The course History of Architecture 2 concerns, through an introduction and deepening on specific and significant study-cases, some of the main chapters of history of architecture between the late XVIII and the mid-XX centuries. It provides basic knowledge on the subject, referred to the events, buildings, architects, and to the fundamental and different ways of architectural culture and historiographical interpretation of the contemporary period. Lectures underline the complexity and transformations of relations between history and designing, architecture and technology, urban environment and landscape. Starting from a general framing in theories and design perspectives, in relation with the main knot of Modernity between the XIX and XX centuries, the course lingers in particular on some of the most significant aspects of culture of designing of the XX century – in Italy and abroad – reaching the early Second post-war period.

The training goals provide on one hand the basic knowledge on the main movements, protagonists and phases of the history of contemporary architecture, with a particular attention to the issues of the study course.

Lectures (and, in case, critical exercises) will allow students to: know and understand the main features of the architecture of the period between the late XVIII and the mid-XX  centuries; know events, buildings, architects, and to evaluate different ways of the architectural culture and historiographical interpretation of the contemporary period; know and understand relationships between history and designing, architecture and technology, urban environment and landscape; to develop an independent opinion and a critical approach to events, buildings, protagonists, and to the fundamental and different ways of the architectural contemporaneity.

The course analyzes the evolution of the notion of modernity in architecture and urbanism. It explains the genealogies and contents of the following terms: urbanism, development of historical thought, style, technique, function, space. Concepts that have been developed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries as new instruments and new methodologies in architecture and as new subjects in the conceptualization of architectural thought; issues which still today represent the premise of any architectural project.

This course is not a survey of all urbanism and architecture produced in the twentieth century around the world, rather it is an introduction to the primary movements, figures, and debates which were at the heart of the diverse strands most commonly referred to as “modernism”. In recent decades the notion of a unified modern movement in architecture and urbanism has increasingly been challenged, and modernism itself has come to be seen as a multivalent, even contradictory category. Something of that complexity will be reflected in the course lectures which will frequently seek to portray a particular figure, movement or ideology in relief against other alternatives available in a given time or place that proved a crucial center of debate over progressive architecture.

The main objective of the course is to offer students the capacity to identify and explain the main characteristics of the history of architecture and cities of the 19th and 20th centuries, appropriate to the level of undergraduate study. Students will be able to interpret architecture and cities as products of technological, spatial and material conditions characteristic of the time in which they were built.

During the educational path the sequence of the courses and the order of registration of the related exam must follow the priority specified in the study programme regulation

Evaluation: The final evaluation is based on an oral exam which will test knowledge of the main concepts discussed during the semester, primarily through the description of exemplary projects.

A specific (individual or group) work dedicated to graphic and theoretical analyses of the main projects analyzed through the semester will also be required. Details of this project will be determined with regard to the number of students enrolled in the course. 

A mid-term exam - written test - should be expected after the first seven/eight weeks of the course, and will be based on the work done in the first part of the semester.