60
Architectural and Urban Composition
REGGIO DI CALABRIA
Overview
Date/time interval
Syllabus
Course Objectives
Specific learning objectives (with reference to the topic of the course/workshop): ability to interpret an architectural text, whether literary, figurative, or constructed; drafting the architectural project as a critical text, having acquired the ability to articulate and compose spaces while responding to functional and regulatory needs and attributing meaning to one's work.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES: Knowledge and understanding. Students will acquire the ability to navigate the theoretical landscape of the discipline and identify the common threads and differences among the main positions in the contemporary architectural debate. Applying knowledge and understanding. Students will demonstrate mastery in the use of disciplinary tools to interpret and transform through design. Making judgments. The ability to proceed through successive choices toward the final goal in the practice of architectural design, demonstrating the awareness that this process is, in itself, a process to be developed. Communication skills; the project, as a prefiguration of architecture, is an interpretation; the student must demonstrate their ability to narrate it using a combination of different graphic, textual, and multimedia tools. Learning skills. The architectural student must develop their own profile, constructing their own independent learning path, demonstrating the ability to articulate a design purpose not only with regard to functional questions and the response to the geographical context, but also by describing a linguistic process, even if still elementary.
Course Prerequisites
Teaching Methods
The teaching is structured around lectures, exercises, and seminars, distributed across two blocks, interspersed with a series of practical activities designed to test the studied methods through the use of drawing.
The first half of the course will be dedicated to lectures and exercises, analysis of assigned architectures, and the way they are communicated. The second half of the course will consist of preparation activities for the exam, interspersed with seminars.
Attendance at the workshop is mandatory.
Lectures: (hours/year in class): 18
Exercises: (hours/year in class): 18
Practical activities: (hours/year in class): 14
Seminars (hours/year in class): 10
STUDENT INDEPENDENT WORK
Students are required to complete 90 hours of independent work as follows:
In-depth study of the literature (theoretical part): 45 hours
Preparation for tests (experimentation): 20 hours
Exam preparation: 25 hours
TRAINING ACTIVITY SCHEDULE The first half of the course will be dedicated to lectures and exercises, analysis of assigned architectures and the way they are communicated. The second half of the course will consist of preparation of exam materials, interspersed with seminars. Attendance at the laboratory is mandatory. STUDENT'S INDEPENDENT WORK The student is required to carry out 90 hours of independent work as follows: In-depth study of the bibliography (theoretical part): 45 hours Preparation for tests (experimentation): 20 hours Preparation for exams: 25 hours
Assessment Methods
Texts
Reference Bibliography: In addition to the texts listed at the end of the Theory syllabus, readings related to the topics covered in the lectures will be recommended. Each student will be required to study one issue of Casabella magazine from the last ten years.
Reference Web Sites:
https://www.oma.com/partners/rem-koolhaas
https://www.oma.com/partners/rem-koolhaas
https://www.editorialelotus.it/web/library.php
https://www.editorialelotus.it/web/library.php
https://www.the-lsa.org/
https://eisenmanarchitects.com/
Contents
CONTENTS The workshop concludes the first cycle of the five-year Master's Degree in Architecture. It is structured around two disciplines: Architectural and Urban Design and Architectural Research Theory 1. Their integration is essential to guide students toward understanding and interpreting a complex reality through drawing and design, understood as tools of interpretation and invention. In previous years, architectural students have acquired compositional skills that enable them to organize simple elements into even complex aggregations at the residential scale. The educational objective of the workshop is to develop these skills both by modulating the functional theme on a specialized, therefore complex, building and by addressing the relationship between the building and the urban context in which it is inserted. The course also aims to develop students' critical thinking in evaluating the relationships between the various scales of design and the process of shaping living space.
COURSE PROGRAM With the recent start of construction of the Maritime Museum, the affected strip of land, squeezed between the harbor breakwater to the east (currently being demolished), the terminal and mouth of the Fiumara dell'Annunziata, which joins with that of Via Roma to the south, and finally the Ionian Sea to the west, becomes an urban condenser. It is a place that does not belong to the city. It no longer belongs to nature and struggles to integrate with the landscape. It is a pivot point of the urban grid: to the north, the fabric of the post-earthquake reconstruction of the Santa Caterina neighborhood with its orderly and regular grid of urban blocks; to the south, the city center, rebuilt after the 1908 earthquake. The fiumara connects the landscapes of the Aspromonte with its plains and the Ionian Sea. The marine terminal, the mouth, of the two fiumaras and the strip of land between it and the Maritime Museum will be the site of the project. This site incorporates the joined mouths of the two fiumaras, the end of the lower promenade of the city waterfront, and borders the churchyard of the Mediterranean Museum. Connection with the city is blocked by the interposition of the FFS parking lot to the east. The objective of the course is the design of a complex building organized within a fabric of volumes that will house workshops for events and art galleries, connected in an organic and interdependent whole. The year's theme and the disciplinary and interdisciplinary references—the theme of the workshop as a whole, Design plus Theories—is the design of a City Museum of Contemporary Art, conceived less as a single large building than as a composite, yet cohesive, organism. The museum building will be divided into various parts necessary to meet the various functional needs, from exhibitions to reception, from workshops for elementary and middle school students, from conference rooms suitable for small groups to an auditorium designed as a service to the city. The building must therefore consist of spaces for teaching, spaces for temporary exhibitions, and spaces intended to house a permanent collection of contemporary art to be established. A small core of administrative offices and spaces suitable for collective functions will complete the system. A complex organism to be thought of as a continuous osmosis between architecture, landscapes, and the sea. This theme of the City Museum of Contemporary Art will also spark reflection on the theoretical aspects of composition, architectural principles, and the relationship between music, proportion, metrics, and architecture. It will lead students to understand how the ability to coordinate not only different scales but also to relate theoretical and cultural fields, bringing together diverse knowledge in the project, also reflects on figuration and language. A series of monographic lessons on architectural interpretations will punctuate the course during the semester of the workshop. Students will be asked to link these architectural works into a personal narrative, documented in a textual and figurative diary, selecting a few and constructing their own territory populated by the architecture they thus select.