HERITAGE CONSERVATION THROUGH LEARNING. CASE-STUDY OF AN INTERNATIONAL MULTIDISCIPLINARY SUMMER SCHOOL

Education in the field of architecture represents an important but difficult task for the way in which we perceive the cities and the buildings in which we live. As a vocational profession, architecture must be taught and learnt through various applied methods, such as the case study method, which allow the students to deeply understand and properly apply the theoretical investigation procedures. This paper presents the results obtained after a multidisciplinary summer school, which was organised in Timisoara, the European Capital of Culture 2023, for a period of two weeks. The students involved were mainly architecture students from the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning of Timisoara, but also there were several German students from sociology, anthropology, and town planning. The participation of the German students was possible due to a partnership with the German Academic Exchange Service D.A.A.D., based on a scholarship within the framework of the Go East Summer School program. The activities were based on a multidisciplinary investigation of a case study area, consisting of a group of historical buildings, in Timisoara. The students were organised in teams, and they did a detailed architectural-artistic, urbanistic, and socioeconomic analysis of the area, which allowed them to determine the multicriterial vulnerability of the investigated buildings. The vulnerability assessment was based on a procedure that was previously developed and published by the same author. Moreover, complete surveys and 3D models, both digital and physical, were obtained. The results indicate a medium vulnerability of the case-study historical buildings, but the general conclusions of the study were that the area is very valuable from an architectural-cultural point of view. The students were able to investigate the history of the buildings, the nowadays functions, and the conservation state, to talk with the inhabitants, and to better understand the entire process of assessment of vulnerability. The teaching and working methods that were used during the summer school were the lecture, the case-study assignment, the teamwork, and the brainstorm method.