Empowering Students

Abstract

Since the 1950s, students at the Italian faculties of architecture have been demanding a renewal of their schools requesting new courses, professors and teaching methods. They demand a less academic approach and closer to the reality of a fast growing country, booming industrialization and big urban problems. The energy and intensity of the debate, together with the dynamics of students’ participation, anticipate in many aspects a breaking point in architectural training and, consequently, in architectural practice. This article intercepts this long vindication between 1967 and 1971, the culmination of the crisis and the moment when architecture students occupy their schools beginning an unprecedented process of experimentation and self-management. Tired of the lack of real solutions, either political or academic, exhausted by the effort of dialoguing without obtaining results from the usual methods of pressure, students begin a movement which takes control of structures, subject matters and teaching staff of the schools, showing the tenacity and strength of a movement capable of assuming a political role typical of the dynamics of the country s transformation. Due to the radicality of their initiatives, the experience of the architecture faculties of Milan and Venice takes on particular relevance for the purposes of this article.