Learning objectives
The acquisition of tools and operational techniques necessary in the professional training of an architect cannot disregard a training experience of a cultural nature as an introduction to an attitude of critically understanding architectural and urban phenomena and the refining of solutions involving the peculiarities of specific themes and places. An efficient capacity to interpret the theme at a typological level, within the conditions of the urban and territorial structure, becomes the premise for a design procedure belonging to the context and at the same time able to bring about innovation on both the typological and figurative planes.
Prerequisites
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Course unit content
The contents of the course come from experience of interpretation and design in the making of architecture through methodological references in their historical evolution starting from the modernity of the Renaissance. From this point of view the theme of the architectural organism cannot be separated, as in Alberti’s vision, from that of the city, above all starting from an urban dimension which at the end of the twentieth century assumed such a scale and complexity at a territorial level that it caused a crisis in the coherent concept of what a city is. In this dynamic scenario architecture needs to venture beyond its role as an objective self-referent testimony, only stylistically denoted, to relate dialectically to that urban tale of the context which from time to time, due to peculiar conditions of cultural structure and settlement procedures, demands a specific architectural solution in the sense of a contribution that can enrich the settlement palimpsest as a whole. On the contemporary scene there are many formal matrices of a territorial and infrastructural nature that determine the conformation of the urbanized landscape. This is not to deny that the typological component, as an invariant of urban morphology according to Guido Canella’s definition, remains an important reference point in the development of those architectural forms that contribute to the advancement of the process of continual redefinition of a forma urbis.
Full programme
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Bibliography
A. Rossi, L’Architettura della Città, Milan 1978.
Various authors Per un’Idea di Città, Venice 1984.
Various authors European City Architecture. Project, Structure, Image, Parma 2011
Teaching methods
The teaching methods make use of a dialectic procedure with deductive and inductive contributions. Starting from the theoretical contributions of architectural design, then through concrete historical/analogical case histories applied to the various contexts, with particular reference to that of Europe, to analysis of the study case and the advancement, through successive approximations, of the construction of the project.
Assessment methods and criteria
The quality of the headway in the projects carried out by the students indicates the extent of learning from the didactic contents adopted through theoretical and case history contributions brought to the students’ attention.
Other information
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