"literature is a dictionary"
1. Didactic purposes and theme of the course
The course aims to introduce the student to the study of spatial, functional and complex construction situations, proposing an important cultural institution as a design theme and focusing the tutorial on the relationship between this public equipment and city life. It is therefore a question of tackling the project of a library with a significant urban impact.
The course assumes an area on via Aterno as a case study, in the belief that the establishment of a building of this importance can contribute to an urban redevelopment process.
The educational path is committed around three issues:
1.Luogo. The relationship with the physical and social context of which the building becomes part. To this end, it will be necessary to conduct an urban reading exercise.
2.Program. The variety of activities to be installed, the mutual interferences and the nature of the spaces that welcome them. To this end, it will be necessary to conduct a study of similar buildings, to identify themes and issues useful to fuel the project.
3.Disegno. The quality of the proposed architectural solutions. The design phase starts with the development of a spatial strategy capable of implementing the planned program and installing it on the site.
2. Organization of the course
The course is organized in three moments:
2.1 Preparatory exercise (October, two / three weeks)
It is an exercise whose analytical and interpretative nature is only apparent, which will consist of the study of some houses of Smiljan Radic, all built. Of these, functional, spatial, distributive, structural and linguistic devices will be included, elaborating suitable sketches and drawings. Subsequently, students will have to produce an interpretative model. An interpretative model is an elaborate different from a descriptive model, since it does not aim to represent the artifact as it is, but to provide an adherent critical reading: adherent, since it will be based on a relevance to the artifact, capable of avoiding any arbitrariness ; criticism, because it will try to grasp one or more salient aspects of the artefact and highlight it. An object will be built which, for what has been said, will not be similar to the starting building but rather similar. In hindsight, this exercise, with a synthetic result, is also a design.
2.2 Preparatory studies (October, one week): Place and Program
It is a matter of studying the project area in its relations with the Pescara river and with the parts of the surrounding city, of a distinctly productive character but partly in a state of neglect. This is not an exclusively morphological study, but also social and functional, aimed at acquiring the necessary contextual knowledge and the exact definition of the project program.
2.3. Design exercise (November-December, remaining weeks): Drawing
It's about designing the new building. Particular attention must be paid to the housing meanings of the choices made on the spatial organization: from the methods of access to the building, to its possible public permeability; from distribution environments to spaces dedicated to various activities; from the qualification of the interior spaces to their connection with the exterior. In addition, of course, to the relationship with the urban surroundings and logistical connections.
3. Conducting the course
3.1. Teaching group
The course is divided into ex cathedra lessons and communications, and seminar moments.
Lessons and communications
The lessons are divided into lessons in assembled courses (with the students of Prof. Misino) and lessons in this course.
The former will be communicated from time to time; the lessons of these courses will concern:
. Introduction (course presentation)
1. Smiljan Radic. Some houses
2. Critical models
3. Architectural considerations
4. Vitruvian components. Anthropological education
5. Vitruvian components. technical Education
6. Vitruvian components. Figurative education
7. The library. History and modernity
8. The library. Modernity
9. Program and space
10. Ethnography, anthropology of space and architecture
The above lessons are accompanied by communications on the work of some architects, chosen from among the main masters of modern and contemporary architecture:
Loos and Rudofsky
Pagano and Lina Bo Bardi
Ethnographic Le Corbusier
Rem Koolhaas
Atelier Bow-Wow
Smiljan Radic. Non-residential works
These communications will consist of a summary illustration of the work of the architect in question and a detailed illustration of some works.
Materials provided by the course
The course will make available to students, at one of the copy shops in viale Pindaro, a CD containing this same program, the basic cartographic materials and anything else that will be necessary and appropriate.
3.2.Studenti
Attendance of the course is compulsory. Attendance will be recorded on special sheets and through the revision register. Remember that a significant number of absences prevents you from taking the exam.
Seminars and Revisions
The seminar activity consists of classroom work under the supervision of the teaching team; the work done in the classroom is different from that done at home, it is an opportunity to discuss and deepen the issues raised by the exercises and allows a comparison with the activities of the other students, evaluating analogies and differences between the ways of doing. This comparison is a moment of reflection and therefore of growth.
Revisions are a fundamental didactic act, whose intent is not only (not so much) to direct the elaboration towards the best outcome, but to make the student acquire awareness about the mechanisms of the design process, internal coherences to the project, to a conduct of the same congruent with the initial premises and reasoning, even in the case of their complete subversion.
Use of the computer and drawing by hand
Students will be able to use the computer for various writing, graphic and photographic processing, digital drawing, 3D modeling and presentation software.
However, hand-drawn graphics or collagistics will be appreciated, as well as intermediate (that is, not definitive) cardboard models. This is in order to make the student understand which phases or moments of the design path is good to carry out by hand and which ones to conduct on the computer.
Groups
Students will work in groups of three (neither more nor less), but some activities will be strictly individual, also for the purposes of the tests and the final mark.
Students are required to come to the classroom equipped with the essential equipment for the job (paper, pencils, pens, cardboard, cutters, glue, adhesive tape. And laptop).
Students are required to bring all the documents from the previous phases with them, each time, to allow teachers to evaluate the development of the work and highlight the various steps of the project development.
Course notebook
Students are required to search and show the references used in the development of the work (notes, reasoning, photocopies of articles and projects, how to use them.).
The activity of accumulating references, various materials, reflections, sketches, diagrams etc. . it will constitute a course notebook, that is, a sort of tool for recording and measuring the growth achieved; which is also a way not to disperse the thought and the work done. This notebook must be built day by day (not prepared the week before the exam) and will be requested and observed by the teaching team during the seminar activity.
Exam methods
The exam will be individual and will consist of a discussion on the results of all the exercises, on the topics covered by the various lessons and contributions, on the compulsory text, on the contents of the notebook. All partial evaluations will help to define the final grade.
Rules of good conduct
The use of computers during lessons is not allowed: they will be switched off and stored away; you are kindly requested to silence personal telephones; the tables are used to work and not to store backpacks and jackets. Students are requested to be punctual and to observe elementary rules of good conduct, so that there is always a "laboratory" atmosphere inside the classroom.
4.Letture
Students are required to read Words in Emptiness, written by Adolf Loos and published in 1921, limited to the following texts: 1_The principle of coating; 2_Ornament and crime; 3_The master saddler (stands in one of the two numbers of ); 4_Architettura; 5_My school of architecture; 6_Rules for those who build in the mountains. Reading the book will be accompanied by a dedicated introductory lesson. The contents of the various texts will be questioned during the examination.
5. Reference Bibliography
The course indicates to the students a reference bibliography, which they are required to consider in order to find the necessary cultural and operational supports; during the course specific bibliographical indications may be provided.
Design hanbooks:
Herman Hertzberger, Lezioni di architettura, Laterza, Bari 1996
Ludovico Quaroni, Progettare un edificio. Otto lezioni di architettura, Mazzotta, Milano 1977
Piero Ostilio Rossi, La costruzione del progetto architettonico, Laterza, Bari 1996
About architecctural space:
Georges Perec, Specie di spazi, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1989
Federico Bilò, Tessiture dello spazio. Tre progetti di Giancarlo De Carlo del 1961,
Quodlibet, Macerata 2014
James Graham Ballard, Il condominio, Anabasi, Milano 1994
About relationship between building and town:
-Federico Bilò e altri, Plusvalenze Urbane, Sala editori, Pescara 2014
About libraries:
-Domizia Mandolesi, Biblioteche e mediateche, Edilstampa, 2008
About Smiljan Radic:
-"2G" n.44, fascicolo monografico
-"El Croquis" n. 167: el juego de los contrarios
-"El Croquis" n. 199: el peso del mundo
"Casabella": 650, 691, 731, 746, 885
