Architecture, Innovative Human Education and Feeling: Inclusive Projects for People with Disabilities

Abstract

It is feasible to combine teaching innovation and social inclusion, and transcend the academic sphere. At the CEU-San Pablo University, as part of the subject of «Architectural Composition», educational experiments were carried out based on collaboration between students of Architecture and volunteers with intellectual or visual disabilities. The objective was to devise criteria and spatial typologies to design places of human training. The methodology was interdisciplinary, through working sessions of mixed teams, with empathy characterizing the relationship between students and volunteers; the latter enriched the design sensitivity of the future architects by expressing their way of perceiving, interpreting and feeling educational spaces.