17424 - History of Architectural Techniques

Course contents

The program of History of Architecture has the intent of creating a referring platform in order to give the students the chance of  defining the historical background  – in the limited extension

of time available- in clarifying the “system” of complexities History contains.

A “History” meant not as simple chronological sequence , but as a categories concatenation

whose co-existance  define a Value and becomes a cultural and useful basis.

The program conceives History of Architecture as an history of concepts and the analysis of the latter  allows the learning of their meanings and intrinsic evolution. Evolution represented by the visual elements of aestethic. Whose nature is quite complex and  with various forms. There is History meant as such in this analysis , but there is also Art and Technique in it , visuality and way of representing it and basicly realizing it.

Take Gothic architecture as the best example.

History program becomes therefore complementary to the one of History of architectural techniques and , in such a broader view , a moment of  mutual verification.

Architecture is how you make it and History  does not  represents just a moment of investigation but a  potential working instrument  for the transformation of  “space”.

The intent being the cognitive capacity and the assimilation of concepts that  superintend form.

And form is the final result of its major elements ,  technique and its representation.

Thus this sequence goes through the entire excursus of built architecture, starting from the world of classical constructions to the most pregnant examples of contemporary architecture.The former

being analized  with special attention in that of History of techniques, where the contribution of the “way” we built has become its way of “being” , that is exactly being Architecture.

Since is this  the topic of our program.

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Just like  in the former years to a theorethical teaching of the semester , there will be a model building laboratory.

The purpose of  which has the purpose of  a real comprehension of what architecture basicly is made out of: spaces , measures , materials , dimensions.

And scale. The students will have this way  the chance of  a straight confrontation with  the meaning of  architecture and even a little model will give them a way to relate theory to reality.

Office hours

See the website of Silvio Cassarà