In the Shadow of Doubt

Teaching architecture is like pursuing a sphere that always has one side in the shadow of doubt. However, learning architecture is like pursuing the same sphere that always has a side in the light of doubt. Both the particular circumstances are characterized by: 1) pursuing something very difficult to achieve fully; 2) the value of the pursuit object, the sphere that here represents architecture but which, among many other things, also represents the infinite; 3) the doubt that affects teaching and also research. Cultivating the attitude to doubt both in teaching and in the profession of architecture does not want to push towards the sphere of uncertainty or controversial. This is not scepticism but a sort of methodological doubt. Doubt as a method of knowledge is not a novelty. In architecture, understood as a form of knowledge and not only as knowledge of the form, doubt can be a horizon to be explored both for those who teach and for those who learn. The architecture is very complex although it has been dismembered in a many teaching. In fact, for the relationships with the social, cultural, environmental, economic, territorial context, and so on, architecture needs a holistic and complex vision. Doubts, faced with so much complexity, are inevitable and perhaps also indispensable to be able to deal with one's own activity with awareness and responsibility. On the other hand, our time requires certainties disguised as competences and specializations. Contemporary society wants more and more super specialized individuals who cannot have doubt. If not, they could not be efficient. The school, in every degree including the university, is following this chimera. But at the expense of what? If it is true that the super specialists are able immediately to find work, what will happen to them when their expertise will no longer serve? And in our age, change is always faster. Will they be able to change their certainties (competences) with the same speed and re-enter the labour market? Or will they be discarded in favor of new expertise? What is essential today is the discard of tomorrow? We hope to be wrong, but we have some doubt. What to do to prevent this, hopefully remote, eventuality? Continue to pursue the labour market that chooses the specializations but, paradoxically, appreciate the versatility and flexibility? Or continue to cultivate doubt as a method of knowledge and therefore also of professional practice? What advantages can the choice of doubt as a method bring? And what disadvantages does it involve? Is perhaps still doubt the method to be pursued to try to understand the complexity of architecture rather than certainty? Doubt as a sign of curiosity. Doubt as a search for responsibility. Doubt as a search for new solutions. Doubt as a investigation of tradition but also of innovation. Doubt to overcome our limits. Doubt as empty yet to be filled. Doubt as hope to overcome modern contraposition of science education versus aesthetic education. In these terms all the questions posed up to now would seem to be rhetorical. Or maybe not? The purpose of these reflections is to address the meaning of doubt in teaching. This paper reports the results of the method of doubt as an approach to teaching the architectural project. The results generated by the questions asked in response to the students' questions