The studio didactic activity allows to test the student's ability to apply to concrete issues the knowledge gained within the teachings.
The Building technology studio aims at fostering - in the process of architectural design - the ability to handle the interrelationships among materials, construction systems, executive techniques, as well as environmental and functional requirements, regulations constraints and context features. To this end, existing projects and realizations will be taken as reference and deepened in their correlation between materials, constructive principles and architectural form. Objective of the Studios is the exploration and the acquisition of the know-how called for: the sizing of living space and the definition of their typological-distribution in order to meet explicit and implicit needs of occupants; the configuration of the building and the setting of its technical and construction systems in order to comply with the wide range of requirements demanded.

The Studio offers a project experience on a limited-scale and "controlled complexity" building, paying close attention to the constructive realization of the work. At the end of the project experience, the student will acquire the necessary skills to identify the set of criteria to be taken in choosing the available technical options. He will be able to define the typological and spatial alternatives in coherence with the complexity of user constraints, environmental requirements and with the relative technological and constructive choices. He will gain the ability to face the project at different levels of detail and with the proper scales of representation, up to the development of construction details deepened in their material dimension and in the verification of their technical feasibility.

Didactic structure.

TECHNOLOGICAL DESIGN ARCHITECTURE - 8 CFU

BUILDING COMPONENTS AND SYSTEMS DESIGN - 4 CFU

Educational aims.

To promote the architectural design ability to manage the relations among materials, construction elements, techniques, environmental and functional requirements, building regulations, characteristics of the context. The project experience is applied to a small residential building of “controlled complexity”. This topic is developed along a design activity to acquire and to experiment the basic knowledge about:

- to give correct dimensions to living spaces, and to organise their morphological configuration;

- to define typological and distributive characteristics;

- to configure the technological systems and elements;

- to verify the buildability, as consequence of a design processes that facilitates the construction and utilization of the architecture.

 Teaching methods.

Students are led in a gradual process of acquisition and application of methodological and operational tools required for the development of the project.This, in relation to the dimension of feasibility of construction, through guided exercises aimed at acquiring adequate capacity of analysis and synthesis.The design process is articulated through a series of steps:

- concept (definition of all the major characteristic and performances that the architecture must provide);

- design (implementation of the concept providing all the pieces of information necessary for administrative approval);

- project (implementation of the design providing all the pieces of information necessary for the construction).

Within these steps, the didactic activities will be focused on:

- the interpretation of paradigmatic projects with regard to the relationship among materials, design principles and architectural languages;

- the use and the management of an integrated system of constraints (environmental, regulatory, structural, constructing, etc.);

- the assessment and the selection among different spatial and techno-typological alternatives;

- the configuration of the construction details, studied in their material dimension and verified with regard to their feasibility;

- the representation of the project at the different scales, in relation to the specific needs of knowledge, reporting and verification.

The design activities will be carried out in groups of 2/3 students.

Educational structure.

Learning activities are configured through:

- lectures and seminars held by the professors, with the contribution of external speakers;

- tutoring in the classroom;- development of the design process, with verification of progresses at the different scales;

- supplementary activities extra classroom for the study, the graphics processing and research.

Forms of horizontal and vertical coordination of the key courses.

The Building Technology Studio is organised in a system of horizontal and vertical coordination which involves the whole area of Architectural Technology in its various components.

As for horizontal coordination, there is a permanent confrontation that has agreed and standardised for all the studios: design theme, size of the intervention, level of detail, methods and verification criteria.

As for the vertical coordination, progressive learning strategies have been defined and will be constantly monitored, for a process of gradual acquisition of knowledge and skills.

This process consists of training sessions related to: taking basic knowledge (Fundamentals of Technology) and their subsequent application in the design experience carried out in the Studios.

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.

The judgment will be in progress through the experience of the Studio.

The final exam will consist in an oral interview, individual and mandatory, on both lectures and seminars and on the design activity results.

Students will have to proof the achievement of an individual critical position on the themes developed during the semester and present their final design proposal and outcomes.

The criteria for assessment are:

• for the theoretical part: the level of knowledge of the tackled topics; critical thinking; clarity and pertinence of the vocabulary;
• for design part: clear correspondence between technological solutions and morphological and typological setting of the project, at all scales; proper definition of the construction details in relation to the performance aspects of technological subsystems; accuracy of the graphical representation at different scales; completeness of the information at the scale of the final design; clarity and pertinence of the vocabulary.