Preface
Looking back on the School of Architecture’s Experiment in Joint Teaching
Every year at the beginning of the fall semester, the School of Architecture holds in Arts Education Internship. During this period, second year students throw their easels on their backs and follow the instructor to a place of magnificent scenery and begin to capture the word in their art. 2010 was a little different than usual, as we invited Professor Philippe Guérin…
… After the course, I took the opportunity to take a survey and found that the vast majority of both students and teachers felt Professor Guérin’s reaching was quite interesting, different from their usual way of doing things, and brought many opportunities for imagination and speculation. In my mind, this is the virtue of joint teaching: the coming together and communication between different cultures bring new horizons to our education content, and exposure to a new education method gives our instructors new inspiration...
... Most importantly, thanks to all the students who took part in the activity, since it was their active participation that made the fruit of this activity able to be published in this form for the enjoyments of its readers!
Gong Kai, Professor, and Vice President of the School of Architecture, SEU, 2011 march 18th
Introduction
Participating in this European contribution, to which you invited us and in which we still believe, represents a gesture of accomplishment and inner conviction which you, Chinese teachers
and young students, will be able to put to good use in the future as a "breeding ground" in order to recreate links with your own culture - a culture that has unfortunately been mistreated at the
end of the nineteenth and during the twentieth century. This "transplantation" will perhaps also be beneficial to us, all the more so as we will strive to achieve it with a little bit of
knowledge and perfect honesty. The hybridisation of cultures has prevailed throughout history. in my opinion this fusion was the most important part of our project, and I firmly believed
that we would manage to speak a common language. That common language is what allowed for dialogue and for our exchanges to be so interesting, despite the fact that our points of view on our own
situations in China and Europe sometimes diverge. On the contrary, Thes différences of opinions can bring additional précisions and pertinence to our present exchanges, and maybe even help
have a clear view of the issues that will drive us in the future.
Epilogue
... The atmosphere of trust, curiosity and mutual understanding in wich we work today promotes and allows for the existence of this cultural and pedagogical exchange. Improvements ans proposuals for futher thought will nonetheless be necessary for the experience to continue. Thus, this work is first and foremost a tangible tool witch records the exchange and fuels the dialogue to alow us to develop our projects with an even greater degree of cooperation. It will also make the observation and the analysis of mid-term and long-term results of the Chinese students more relevant.
Firstly, our curiosity, with pertains to the tecniques they use and master, will apply more precisely to the thought process surrounding their future works and freedom they will allow themselves. Secondely, it ill be the task of our colleagues to transform these pedagogical methods accordingly with the needs of Chinese architecture schools, nedless to say, these needs will be evolving very quickly, especially it comes to art and culture.
Philippe Guérin
Teaching Reform Series on Architecture & Art Design in University. 2011
Southeast University of Nanjing, China
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