48295 - Architectural and Urban Composition

Learning outcomes

The educational objective of the course is to guide students in studying and designing within the complex context of the contemporary city. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to recognize permanent elements within the urban fabric—monuments, thoroughfares, and primary urban features—and, conversely, identify degraded and meaningless marginal areas, requiring a recognizable character and formal configuration. At the same time, students will have honed their ability to concisely represent the elements and critical issues described above through a purposeful image. The planned design experiments—conducted by students collectively and in small groups—will take the form of an architecture of the boundary, resolved through topological themes, such as the enclosure-facade—inside/outside, above/below, here/there—and typological ones, namely, an autonomous figurative structure, where functional indications will be sought in the formal vocation of the place.

Course contents

Starting from the study of the physical structure of the compact city, the workshop will address the liminal relationship between the center and the periphery, seeking to define the ways of building the present-future city.
The experimental field will be found, from time to time, in the voids left free between buildings and in the space between the consolidated parts of the city, so that the project will always take on the value of "building within the built." This means that a building or a place is constructed in relation to an existing urban feature, embracing the concept of "environmental pre-existence," which will be considered as the measure of any subsequent intervention. If it is true that in anthropological space, a character is intentionally assigned to places, the key word of the Degree Workshop will be precisely the notion of "character," expressed in the relationship between the existing city and new buildings.
The buildings on which the Laboratory will engage in this comparison will not only be residential buildings or the large institutions that traditionally define the role of the city (theaters, libraries, museums, parks), but also those that project the historic city toward the "city of the future" and that have fascinated the urban avant-gardes of the 20th century, such as the skyscraper and the large infrastructures of contemporary urban mobility.

Readings/Bibliography

• L. Amistadi, La città ordinata. Progetti didattici e professionali, LetteraVentidue, Siracusa 2024.
• L. Amistadi, V. Balducci, T. Bradecki, E. Prandi, U. Schroeder (a cura di), Mapping Urban Spaces, Designing the European City, Routeledge, New York 2021.Open Access [https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/50266]
• L.Amistadi, V. Balducci, T. Bradecki, E. Prandi, U. Schroeder (a cura di), Archéa, Mapping the City, Aion, Firenze 2021.
  
• L. Amistadi, La costruzione della città. Concetti e figure, Il Poligrafo, Padova 2012.

Teaching methods

The laboratory will proceed through lectures, seminars and analysis and project activities on the proposed case study: the city of Bologna. The study of the identified areas will require an in-depth knowledge of all the elements useful for defining its problems and opportunities as well as identifying the possible relationships of the project with the context. Starting from this survey, the students, through the analogical comparison of one or more projects taken as a reference, will specify the themes they intend to develop in the project. The design and the architectural model will be the privileged tools both for the study phase and for the final verification. Weekly reviews of the analysis and design work around the case study will be carried out. The work will be organized in groups of two students and the design hypotheses, developed using the tools and techniques deemed most suitable and agreed with the teacher, even when produced using digital instruments, will be illustrated and checked with the teachers and tutors printed on paper. A collective seminar to present the progress of the work activities will take place before the Easter break. The lectures will be given in direct relationship with the students, in some cases they will be accompanied by discussion seminars on the proposed bibliographic materials.

Assessment methods

During the course the student will develop the analyzes and the design applications by confronting the teacher who will constantly check the progress of the studies. Intermediate verification seminars will allow students to build moments of mutual exchange, participation and criticism of the work done. The exam will verify the knowledge acquired through the development of the design exercise and the preparation on the topics covered in the lessons held within the course and the didactic modules coordinated with it.

Teaching tools

The thematic bibliographies provided during the course will constitute the main reference for the acquisition of the information necessary for the development of the project analysis. The use of audiovisual materials, the planning of thematic seminars, the organization of inspections on the project site are foreseen.

Office hours

See the website of Lamberto Amistadi