Participative collaboration as a teaching experience: heritage and responsible tourism

Abstract

The text shows the work carried out by the cooperation group of the School of Architecture in Malaga, throughout the framework of an international project that deals with landscapes, heritage and responsible tourism in southern Morocco. The activities implemented are presented as teaching proposals which complement the training of the architect within a global culture.

Full text

PARTICIPATIVE COLLABORATION AS A TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
HERITAGE AND RESPONSIBLE TOURISM
Jorge Asencio Juncal, José Manuel López Osorio, Juan Manuel Mateos
Delgado
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Málaga (SPAIN)
juncal@uma.es, lopezosoriojm@gmail.com, j.ma.de@hotmail.com
Abstract
The text shows the work carried out by the cooperation group of the School of Architecture in Malaga,
throughout the framework of an international project that deals with landscapes, heritage and
responsible tourism in southern Morocco. The activities implemented are presented as teaching
proposals which complement the training of the architect within a global culture.
Keywords: International cooperation, global culture, collaborative participation, landscapes, heritage,
sustainable environment, responsible tourism, Morocco.
1 INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION AT THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE IN
MALAGA
The international cooperation activities represent the main framework of eAM`Coopera’s team,
composed of students, lecturers and administration and service staff from the Technical College of
Architecture at the University of Málaga (Spain). The team begins operating in 2011, and its main aim
is to complement the academic training of the architect with regards to international cooperation,
architectural heritage and social sustainability in a global culture.
eAM`Coopera team pretends to develop a framework for reflection where the presence of the architect
is not confined to the design of architectural objects or the preservation of material heritage. Moreover,
the architect is encouraged to assimilate and incorporate intangible values related to the requirements
of architect transformation, town planning and landscapes, as well as the relation of all these aspects
with a cultural identity in endless evolution.
It becomes necessary to raise the university staff awareness about the architect responsibility as an
active agent linked to preservation and transformation of the environment, in a difficult scenario where
social reality demands a tight commitment about real situations in a global context.
Álvarez y Galán [1] support this idea of public service by the architect, taking into account the
consciousness of social reality, declaring that "Not accepting the relation with the socio-cultural
environment helps getting a hard interpretation of it, and supports the construction of the architect's
identity, dissociated from the society he/she belongs to".
The involvement by means of the architecture professional turns out to be evident in this old and not
updated context; especially in the actual socio-economic situation when the crisis and devaluation of
the housing market have highlighted the loss of the architect social prestige. In this sense, it comes
necessary to recover the architecture student training in processes beyond the mere learning of
project or technological contents which are, sometimes, away from the practical duties and
professional ethics. The establishment of an active team within Malaga’s School of Architecture, made
up of different level students and different areas lecturers (History and Architectural Composition,
Town Planning and Architectural Buildings), make possible a multidisciplinary collaboration which
wanders from the conventional training, dealing with insulated and independent education. This model
aims bringing together the social architect and professional reality. Besides, collaborating between the
diverse disciplines, attending the complex and related contemporary culture is becoming increasingly
required.
“There has been a considerable increase on the demand of Architects to implement the cooperation in
construction and infrastructure projects in a more effective ways. This is due to the help provided
within the development and more professional cooperation. However, the context of these projects
show complexities which differ from those we are used to work with in western countries. A specific
training is necessary in order to face these complexities, not leaving the architect social and personal
commitment behind, and his/her critical appraisal within nowadays reality” [2].
Proceedings of INTED2012 Conference.
5th-7th March 2012, Valencia, Spain.
ISBN: 978-84-615-5563-5
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University education in Architecture schools does not include subjects related to these disciplines,
which the Architect makes difficult and necessary competences in these processes. This situation is
getting worse in the new study plans from the Bologna Process which has considerably reduced the
credits in the Architecture degree, which means the architect general education and relegate the
technical education to masters and postgraduated courses, or carrying out non-accredited studies.
2 HERITAGE AND RESPONSIBLE TOURISM
The project, “Landscape and heritage in southern Morocco: Proposal for the development of a
responsible tourism model in Mgoun Valley. High Atlas (Morocco)” constitutes one of the activities
carried out by eAM`Coopera’s team. The project is carried out in collaboration with the Culture
Department of the Kingdom of Morocco and the National Architecture School of Rabat. The initial
development consists of the First International Workshop Contest: LANDSCAPE AND HERITAGE IN
SOUTHERN MOROCCO, funded by the participants themselves and by the University of Málaga in
agreement with the Andalusian Agency of International Cooperation for Development (AACID).
The act has been carried out in Mgoun Valley, situated in the southern slope of High Atlas in Morocco,
also including an itinerant trip by other territorial units of the North African country. The workshop took
place between the 20-30th September, 2011 and fourteen students and five lecturers from Malaga’s
School of Architecture joined it. Most of the trip focused on the specific area of the study, Mgoun
Valley. It constitutes a territorial unit where the oasis and traditional architecture are presented as
entropic elements which define a great value environmental ecosystem as far as heritage, landscape
and culture are concerned.
The workshop placement took place in Kasbah Amnay, a touristic accommodation located in Bou
Taghrar. The work carried out constitutes a first rapprochement to this environmental context. This
deals with laying the foundations for the formulation of a future project of international cooperation
which raises aspects to do with preservation and an effective growth strategy of the traditional habitat.
The aim of the project is to define knowledge and preservation strategies in the traditional architecture
and landscape, as well as putting activities into action in order to spread and foster a sustainable
cultural tourism. By doing this, tourism will help the region achieve socio-economic development by
means of a responsible usage model. The starting point will deal with the knowledge of the territorial
and landscape units, as well as the analysis and study of the architectural and urban models existing
in the region, highlighting its potentials and capacities.
The investigation carried out has undergone two different field studies:
a) The analysis of the traditional habitat transforms due to the value shift and current lifestyle and how
this transformation produces different levels of alteration of territory and landscape quality.
b) The study of introducing new models of touristic development which lead the appearance of new
touristic architectures by means of new buildings or the utilization of the already existing ones.
Figure 1: Mgoun Valley (Morocco) Author: Juan Manuel Mateos Delgado.
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Figure 2: Douar Ait Said. Mgoun Valley (Morocco). Author: Daniel Natoli Rojo.
The investigation has, therefore, two different work areas: the first one, of great social and cultural
inertia, affects structural changes in distribution and protection policies dealing with architecture and
landscape. Finally, the second one has a bearing on specific actions in territorial scale and setting out
the guidelines of responsibility in the definition of touristic development models.
Besides, an investigation about the existing bibliography was attained before the workshop, and an
analysis of planimetric and region maps was carried out, dividing Mgoun Valley into eight study
sectors. Four specialized work teams were defined: “Landscape, vegetation and hydraulic system”,
“Urban morphology, and highway administration of territory”, “Architecture and heritage” and “Culture
and society”. Likewise, institutions and involved organizations made contact, looking for and advising
of professionals and social agents with experience on architectural and landscape ranges, as well as
local tourism.
Daily recognition campaigns took place during the workshop, as well as urban and territorial drifts,
interpretation and data gathering. This job basically consisted of the registration of the information on
topography maps and ortophotos by air: approach roads, identification of diverse landscape units, the
study of territory transformation and environmental impact by the current touristic activities, the
identification of risks for environmental degradation and the initial evaluation of potentially touristic
places. Besides the identification and characterization of urban models (douar, kasbas, collective
granaries, mosques, etc) was carried out. As far as the socio-cultural influence, there were
rapprochements to the local population, visiting primary schools, interviewing sedentary berber
families and migrating nomad families, by means of sworn interpreters and local guides who made
communication easier.
Data gathering also included taking digital pictures and videos, as well as drawings and landscapes
and architecture sketches. Other developed activity that took place in the workshop was the sound
register for the elaboration of a voiced map from Mgoun Valley. The recordings are embraced within
three different fields: sounds, ambient sounds, and conversations. Sounds consist of records less than
15 seconds which register punctual information from a particular source (a gurgling irrigation ditch, a
mule passing through a road, handicrafts activities in a Moroccan market). The ambient sounds
consist of records less than 3 minutes which grasp the sound atmosphere in a particular place. This
sound is recorded when the richness of the sounds reached an important value as a whole (the
summon to prayer from the mosque or the pedestrian route throughout the market). Conversations
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present long duration recordings, with the purpose of transcribing the interviews to the local
population.
Moreover, guided tours to touristic accommodations, placed in buildings of great patrimonial value,
were organized as complementary activities (El Khorbat, Hotel Tombouctú, Kasba Ben Moro) getting
in touch with the local experiences of responsible tourism.
At the end of each day, meetings between the different work teams took place, where each team
member passes on their acquired knowledge, fostering new ideas exchange and group reflections. An
evaluation of the process was made every day and subsequently the validation and organization of the
following working day.
After the workshop, groups were formed from diverse attendance meetings which have been carried
out every week in the Architecture School of Málaga, with the main purpose of ellabotating the
material and coordinating the following activities. There has been a working period with an ellaboration
system of contents, in on-line form, which brings together a space-time map of the route, and a travel
notebook of instantaneous memories [3], an evocation of the landscape sounds [4]. This materials are
available through a specific blog [5] and a Facebook page which is good as a debate forum [6].
On the 16th of November 2011, as the first spreading activity, a public presentation of the work carried
out was presented in the Malaga’s School of Architecture. The university community and the rest of
the collaborative institutions were invited to join the act. Likewise, students actively joined the
Evaluation Workshop on joint activities, managed by the Vice-Chancellor’s office of International
Relations at the University of Málaga, which took place the 15th of December of that same year.
The proposed working system and the model for knowledge transmission are executed under the
Creative Commons License, allowing the free diffusion of the elaborated material.
Figure 3: Work team in Mgoun Valley (Morocco). Author: Pedro García Sáez.
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3 COLLABORATIVE PARTICIPATION AS TEACHING EXPERIENCE
According to Wikipedia, collaborative work or team-work with technological support is presented as a
group of strategies which tends to maximize results and minimize the loss of time and information in
the interests of the objectives.
In the project framework carried out by the eAM`Coopera’s team, the collaborative work maintains it
goes further in order to attain active learning: a collaborative construction is produced from knowledge
with the ideas exchange, where every single component shares his/her work in a real or virtual
environment and lets increasing the level and the management of information.
The development of virtual participation has become the most effective tool in communication and
ideas exchanged carried out within the project. As Francisco García García, Audiovisual
Communication and Advertising Professor at the UPM, highlights, “the medium acquisition,
increasingly more flexible, in which human knowledge has been paying attention to. From the stone up
to the cyberspace, it has involved the conquest of space and time, as far as knowledge transmission
or the speed of diffusion, up to fulfill communication in real time” [7]. Internet allows, moreover, the
chance to participate in real time or do it in the distance. This tool has been used during the project
development, by means of virtual group formation which keeps communication throughout forums,
chats and social networks, sharing contents in virtual hard disks, files and hyperlinks. This media lets
the group exchanging new ideas and mutual support during the warming-up stage, the development
and the elaboration of material.
Mariano Segura presents a new educational background where the creation of new virtual learning
environments acquires a huge potential, based on information and communication technologies (ICT),
overcoming the space-time barriers and providing the collaborative learning, apart from the individual
learning methods [8].
By means of this work, the group has raised a collective proposal throughout a progressive
investigation model, where every team member generates knowledge from the previous thoughts. The
management of these teams becomes more operative, as Héctor Alberto García Romero explains
who attributes specific responsibilities to the members, leading to motivation and active participation of
each team member [9]. The eAM`Coopera’s team has defined personal tasks which may shift during
the time, so that the resources may be supplied by the components and giving every member the
chance to contribute to the group. That is how a “collective mind” is built: a synergy which is able to
produce a better effect than the combination of every part.
This work is included within the teaching framework of the Malaga’s School of Architecture.
Nevertheless, its development keeps away from the accredited studies, because the group does not
join any particular subject, which lets to free the evaluation criteria from the work carried out. The
student gets involved in an active and independent role and has the real opportunity of openly define a
critical appraisal.
It is produced, therefore, a cooperative work where each member acquires a specific responsibility on
material production, and obtains individual benefits for their own personal curriculum. A revision of the
traditional education in the university curriculum is subsequently expected, where the hierarchical
structure is the keynote between the fulfilled work and the ownership of the published material. From
this viewpoint, the teachings just reached the students basic formation in traditional environments and
responsible tourism in southern Morocco, as well as the introductory course on scientific investigation
by means of article formulation techniques, papers and presentations in meetings and congresses.
The final result presents a material within a well-balanced environment and a horizontal structure
team-work.
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[3] http://issuu.com/eamcoopera/docs/recuerdos_instant_neos_-
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