ABSTRACT
The term Tectonic is polysemic and will be addressed in this article as a premise for holistic design exercises that simultaneously consider space, materiality, and structure. Tectonic reasoning in design education contrasts with the logic of fragmentation which determines sequential processes of the project (architectural design followed by supplementary engineering projects), a traditional practice in the field of architecture. The Open Building approach, thinks the building in layers to provide spatial flexibility and encourages user participation in the space production, aligns with the aforementioned principles. Although it remains scarcely practiced in Brazil, we hope that this type of design gets eventually integrated into teaching, which in turn would reinforce this characteristic in practice, closing a virtuous cycle. The aim of this study is to investigate how addressing these themes in architectural design and structure teaching experiments could encourage the integration of knowledge.
