While teaching the History of Contemporary Architecture course at Unicap Architecture and Urbanism school for many years I realized two effective and relatively simple strategies in approaching the broad content the course requires, which encompasses architectural history and theory since the late 1960s: Applying the theoretical knowledge acquired to simple design exercises through design-build experiences and having students critically analyze the various theories and design approaches by producing authorial fanzines.

 

Both tools have proven to lead to engaging the vast majority of students in the theoretical realm of architecture much more easily and faster than limiting the course to traditional lecturing, debating, and written tests. The fanzine experience is shown here.

 

With the course content organized in five modules (post-modern architecture in town; the contemporary museum, minimalisms, sustainability, and digital design), students are asked to conceive a fanzine (name, aesthetics, and editorial approach) to which they add content according to these 5 topics, each at a time. The partial fanzines are produced digitally, and at the end of the course they also have to deliver a printed version of the work, encompassing all five modules.

 

Throughout the years we have had various approaches explored in the students’ archzines. Here we show a few of them.