93637 - Architecture and Architectural Design Studio T-1

Learning outcomes

The module is aimed at teaching students design techniques through a set of coursework, including the description, survey and representation of significant buildings that have characterised different periods of history, as a prelude to an individual architectural composition.

Course contents

In the present "age of analysis", to quote Morton White's incisive expression, people tend to prefer classificatory working methods which most often fail to act as suitable instruments to deal with the contingent facts created by complex contemporary society. This limit is overcome by the need to resort to the project, understood as a set of basic operations that, in the case of architecture projects, has its basis in the rules of architectural composition. The course aims to lead students to discover those techniques which can help them to develop their critical ability in architectural project design, based on the inseparable pair of theory and practice, and which subsumes conceptual, expressive, technical and constructive elements into a coherent organisation.

Course contents
The course is divided into two parts: a series of theoretical lectures held by the course lecturers, and a series of seminars focusing on the revision and presentation of students' technical drawings. Considering architecture as the synthesis of a cultural process, starting from the value of the permanence of some "archetypal forms", rather than as a natural process of description and representation of the needs that gave rise to it, the course programme is based on the firm belief that the project needs a cognitive phase, in which the study of theory and exemplary work of a number of masters of the trade represents a prerequisite for understanding contemporary thought. In order to facilitate the development of personal ideational processes, it thus becomes necessary to teach architecture through the "shapes" and "types" handed down by history, which are considered both in their unitary dimension and as a set of parts. These parts can be analysed according to specific constituent elements, arranged according to a specific order governed by the rules of composition. Favouring the typological and formal aspects of the project, laboratory activities will therefore inevitably focus on the study of selected works of architecture, defining their cultural horizon through the analysis of the theories of composition which generated them.

The main topic of the course will be the home, in all its types: single-family detached houses, apartment buildings, courtyard houses etc., and the fundamental dialectic relationship between architecture and town. As far as applications are concerned, the laboratory work carried out by students is aimed at the production of technical drawings. During the first cycle, with the support of teaching materials and references provided by the lecturers, students will focus on the study of a specific house example, trying to understand, by means of redesign and 3D reconstruction, its rules, proportions, geometry and design theme,. By identifying the parts and components of these architectures, and reflecting on the choices that led to their application, students will review the passage from principles to language, and ultimately recognise the project as the result of a theoretical construct which cannot be defined through simple operations of invention, but rather through specific principles of the discipline. Full understanding of grammatical and syntactic elements, by learning a methodology rather than a set of rules, will allow students to master such elements in composition. During the second cycle students will be asked to develop a project on housing design, applying the theoretical, technical and representational knowledge acquired via the practice of redesign during the first part of the course.

Readings/Bibliography

The following books are essential reading for the theoretical background of the topics addressed during the course, and may represent the core of students' personal libraries:

- Aldo Rossi, L'architettura della città, Marsilio, Padova 1966
- Manfredo Tafuri, Progetto e utopia. Architettura e sviluppo capitalistico, Laterza, Bari 2007 (1 ed. 1973)
- Rudolf Wittkower, Principi architettonici nell'età dell'umanesimo, Einaudi, Torino 2007

Students are also encouraged to read some of the most important architectural treatises (reprints):

- Vitruvio Marco Pollione, De Architectura, II vol., Einaudi, Torino 1997
- Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria, ed. Il Polifilo, Firenze 1966
- Andrea Palladio, I quattro libri dell'architettura, Hoepli, Milano 1990
- Etienne-Louis Boullée, Architettura. Saggio sull'arte, Einaudi, Torino 2005

During the course of their studies, students will be asked to keep abreast of major architectural publications and to develop the critical ability to identify the most significant texts, essays and books within the extensive, but not necessarily scientifically valid production which defines the publishing scene regarding contemporary architecture. For example, first-year students are advised to read the following recently published books:

- Iñaki Ábalos, Il buon abitare. Pensare le case della modernità, Marinotti, Milano 2009
- Peter Eisenman, La base formale dell'architettura moderna, Pendragon, Bologna 2009
- Léon Krier, L'armonia architettonica degli insediamenti, Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, Firenze 2009
- Josep Lluis Mateo, Iconoclastia: News from a Post-iconic World, Actar, Barcellona 2009

Teaching methods

Assembling an adequate bibliography is one of the course aims. More specific references regarding housing design will be provided during lectures and seminars.

Assessment methods

Examination results will depend on the quality of the students' coursework and on the discussion of topics addressed during the lessons, with reference to the course bibliography. In addition to drawing quality and representational techniques, the evaluation will take into particular account the students' ability to use appropriate and correct domain-specific terminology, both during the presentation of their own work and in written texts.

In order to sit the exam, students are required to produce the following materials:
- drawings related to the first piece of coursework
- A3 book related to the first piece of coursework
- any models produced during the course
- drawings related to the last project work

Teaching tools

Only students who produce the required drawings will be allowed to sit the exam at the end of the seminar. More specifically, the examination will include the presentation of the student's drawings (redesign of the buildings assigned during the first semester, and drawings related to project work). During the exhibition, students will be asked to present their redesign of the assigned architectures and the project drawings, making reference to the contents of the Caratteri distributivi degli edifici (Compositional and functional aspects of buildings) module.

Office hours

See the website of Matteo Agnoletto

See the website of Sandro Pittini