León's Center ceased to be a landscape to become a classroom. Students took to its streets as part of Campus Madero, an initiative that seeks to link learning with the real territory. 'The intention started with an initiative to take classes to the city so that students can use the city… and also contribute something from the classrooms to the city,' explained Alexandra González Aguirre, director of admissions for creative studies at the School of Art and Architecture of the Tec de Monterrey campus León.
Learning what you step on The exercise is based on a simple but powerful premise: you cannot transform what you do not know. 'As Luis (Alegre) says, you cannot study and want what you do not know, in the end it is for them to know it and to connect with their city to later do projects,' said Alexandra González Aguirre.
From the periphery to the heart Driven by the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Madero also emerged as a response to the physical distance between the campus and the city. 'It is located in a very remote area of the city, so it was like, how do we get the students to the center for them to get to know it,' explained González Aguirre.
A city that is read in layers During the tour, the city's chronicler, Luis Alegre, offered a reading that went beyond anecdote: an interpretation of the Center from the passage of time, where each street holds accumulated traces. His narrative allowed understanding the city from a long-term perspective, where transformations are not immediate, but are sedimented in every stretch that is walked today.
Ten years of taking the school to the street Campus Madero has a decade of work from the school of art, architecture, and design, with exercises that start from real problems. 'We have been doing the project for ten years… the idea was born from bringing the students here, and today we still work with a model of the city as a workshop,' she explained.
Against empty theory The objective is to break with abstract teaching and bring students closer to the concrete. 'It gives you a real vision of what is happening… they are not theoretical or hypothetical cases, but you are working with what exists,' she affirmed.
Because in the end, as the project's own logic summarizes: the city is not studied from afar, it is walked, observed, and understood.
