Physical Thinking vs. Project Thinking: from Kaleidoscopes to Mutable Materials

This work describes a constructivist teaching experience during the first semester of 2021 in the discourse of the Physics subject in the Industrial Design career (curriculum) at the University of Buenos Aires. Four milestones in this innovative project were a) the formation of an interdisciplinary chair (physics, clothing and textile design, interactive design, and architecture); b) the integration of the contents (in this case, geometric optics and color theory), c) the combination of new interactive communication tools to present virtual classes, deliver work and evaluations, and make well-publicized the various didactic resources available on the internet (in particular, simulations and videos) and, finally, d) the students' application of the knowledge learned in the object-project plane, both individually and in groups. This article presents and illustrates the students' productions in this experience. The results allow reflecting on the need to articulate the “proper nature” of the discipline to be taught (in our case physical) with the “proper nature” of the professional orientation chosen by the recipients (industrial design). We believe that creative work occurs in a specific context and goes beyond the discipline's limits to emphasize divergent thinking and creativity.