LABORATORIO DI PROGETTAZIONE ARCHITETTONICA E URBANA M - Z

The purpose of the laboratory is to guide the student to the understanding and practice of the urban project. The course aims to provide students with a critical methodology to tackle the architectural project on an urban scale, recognizing its peculiar multiscalarity, the complex connection between the characteristics of a transformation of the existing and the interface with the pre-existence.

The items will be developed combining design exercises with the lectures. A final design essay will be the moment of synthesis and verification of what has been learned during the laboratory.

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In learning and recognizing what qualifies the space of the city and its essential facts, the urban context is conceived as the place of the relationships established between a single building (mainly the house, both single and collective) and the complex urban fabric. The main interest of the course is therefore aimed to the relationship between building type and urban form: for instance, how a single building, in its logic structural basis of the form and in its organization of internal and external relations, could shape and determines the outcome of the urban organism’s form and the scenarios that characterize it.

The urban context is also conceived as the place of social interactions and practices characterized by buildings and by the configured and ordering space between them. Above all, however, the urban context is such due to the presence of people, whose activities and needs are translated into spaces, open or confined, in intimate domestic interiors, in shared interiors, in collective interiors, including those in the exterior spaces, like squares, streets, courtyards and courtyards. Those characteristic themes of the rich and complex urban organization will be developed through lessons and design exercises. A final design experience will consist on a moment of synthesis and verification of the disciplinary contents learned during the course.

The teaching will take place with ex cathedra lessons and with the development of an application project on a study area.

Thence, the teaching of the laboratory will have, as a final moment, the participation of the students in an Architectural and Urban Design Workshop. The workshop intends to elaborate on some design solutions from the scale of the urban and architectural project, in response to some contemporary problems of the city of Palazzolo Acreide:

1) the solving of problems of marginality, in the relationship between city in extension and countryside and between city, archaeological sites and territory;

2) the permeability of the historical center, its destiny in the contemporary condition and the fruition-enhancement of the archaeological and architectural heritage of the city.

The work of the workshop will be group.

Duration of the workshop: 6 days (including the opening day of the final exhibition of the projects in the presence of the authorities and citizens).

Basic knowledge of architectural and urban design methodologies. Basic knowledge of technical drawing methodologies. Manual of freehand drawing and models skills. Theoretical and historical knowledge of contemporary architecture.

Attendance is binding for courses called "Laboratory". Students can request total or partial exemption from the attendance obligation for serious and / or justified reasons. The dispensation is deliberated by the Degree Course Council and at the same time it must provide for the possibility of participating in the sessions of the related exams.

Lessons take place both in the first and in the second semester.

The exam includes an oral interview on the disciplinary contents and course documents, including the design ones and those of the first semester’s exercises (written-graphic notes for reconnaissance and letters to the architect) collected in the "logbook".

During the oral interview the following must be demonstrated: mastery of the topics covered during the lessons, overall expressive ability, ability to report examples relating to general topics, ability to connect with other topics, relevance of answers, quality of content and personal contribution to team work.

The subject of the study will be the places of abandonment of the historic urban fabrics of the city of Palazzolo Acreide and its "marginal" areas between the urban center and the countryside.

In the first semester we will proceed with a basic preparation on the fundamentals of the architectural and urban project through elementary lessons and exercises and the monographic study of some exemplary case studies.

The course’s central moment into the first part of the course will be, above all, a cycle of programmed outdoor activities (freehand RICOGNIZIONI), alternated with laboratory activities in the classroom to deepen the topics addressed during the outdoor activities. During the RICOGNIZIONI and the laboratory, the preparation of a CARNET DE VOYAGE will be requested, a "logbook" that will collect all the materials and reflections useful for the exercises. The CARNET DE VOYAGE is a drawing notebook, a horizontal A5 or similar, with a hard cover, in which the student will have to collect their own graphic and written-graphic annotations, as well as LETTERS TO THE ARCHITECT.

The work on the drawings and letters collected in the CARNET DE VOYAGE is single.

In the second semester, a final project will be elaborated which, starting from the first intuitions developed during the "RICOGNIZIONI freehand", proposes a strategy, defines the salient features of an unprecedented or re-meaning urban scenario, by means of measured and technically designed planning check.

For strategy we mean the preparation of some interrelated moves also belonging to different reflection planes; scenario means the formulation of hypotheses on future transformations and their possible consequences; for project actions we mean the representation on an adequate scale of interventions that modify the physical state of the places.

Essays on Architecture

1. Quatremére de Quincy, C., Dizionario Storico dell’Architettura. Le Voci Teoriche, a cura di Valeria Farinetti e George Teyssot, edizione italiana a cura di Marsilio, 1985.
2. Le Corbusier, Vers Une Architecture, Crés, Paris 1923, 1°ediz. Italiana: Verso una Architettura, a cura di Pier Luigi Cerri e Pier Luigi Nicolin, “I Marmi” 1976, Longanesi, Milano, 2004.
3. Loos, A., Parole nel vuoto, edizione italiana a cura di Adelphi, Milano, 1992.
4. Aalto, A., Idee di Architettura. Scritti scelti 1921-1968, edizione italiana a cura di Zanichelli Editore, 1987, Bologna.
5. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gli scritti e le parole, a cura di Vittorio Pizzigoni, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, Torino, 2010.
6. Frampton, K., Tettonica e architettura. Poetica della forma architettonica nel XIX e XX secolo, edizione italiana a cura di Skira editore, Milano, 2005.
7. Marti Aris, C., La centina e l’arco. Pensiero, teoria, progetto in Architettura, edizione italiana a cura di Christian Marinotti Editore, Milano, 2007.
8. Moneo, R., Inquietudine teorica e strategia progettuale nell’opera di otto architetti contemporanei, prima edizione italiana Electa, Milano, 2005.
9. Venezia, F., Che cosa è l’architettura. Lezioni, conferenze, un intervento, Mondadori-Electa edizioni, Milano, 2011.
10. Campo, Baeza, L’idea costruita, edizione italiana a cura di Alessandro Mauro, LetteraVentidue edizioni, Siracusa, 2012.

Essays on Architecture, city and context

1. Rossi, A., L’Architettura della Città, ristampa CittàStudiEdizioni, Torino, 1995.
2. Schulz, C. N., Genius Loci. Paesaggio Ambiente Architettura, edizione Mondadori - Electa (Collana Documenti di Architettura), Milano, 1979.
3. Venturi, R., Complessità e Contraddizioni nell’Architettura, traduzione italiana a cura di edizioni Dedalo, Bari, 1980.
4. K. Lynch, Progettare la città, Etaslibri, Milano, 1990.
5. Marti Aris, C., Le variazioni dell’identità. Il tipo in architettura, edizione italiana a cura di CittàStudiEdizioni, Novara, 1994.
6. Siza, A., Immaginare l’evidenza, edizione italiana a cura di Editori Laterza, Bari, 1998.
7. Monestiroli, A., L’Architettura della Realtà, Umberto Allemandi & C. editore, Torino, 2004.
8. Rowe, C., Kotter, F., Collage City, The MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, 2010.
9. Koolhaas, R., Deliorious New York, edizione italiana a cura di Electa, Milano, 2004.

RICOGNIZIONI a mano libera I Metodi e strumenti operativi (Freehand RECOGNITIONS I Operative Tool and Methods)

1. GRESLERI, G., Le Corbusier. Viaggio in Oriente, ed. Marsilio E FONDATION LE CORBUSIER, 1984.
2. Ruskin, J., Elementi del disegno, ed. italiana ADELPHI, Milano, 2013.
3. Foti, F., La Via del disegno, LetteraVentidue Edizioni, Siracusa, 2016.
4. Cullen, G., Townscape, The Architectural press, London, 1961.
5. AA.VV., NUMERO MONOGRAFICO SU LE CORBUSIER, “CASABELLA”, N° 531-32, GEN-FEB 1987.
6. Cacciatore, F., Afferrare lo spazio. Dispositivi, pratiche e strumenti
   per un approccio tridimensionale al progetto di architettura, LetteraVentidue editore, Siracusa, 2021.