Sampling a sustainable approach in an architectural educational context.

In order to develop a sustainable architectural environment, we must first of all research and learn how sustainability can be reached in a specific context and following a specific topic. Thus, architectural education has a vital role in preparing future generation to address such issues and to advance them. Architectural education must not only be creative, but also innovative and at the forefront of contemporary approaches in order to prepare future generations for demands that are just beginning to shape or to anticipate future needs. Sustainability is a subject under continuous consideration and as it becomes a requirement in the real world, so it should, in this context, be addressed in every project even during university studies. However, it should not become a checklist as it frequently is – introducing sustainable aspect into a project in order to gather enough points. As the educational context allows less conformist approaches through projects that can be creative, imaginative in a way that sometimes puts aside present-day technical capabilities, regulations, finances (being even utopian), it also opens sustainability to exploration. In such approaches lays innovation and one can only open students' mind, teach them how to raise the right questions, encourage them to look for less expected answers and solutions, not show them how to "do" innovation. Every project is a challenge for an architectural student, as they learn to design spaces while answering to a more or less detailed brief. However, those spaces must not be just that – students must build their way through sets of research and design questions, searching for an architectural solution that meets various criteria in various proportions (given the conceptual vs. buildable today request for example). Sustainability, through its components – economic, environmental, social – should be implemented by fully understanding its extent and taken into consideration when appropriate during the endeavour through the research questions. What we are proposing in this article is a sampling of a train of thought in an architectural educational context, taking as reference points given sites and the specific questions they raise. The paper wishes to both show the depth research should reach in the final years of architectural studies and the possibility of taking into consideration sustainable elements. We are calling it a sample because, unlike a template, it does not impose a list of issues to be addressed or a list of requirements to be respected, but it is rather an open list of issues to be considered in an organic manner, following different routes (subjects of interest, themes, topics) in search of depth and coherence – which we consider to be essential values in architectural education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]