In the Architectural Design and History Program, the teaching is conceived as an opportunity for students to address complex planning problems dealing simultaneously with urban design and landscape architecture aspects of territorial transformations. The purpose of the design studio is to provide the students with cultural and scientific instruments that enable them to autonomously identify the different urban and landscape problems within which context they may identify the necessity of a physical project, or in other words the usefulness of architecture and its permanent characters, in the contemporary city.

The student acquires practical skills through the performance of laboratory activities.

After passing the exam, the student: understands the characteristics, needs and constraints of the design processes in a territorial area; is able to apply knowledge to specific problems of planning intervention in a urban historical context; is able to manage, with independent judgment, problems not strictly related to the issues addressed in the course of study, taking motivated decisions and communicating the results of their activities in a clear and convincing way.

The Studio activities may be presented with reference to two different specific aspects:

1) with regard to approach:

To design a contemporary city means to intervene on a highly anthropized landscape where the classical oppositions in which the natural is distinguished from the artificial, the centre from the periphery, are blurred and sometimes disappear before the complexity of acting in a multifaceted and layered reality.
The contemporary landscape thus calls for a constant study of the changeable phenomena affecting it, and a continuous research of the new problems they pose. It is the duty of the architect to identify and recognize these problems, and use them as basis for the definition of solutions and possible transformations of the spaces, beyond predefined design schemes and solutions. The use of the form is the principal instrument for purposes of analyzing the urban territory and intervene on it through the physical design of its spaces.
The purpose of the design studio is to provide the students with cultural and scientific instruments that enable them to autonomously identify the different urban and landscape problems within which context they may identify the necessity of a physical project, or in other words the usefulness of architecture and its permanent characters, in the contemporary city. The studio will concentrate upon different areas of Province of Mantova.
The analysis is thus appreciated as an essential part of the architectural project, rather than being considered as an autonomous and preliminary phase with respect to the planning phase.

2) with regard to structure:

The design studio, which consists of ex cathedra lessons, seminaries and collective and individual reviews, is organized in three different periods, corresponding to three different stages of the projects.
In the first period, groups of up to three students will be asked to investigate potentials and issues of the agricultural/urbanized landscape by autonomously identifying both the area and the design themes to be tackled. In the first part of the semester numerous examples of urban and territorial plans will be illustrated in thematic lessons on principal Italian and foreign urban realities.
In the second period a collective workshop will be organized to set the design concepts and to analyze the technical issues.
During the workshop students will also have the opportunity to measure swords with technicians and professionals specialized in themes as the landscape and the urban mobility.
The third part is much more focused on the themes of urban design representation.

Throughout the year the students will be followed by the teachers in individual reviews.

No pre-requisites. The students have to refer our Master Program and the Organizational and Function Rules of the School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering.

The exam will cover the presentation and discussion of activities performed by the student independently, in the context of the Studio. The students will discuss (as a group or individually) the activities performed in the programme and the different elements of the final project.