The main objective of this study is to understand how we can create a mutual understanding between young people/citizens and the architects in what concerns the built environment, and how can the architectural spaces in general and the school in particular, promote an increase of our life quality.  Considering that young people and children aren’t the only citizens “to be” (Corsaro, 2005) but already have knowledge and skills which allow them to be autonomous and active citizens. This study intends to reinforce the link between architecture and education, working in a multilateral approach and combining different subjects and perspectives for the improvement of the spaces and the creation of better solutions according to our needs. The ethnographic approach is of great importance for performing this study and a good way to merge and combine architectural and educational research. This paper is presented within the context of the PhD thesis entitled “Education and Architecture. Young people perspectives and dialogues for a better understanding of the built environment”.

In a qualitative research, the information is obtained from the natural environment. The researcher is the main intermediary between the field and collected empirical data, spending an important amount of time in schools, families and neighbourhoods and trying to clarify the educational questions (Bogdan & Biklen, 1994). In our research, we must be aware of this relationship in order to avoid misunderstandings and biased interpretations of the reality. From this point of view, this research has been a challenge because the researcher is an architect with a contextualized knowing eye (Anne Taylor, 2009). The ethnographic research in the education field, requires different kind of perspective. The early difficulty of playing different roles and combining two different research perspectives on the built environment became a good motivation for enlarging our approach.

In the educational sciences it is more frequent to use the Ethnography in the qualitative research, than in architectural research. We consider that this approach is very interesting and we would like to reinforce the potential of the ethnography in other fields of research, such as the architectural one. During this research we were able to find a good connection between architecture and qualitative research, promoting a contextualized analysis of the built environment and its inhabitants. This methodology enables the researcher to work from the perspective of the client, understanding the relationship created between the product (the architecture) and the user (the inhabitant), identifying the meanings and identities associated to the built environment. It also generates opportunities for the evaluation of the architecture in a post-occupational phase, understanding how the people inhabit and appropriate their spaces. From this evaluation, the architect can rethink the design process and have a better understanding of the power of space as a learning environment.

Architects usually provide answers to specific problems or needs. These problems can have more or less variables which are usually related to a tangible reality, e.g. the needs of a client with several different environmental constrains. All this process, including its creative components, presents considerable practical applicability to the reality.
The ethnographic research presents a completely different approach. The starting point is a more general reality and the attention of the researcher is focused on all the aspects that constitute it. The objective is to achieve a particular perspective within this reality. The modus-operandi is more passive and there is no intervention aim or action behind the research purpose. The ethnographer, as a participant-observant should be integrated in the reality, avoiding interfering with it, but paying attention to all the details, actions and behaviours around him.

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