18547 - Architecture and Architectural Composition III (A-K)

Course contents

Prof. Ing. Giorgio Praderio

18547 – ARCHITECTURE AND ARCHITECTURAL COMPOSITION III

Academic Year 2008/2009

Teacher Praderio Giorgio

Number of credits 8

Knowledges and abilities to be achieved

The course of Architecture and Architectural Composition (AR.CA) III aims at completing the training of the Architecture General Planner (PGA, Progettista Generale dell'Architettura). The general planner is a “multirole” specialist, who is culturally founded, environmentally aware and methodologically organized and is fit for working on the international (European) market in a multidisciplinary dimension.

The PGA shall be able to develop the Architecture Integrated Project (PIA, Progetto Integrato dell'Architettura) with programmatically original solutions, which differ according to the various transformation requirements of cities (customers, clients, users, guests), up to specific conditions relating to the field of application and to the context (urban, metropolitan, technopolitan context).

The integrated project shall adopt all necessary references to previous experiences (knowledge about themes and topics dealt with) and to similar cases (examples, models, types) in the network districts, cities and regions under transformation and in competition. EU directives and recommendations identify appropriateness and quality, effectiveness and sustainability, transparency and competition, while the European scene is directed towards an increasing professional mobility and a marked interdependence between building contractors and service companies (knowledge, mobility, logistics). Then, the technological (construction, descriptive, operating) innovation completes knowledges and abilities, with the new third and fourth generation materials (from real to virtual and from material to immaterial).

Program/Contents

The program of AR.CA III (5th year) is a coordinate part of the planning training of the specialistic course in constructional engineering/architecture of the University of Bologna. It is carried out through a semi-extensive didactic iter: classroom lessons (60 hours), alternative didactics (60 hours of practices, meetings and seminars), relatively autonomous planning laboratories (60 hours of applications) for the organic – first collective and then individual – drafting of a Definitive Architectural Project (PAD, Progetto Architettonico Definitivo).

This PAD is a deepening level of the preliminary project aimed at achieving the Building Permit from municipal administrations (Law 109 on public works). Therefore, it refers to sector national and regional laws, to rules and standards in force (building codes, safety, protection and environmental prevention standards, energy saving, etc.), to the current building practice in the various realities, in an evolutionary perspective.

The architectural planning of AR.CA III adopts basic notions already offered by previous courses of ARCA I and ARCA II. Anyway, it repeats some fundamentals such as: (non-deterministic) decisive method, appropriateness between demand and offer (requirements and performances), relationship between complex works and diverse contexts (interactions and effects), between permanences and movements, and contrasting tendencies between perfection and imperfection (art in architecture and formal languages). The course also takes into consideration the dualisms between memory of the past (history) and future perspectives (possibilities and hopes), between invariances and variances (of a typological, functional and morphological kind).

The heart of the formative iter is the ideational (heuristic/holistic) unitary process of prefiguration, conformation and configuration of the inhabited space and of planning solutions.

Therefore, the course privileges the following notions: action of transformation (the decisive vector of “multiproject”), local identity and urban place (permanences, public space and landscape), multipurpose and polysemic architectural space (recognizable scope of unlimited urban experiences and inexhaustible human personal experiences), metaphor and paradigm (added-value architecture), environmental reference (from utopia to eutopia), symbolic, formal and expressive language (postrationalism and minimalism, regionalisms and high-tech, environmentalisms, etc.).

The course will maintain every useful reference to previous architectural experiences, most of all contemporary experiences of international and national masters and authors (Italian school from the period of functionalism and rationalism, from last century to today: from Libera to Michelucci, from Piano to Fuksas, etc.). The course will also constantly adopt a useful comparison with other European cities, where contemporary architecture is experimented and innovated (Berlin and Valencia, Vienna and Lyon, Milan and Rome, London and Paris, …) and where local historicism and idioms are noticed, but also and first of all there are tendencies to “spectacular architectures” (skyscraper, bridges/doors, attractive museums, ...).

During current academic years, the course will particularly deal with basic planning themes of complex and innovative works (museums and exhibitions, business centres and public services, etc.), of advanced tourism (cultural and sports, religious and naturalist tourism), of hospitality and entertainment (seaside resorts, hotels and hostels, agritourisms and various facilities, ...) and of the sacred space (churches and chartreuses, monasteries and equipped religious routes, ...).

The course of AR.CA III foresees thematic specializations and alternative opportunities by means of education trips, theses abroad, international workshops, individual degree theses.

Texts/Bibliography

Sector monographs and magazines.

Check of learning

Written and oral exam, with extempore intermediate tests. Collective assessment of the committee between basic knowledge and drafting of the definitive project.

Tools in support of didactics

CAAD service at the DiLab 0-4. Study trips and visits to exhibitions. Exposition of works. Models and relief models.

Language

Italian

Consulting hours

Every Wednesday and Thrusday from 10:00 to 13:00 (if there are no lessons, meetings or conferences).

Office hours

See the website of Giorgio Praderio