The studio didactic activity is characterized by the experimentation of the architectural design tools and techniques gained during the courses.

The Architectural design studio 1 aims to gradually introduce the student to the complexity of the project by focusing on the necessary foundations and theoretical, analytical and instrumental knowledge. The student undertakes basic exercises of design and architecture representation by realizing models in scales. During the year are carried out different exercises concerning initially the reading, interpretation and representation of significant architectures and, subsequently, the development of a project with simple functional contents. The project also intends to address the issue of relations established with the place, the question of use, of construction and materials.

The Architectural design studio 1 guarantees the student the acquisition of theoretical, analytical and basic design skills applied to preparatory exercises and to a final project. Attending lessons and studying bibliography is considered an important moment for the achievement of an ability to judge and control the architectural composition.

The expected results are: knowledge of the tools useful for reading and interpreting architecture (study, interpretative drawing and model building); knowledge and understanding of drawing as a tool for knowledge; knowledge and understanding of the rules of architectural composition; knowledge and understanding of the elements that characterize the relationship between architecture and place and space.

Architectural and Urban Composition
prof. Stefano Perego

The Design Studio aims to guide the young students to build an own architectural thought through a progressive knowledge of important architectural works and the corpus of our discipline. 
The design activity represents the core of this Design Studio concerning, during the first three months: 1) the investigation and re-redrawing of significant architectures as plausible examples related to historical, typological, morphological and constructive issues; 2) experiences of urban analysis. These two moments are constitutive for the design activity that will take up the entire year.
The architectural design should today also consider as important issues the principles of rationalization able to contain substantially the use of soil, consumables resources and costs.

The students will face the design of a small social housing settlement that will contains houses and one or different common buildings for a small town in the north of Italy. Concerning the method of working, the Studio will analize a whole of references chosen for their peculiar clarity related to the architectural, urban, type-morphological, constructive and materials issues. The house, here considered in their spatial aspects and for the role that it takes on the construction of the city, represent the core of the activities of this Design Studio.
The activities, mainly related to the Italian and European research and tradition, will be organized through lectures, seminars, and critiques on the project development issues and according to sequences and timetables that will be progressively established.

The Design Studio intends to create collaborations and exchanges opportunities with other first year workshops on common activities such as seminars, conferences and study-trips.
At the end of this first year the student should be able to discuss the project on the basis of theoretical fundamentals, to manage the project at different scales, relating to pre-existing urban elements. It should also be able to discuss the project in a logical and appropriate way.

The final exam will consist in a discussion on the works done during the Design studio, on the lectures contents and on the bibliographical references.

Architectural Design
prof. Maria Vittoria Cardinale

The construction of a corpus of references is a constitutive and essential analytic and cognitive activity in order to realize consciousness on architectural design, especially for those who start architectural studies. The activities planned in the first half of the year consists to organize a Catalogue of References related to buildings and cities. The comprehension of the forms, techniques and tools necessary to the design will carried out through the analysis and re-drawing of some of the most significant modern residential experiences. The activities, developed by each student on assigned examples, will carried out in close collaboration with the Representation Techniques teaching.

Representation Techniques
prof. Elena Bonaria

Based on the assumption that representation is the preferred place for a design’s genesis and its critical analysis, the course Representation Techniques, considering the substantial continuity and contiguity between analysis and design, introduces to the knowledge and interpretation of the architectural drawing and to the control of the graphic means. Representation techniques are intended as a knowledge process that leads to the creation of a codified model in which the notion of “scale” assumes broad consequences and enriches itself with the quality components that belong to the city and the environment, measuring its specific architectural dimensions.

The final exam will consist in a discussion on the works done during the Design studio, on the lectures contents and on the bibliographical references.