Rationale

The development of the proposed partnership is based upon the following rationale:

1. Schools of architecture in Latin America, unlike the other non-EU countries in Europe, Africa and Asia , have already started to develop competences-based approaches after their involvement in the Tuning Latin America Programme. Most of the partners of this proposed project participated in Tuning Latin America representing their Countries as Institutions officially delegated by the competent local authorities. The ENHSA TN contributed to the meetings of Tuning Latin America (discipline architecture) supporting the definition of the list of competences and the preparation of the final documents. During the Tuning Latin America meeting in Brussels (June 2006), the ENHSA TN organised a meeting in the Brussels Town Hall with representatives of the Architecture discipline, where the perspective, the form and the content of this collaboration was unanimously supported.

2. Schools of architecture in Latin America on many occasions have expressed their willingness to understand the European reforms and to participate in the debate for the future of architectural education. Eight schools of architecture from Latin America participated last year in the annual meeting of the ENHSA TN (Sept. 2006) .

3. There is a cultural proximity with Latin America that is much stronger than with other continents, and an obvious mutual attraction between schools of architecture in Europe and Latin America , taking into account the number of student exchanges programs recently developed between them.

4. US and Canadian schools of architecture have not systematically developed a competence-based approach to their teaching, but discussion has already started on this subject. The ACSA ( Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) participated in the last year's annual meeting of the ENHSA TN (Sept. 2006) and in a meeting we had in Prague (March 2007) agreed to collaborate with the ENHSA on the development of an inquiry/consultation on a ranked list of competences proposed by Schools of Architecture in the USA and Canada. The ranked list of competences they will produce will certainly feed the debates in this project.