A COLLABORATION WITH THE PUERTO RICO SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

In April twenty graduate students and three teachers from Studio Transformation and Architectural Heritage returned from a three-week study trip to Puerto Rico.

In collaboration with students and teachers from the Puerto Rico School of Architecture, the Danish students carried out fieldwork in the capital San Juan during their stay. The overall academic theme was ‘the waterfront’, more precisely the relation between San Juan’s historic centre and the open water, as the town lies on a peninsula.

The students collaborated on examining three different locations: a larger area of the harbour, an infill construction and a historic 18th-century building. After returning to Denmark the students started programming and developing specific project proposals.

Why go to Puerto Rico?

Associate Professor Jan Fugl, Associate Professor Lars Nicolai Bock and Professor Mogens Morgen have organised the collaboration project and they all participated in the trip to Purto Rico.

“Over the years we have been in contact with the Puerto Rico School of Architecture,” Jan Fugl explains. “And after identifying some common didactic objectives and academic issues, we have developed a meaningful cooperation beyond our various historical, cultural and climatic contexts,” Jan Fugl continues.

“The cooperation is fruitful for both schools,” Lars Nicolai Bock says. “In Puerto Rico, there are many talented and charismatic teachers from i.e. Harvard, Columbia and MIT that our students and we as teachers can learn from. But the school in Puerto Rico does not have an actual branch concerned with architectural heritage, and they have been very interested in seeing how we work with architectural heritage. In Scandinavia we use methods that can be used regardless of where you live in the world,” Lars Nicolai Bock says.

Mogens A. Morgen adds: ”It also gives our students something special when they experience life and work so closely connected for a longer period of time. They only have to concentrate on the project and their social life with the Puerto Rican students”.

Future collaboration

The two schools have decided to continue the collaboration through further exchanges and joint projects in both Denmark and Puerto Rico.

The planning of the course and teaching in San Juan have been carried out in close cooperation with Andrés Mignucci, FAIA architect and professor at the Puerto Rico School of Architecture.