms or complete awareness on a topic, quite the opposite.Faced with the classic encyclopedic idea, bringing together all knowledge, the constellation emerges as a partial and intentional vision that can allow us to advance in knowledge.This type of precise and premeditated selection is a consequence of a view that Federico Soriano names as magical and that opposes another outdated scientific aspect that "attempts to explain the entire world from the totality of what happens" (Soriano 2016: 87).The magical gaze "attempts to explain the totality of the world from the traces, the parts, marks or absences that that totality leaves.(…) makes a systematic inventory of situations, relationships and their signs, but Before Bourriaud or Soriano, other thinkers had operated with concepts analogous to that of the constellation.In that sense, one of the most representative instruments of knowledge is the atlas (Didi-Huberman 2010), and its most visible face is that of the art historian Aby Warburg.During the beginning of the twentieth century and moving away from a scientific perspective, Warburg created collections of images (Fig. 2) that resonated with each other based on their heterogeneity and visual affinity, and not from their chronological or stylistic affiliations.
If we return the focus to the experience of teaching innovation that this text develops, the selection of houses to draw for each of the academic years is a constellation in itself: the nearby constellation, the feminine constellation and the formal constellation.Each of the three, although framed in a common architectural context, avoids masterpieces or historical works to focus on more contemporary, familiar or everyday aspects.Each one tries to highlight and give value to the small similarities and differences between their points and their connections, just as the artist Hans-Peter Feldmann did in his work One pound of Strawberries (Fig. 3).In it we see how the act of photographing thirty-four strawberries and placing the results side by side shows that they are all different and all are the same.Putting them together makes them establish dialogues that were previously unthinkable, and this is the same thing that the constellations pursue: to create innovative architectural navigation routes that can accompany students as they go through the subject.

2021-2022: THE NEARBY CONSTELLATION
The experience begins to be put into practice during the 2021-22 academic year with a selection of architecture offices that meet a double condition: excellence and proximity.From the beginning of the course and throughout it, the students were assigned to houses designed and built by the chosen architects from Alicante (Spain).In this way, the results of daily learning in class can be applied to the common and global project that means the drawing (graphic understanding and interpretation) of a real building.If, as Rudolf Arnheim said, "seeing is understanding" (Arnheim 1999: 58), the development of the instruments to enable it (which means the architectural drawings to be developed) will involve first an understanding, then an interpretation... that allows the selection and necessary self-assessment.Or, in other words, drawing an architectural object well and rigorously necessarily implies a mature understanding and interpretation of it.This is the final goal of the subject: to demonstrate graphic criteria, conditio sine qua non to achieve the above described.Thus, for the student, everything occurs under a framework of coherence where the day-today course, the contents and the intermediate exercises are understood as part of a learning process that must be synthesized in the core exercise; that is, the understanding, interpretation and graphic commitment regarding the assigned building.The beginning is the same for everyone and occurs in February in the form of an event, at the beginning of the semester and coinciding with the "Mes cultural EPS" of the Higher Polytechnic School of the University of Alicante.In the 2021-22 academic year, this event involved a conference from one of the authors of the chosen homes and a series of interviews, in video format, from the rest (Fig. 1).
The event, in this case in the form of a conference and interviews, truly involves a reading and interpretation of architecture that, inevitably and as we will see, will condition its graphic representation.

2022-2023: THE FEMALE CONSTELLATION
During the second semester of the 2022-23 academic year we have developed the experience again.The strategy and methodology are repeated, but varying the buildings to be drawn: this time all built by renowned Spanish women architects.Likewise, the event represents the cause and origin of the subsequent torrent of processes.In this case it is based on a round table where the authors (all of them women) participated in a context of necessary interaction with the attending students (Fig. 4).In addition to addressing the important issue of gender and the references that a woman architect is currently able to link with her own work in the discipline, during the event, and perhaps thanks to the sensitivity of the attendees, the environmental nature in which is capable of intervening the constructed fact is emphasized.As Alejandro de la Sota defended, "the importance of architecture is none other than the environment it creates.An environment shapes behavior" (de la Sota 1989: 226).
If the interviews carried out (and available in video format as teaching material throughout the course) give clues to the students about the origin, the alternatives and the reasons that led to the final materiality of architecture, the round table underlined the importance and difficulty of role of the contemporary female architect and what architecture makes possible, encouraging students to be prospective, demanding with the work they do and, above all, to dig deeper and investigate their own way of expressing themselves and representing the architecture in a critical and personal way.

2023-2024: THE FORMAL CONSTELLATION
The research in development during the 2023-24 academic year, and its corresponding constellation, will revolve around a much more disciplinary issue than the previous ones: the formal affiliation on the floor plan of all the houses.If before heterogeneity prevailed, now nine examples located in Spain have been brought together (Fig. 6), most of them built under the umbrella of the famous sentence and pedagogical tool of John Hedjuk: "Architecture begins with a nine square grid" (Hedjuk 1971: 7).
NAVARRO JOVER, L., JUAN GUTIÉRREZ, P.J. AND LÓPEZ UJAQUE, J.M. EGE -Revista de Expresión Gráfica en la Edificación, Nº 19, 2023.ISSN: 2605-082X | 40 Hedjuk proposed this exercise, first at the University of Texas and later at the Cooper Union in New York (Fig. 5), as a design challenge to provoke, in the initial courses, the discovery of the basic principles and elements of architecture.The translation to our architectural drawing subject will focus only on the representation of the houses, not directly on project aspects, so that they resonate with each other and can exchange codes and graphic contexts (something more complicated to achieve with the previous constellations).

EVOKING FICTIONAL WORLDS
A house is assigned to each student at random.This is how a semester begins: the students understand and represent the buildings revealing their personal circumstances through their drawings.The end of the course is a kind of jury between the students and some of the architects selected in the different constellations.The former must explain the process followed and prepare a critical discourse on the way to approach the work, justifying its relevance and suitability.From here, a rich and, we believe, pertinent debate is established.Especially from the moment in which this new and unprejudiced view, institutional but contemporary, reaches its authors about the work they once produced.
Each constellation results in a sub-constellation of drawings (Fig. 7), where we observe how their authors have managed to transmit their particular imprint to the house, adding another layer to it.In some cases, this layer is environmental (or atmospheric), in others it is translated in the form of a new nature, or it is a totally personal composition and organization.Although this does not necessarily correspond to reality (drawn or constructed by its authors), this does not prevent us from valuing that certain degree of abstraction (with which to understand the building) and speculation (with which to modify it) that we try to instill among the students -as emancipated spectators (Rancière 2010: 19)-, obtaining results that are not only original, but also make us reflect on what architecture could have been like if it had been involved in a completely different context, feeding back the work of its authors to the put him in a situation of unexpected confrontation.These results also underline this transformative potential that drawing has to transmit ideas.Likewise, it confirms the idea that drawing is a powerful tool capable of evoking certain emotions and memories in the observer.
As teachers, we understand that the incorporation and consideration of this point of view is really interesting during the teaching and learning process, but, and here is the key, also for the author of the work herself (or himself).In this way, faced with a student body who has been learning throughout the entire semester -in an absolutely free way and separated from the professional conditions of the real job and the context in which the house arose -, the architects find themselves with many and diverse possible ways of interpreting these proposed buildings that, in some way, dialogue with their own architectural response.Thus, we find this bidirectional transfer of knowledge very relevant and eloquent: on the one hand, the students are nourished by the Our students are aware of their ability to suggest fictional worlds.With this in mind, the reading that we can do thanks to the students' drawings (Fig. 7) has a double aspect: on the one hand, they dialogue with architecture as a construction to be inhabited insofar as they show a possible reading and/or alteration thereof; on the other hand, they position themselves in relation to the ideation process and the imaginary with which the participating architecture studios develop their architectural work and signify themselves as part of the contemporary world.In any case, and this is what seems most relevant to us, they are drawings, in all cases, the result of the teaching experience and research carried out where, in all of them, interpretations of the topics raised both in the conferences, round tables or in the interviews themselves.That is to say, they are drawings that are the result of an irreversible process and what the teaching experience that is presented makes possible.

FINAL PARTY
The experience ends with a shared celebration that consists of a drawing contest in which the jury coincides, precisely, with the architects who created the homes that serve as a reference.Thus, the ordinary June call of the subject of the fourth semester of the degree in Fundamentals of Architecture is called Render Party.As teachers and students, we understand it as a party in which, after a morning in which the drawings made are displayed, teachers and professionals privately deliberate on a series of awards and mentions that value, as it deserves, so much effort made.Although fundamentally attention is paid, during this type of public evaluation, to verify the instructions established in the statements of the practices (drawings) and to verify the acquisition of the knowledge developed during the classes, there is, on the part of the subscribing teachers, a component of indeterminacy that It is made concrete with the concerns and experience of the invited architects.The original evaluation parameters are geometry, lighting, materiality and atmosphere and it is from them that the criticism and debate for the contest and selection are built.
In figure 8 we reproduce the first prize for the 2022/23 academic year out of a total of eight (three ex aequo prizes and two mentions).We observe how, in addition to successfully completing an analysis of the drawing from any of the concepts of the aforementioned quaternary (form, light, color/texture and atmosphere) and adapting to the requirements established in the statements of the practices (where in addition to infographics ask for vector drawings, escaped sections and etc.), the results imply a critical and personal positioning (in line with what the architects asked of them at the round table) to understand and explain the space of the house.They are all irreversible images: undoubtedly the result of the starting materials, but typical of a mature, critical and unique drawing in which the introduction of the human figure and the temporal variable in the representation of the selected projects makes their interpretation immediate and clear (Colombo & Saitto 2020: 76) The final constellation of the set of images resulting from the experience (in which the architects' drawings, the students' renders and the photographs of the buildings dialogue on equal terms -Fig.9-) represent, for an attentive observer and an intentional look, a fertile and very interesting work context on which to begin other research.The distance between the stimuli prior to perception and what we know about the objects and events of the scenes in question will be, following Irvin Rock's thesis (Rock 1984: 226), what allows the resignification of the images from each one of those present which activate them.
The role of the reader has been understood, in the case studies considered and with the starting hypotheses raised, as an indispensable part of the same drawing process and, far from being predefined, it is evidently consciously active.

CONCLUSIONS
After the presentation of the results obtained from the first two constellations (2021-22 and 2022-23), the first conclusion that we can draw, through the process followed and the different critical discourses that have made this work possible, is the value of the debate between authors and students, in a framework of trust and absolute non-prejudice, giving rise to new and diverse perspectives on what happens here.This experience also allows us to blur the apparently existing limits between the professional and academic worlds to establish mutual collaboration between students, teachers and Spanish architects of recognized prestige, creating a transfer of knowledge in both directions (professional and academic).
The second has to do with the next constellation, the one to come during 2023-24, which is expected to offer the opportunity to put into play constant self-evaluation, active participation, the search for radicality or conscious innovation on the part of the aforementioned agents.Although the expected results do not have to correspond to the reality constructed or devised by their authors, the student's ability to add a layer of abstraction and speculation will be especially valued, which not only reaffirms our critical will to constantly question the work that one is doing, but to add a new layer of originality to the work.Like the words attributed to Paul Válery (and which give the title to the biography of the American artist Robert Irwin), "to see is to forget the name of the things one sees" (Weschler 1982); that is to say, the drawings and graphic results will have the vocation of forming, in themselves, a new constellation.
In all cases, the conferences, interviews and discussion tables have provided us with a new way of seeing architecture, which will determine, in a resounding and obvious way, not only the way of graphically representing it by the students of the subject but the "decision making" derived from it (Paredes 2021: 74).
Thus, from a purely pedagogical perspective, these works remind us of the transformative potential that drawing has when it comes to transmitting ideas.Likewise, it consolidates the commitment to drawing as a tool capable of invoking certain emotions and memories in us.Finally, and as a corollary, this experience developed in the two aforementioned years (2021-22 and 2022-23) and in process in the next one , confirms that thanks to drawing it is possible to connect the field academic and professional practice, and that both enrich and feed each other substantially, generating, in turn, social and cultural events in the field of the public University.
La segunda hipótesis que sustenta esta experiencia subraya el sentido contrario y recuerda el papel mediador de la Universidad; esto es, permite abrir una vía de comunicación e interacción con los arquitectos/ as a través de sus dibujos.El recuerdo de lo gráfico como instrumento para el pensamiento (frente a la realidad de su papel como herramienta para la construcción) enriquecerá las lecturas y potenciará su utilidad más allá de su identificación como pieza del proceso de la de edificación.
Así, para el discente, todo ocurre bajo un marco de coherencia donde el día a día de curso, los contenidos y los ejercicios intermedios, se entienden como parte de un proceso de aprendizaje que debe sintetizarse en el ejercicio troncal; esto es, la comprensión, interpretación y apuesta gráfica a propósito de la vivienda asignada.El comienzo es el mismo para todas y todos y ocurre en febrero en forma de evento, al principio del semestre y coincidiendo con el Mes Cultural de la Escuela Politécnica Superior de la Universidad de Alicante.En el curso académico 2021-22 dicho evento supuso una conferencia de uno de los autores de las viviendas escogidas y una serie de entrevistas, en formato vídeo, del resto (Fig. 1).
Si las entrevistas realizadas (y disponibles en formato de vídeo como material docente durante todo el curso) dan pistas al alumnado del origen, las alternativas y los motivos que llevaron a dicha materialidad final de la arquitectura, la mesa redonda subrayó la importancia y dificultad del papel de la arquitecta contemporánea y lo que la arquitectura posibilita, incitando a las y los alumnos a ser prospectivos, exigentes con el trabajo que realizan y, sobre todo, a investigar e indagar en su propia manera de expresarse y de representar la arquitectura de una manera crítica y personal.

FIN DE FIESTA
La experiencia termina con una celebración compartida que consiste en un concurso de dibujos en el que el jurado coincide, precisamente, con los arquitectos/as autores de las viviendas que sirven de referencia.Así, la convocatoria ordinaria de junio de la asignatura del cuarto semestre del título de grado en Fundamentos de la Arquitectura se denomina Render Party.Como una fiesta la entendemos docentes y discentes en la que, tras una mañana en la que se exponen los dibujos realizados, profesores y profesionales deliberan en privado una serie de premios y menciones que pongan en valor, como se merece, tanto esfuerzo realizado.Aunque fundamentalmente se atiende, durante esta suerte de evaluación pública, a constatar las consignas establecidas en los enunciados de las prácticas y a comprobar la adquisición de los conocimientos desarrollados durante las clases, existe, por parte de los profesores que suscriben, una componente de indeterminación que se concreta con las inquietudes y la experiencia de los arquitectos/as invitados.Los parámetros de evaluación originales son geometría, iluminación, materialidad y atmósfera y es, a partir de ellos, con los que se construye la crítica y el debate para el concurso y la selección.

Fig. 6 .
Fig. 6. (from left to right and top to bottom): Casa Solo by Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Casa de piedra by Emilio Tuñón, Brick Vault House by Space Popular, Ca na Catalina i en Joan by TEd'A arquitectes, Casa 1311 by H Arquitectes, Casa Rotonda by Alberto Campo Baeza, House in Son Puig by Ripoll Tizón, House 8+1 by Josep Ferrando and Casa Ter de Mesura.