Teaching about heritage and project desing in the European Higher Education Area: The IACOBUS program

The implementation of the European Higher Education Area has become both a challenge and an opportunity to rethink the education system in the field of Architecture in general and teaching of Project Design in particular. The ECTS system has supposed a change of paradigm that recognizes and replaces the concept of "teaching" by "learning" through purposeful action that was one of the usual claims of the project design subject. In this context, intervention in heritage, allows architecture students to recognize the values​​, types and systems of historical buildings throughout a broad and multidisciplinary view. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the experiences gained in the International Iacobus Program, which since 1994 addresses the rehabilitation of European heritage with the work developed by universities from five countries working on a common project. The program is designed to stimulate the debate on the different criteria for the intervention in architectural heritage, taking into account the specific diversity of the participating countries. Furthermore, through the interaction and exchange between students and professors of the different universities, the objective is to enrich learning by carrying out a collaborative work that reflects an intellectual position in relation to the common constructed heritage.