Abstract

In the beginning, the notion of habitat had been conceived in life sciences and ecology studies fields. Subsequently, it began to be extrapolated by housing researchers as a useful term applicable in urban-rural studies. As shown, the habitat itself is an interdisciplinary concept that crosses and bridges several fields of knowledge, such as natural sciences, like biology, and human sciences, like architecture, constituting an interdisciplinary transition. This article poses the model foundations to integrate the Intervention Design Process (IDP) within a pedagogical model. These foundations consist of chronologies that explain the transition suffered by the concept of habitat regarding linguistical, theoretical, and pragmatical issues. After elaborating on the methodology, this article series starts with the use of the term with its different meanings. Then, we develop the epistemological path of the notion of human habitat with its inter- and trans-disciplinary transition. Ultimately, it closes with the path of the integrated sustainability related to the multidimensional approach of the habitat that constitutes the basis of our model. At last, we conclude that this transition fosters a more complex insight on the human intervention in nature and the built environment that overcomes the simplistic insight of traditional housing projects. This research develops the process into three iterative phases: this first article poses the problem (What) and its justification (Why), constituting the foundations of the model to therefore show the implementation (How) of the methodological process in following articles.