2018_07_10_ARQ_mesa_redonda_arquitectura_y_educacion

Changes in new learning methodologies are generating a profound reflection on the functionality of educational spaces among educators and architects. Universal access to information allows teachers to recover their essence as inspirational teachers and mediators. In this environment, innovation in educational spaces is promising. Architects and educators agreed in asking financial aid legislators to develop more flexible regulations to enable this innovation.

Jose María Madrid Mateo, vice president of the Arenales Foundation and architects Clara Eslava, José Ángel Medina and Mayka García-Hípola participated in a roundtable entitled: "Espacios que enseñan: Architecture and Education", held at the new campus of the University of Navarra in Madrid, which opens in September its postgraduate headquarters. "Access to knowledge has become universal, so today it is more important than ever to awaken interest in knowledge and provide students with access to knowledge critically," said García-Hípola, deputy director of Master's Degree University in Architecture at the University of Navarra, which will begin in Madrid in September.

José Ángel Medina, one of the architects of the new headquarters of the University of Navarra in Madrid, insisted on the need to work on the diversity of spaces to allow different forms of learning that combine concentration and exchange with more or fewer people. 

Architect Clara Eslava, a specialist in the design of children's educational spaces, recalled the need to be flexible in the creation of spaces that favor the contact with nature and the experience of student. "Most learning takes place in informal settings. As architects, we can contribute so that students can perceive a spherical view of reality." Eslava advocated the planning of educational centers integrated into natural environments that become green lungs of the city.

The Arenales Foundation has about twenty schools planned and 500,000 square meters in facilities, in this sense, Madrid Mateo stressed the importance of space as a learning lever for the teacher, also added that, far from becoming extinct, good teachers are those who are not afraid of losing the monopoly of knowledge. "Good teachers make more sense than ever. They are the essence of the system and the right spaces can help them develop the full potential of their students."