Pavillon Relancé: Re-Tracing Leisure Modalities – Inhabiting the Archive

Περίληψη

This paper critically discusses the preliminary findings of our research on high-impact experiential learning practices, aimed at enhancing traditional classroom teaching. Our research focuses on interdisciplinary, participatory learning experiences designed to foster environmentally conscious approaches. Drawing on our experience of designing and running two week-long workshops for architects, engineers, and artists at the abandoned tourist pavilion of Mycenae, under the auspices of Fichti Art - Pavillon Abandonné (2022) and Pavillon Relancé (2023) - this paper considers the potential for pensive reflection, dynamic exploration, and creative experimentation as crucial educational elements of in-situ, hands-on and active learning practices. Furthermore, it discusses oral history and its interviewing techniques as potent methodological tools for immersing participants in the local social and cultural landscape: a fundamental prerequisite for environmentally sensitive planning and design. Our paper concludes with an in-depth analysis of Pavillon Relancé’s closing learning activity - an impromptu performance at the abandoned pavilion involving students, tutors, and guests - as propeller of effective teaching. This approach combines historical and theoretical knowledge with practice-based research, imaginatively enhancing the potential for improved learning outcomes, compared to the traditional classroom experience. This nocturnal happening aimed at infusing the temporary installations, designed and constructed by workshop participants, with site-specific meaning, inspired by oral testimonies and relevant archival material. Hence, bodily movement as reenactment of now-lost spatial functions (i.e. leisure) became a medium for communicating both the past and the future (i.e. potential futures) of the tourist pavilion.