Consistently with the syllabus, the Architectural design theory studio aims to train the following competences: _The ability to navigate the architectural literature, distinguishing between architectural history, design theory, architectural theory, and criticism. _The ability to recognize and critically assume positions related to the main issues of architectural design theory. _The ability to connect architectural choices and design actions to their theoretical reasons. _The ability to produce texts capable of effectively describing and communicating the relationships between programs and design solutions, between the project process and its effects. More precisely, this studio focuses on discursive practices, which are intrinsically linear, aiming to exploit them as contrast media for space imagination. They perform a ‘critical’ function even before a critical attitude has been trained and achieved, triggering a mutual improvement of the ability to ‘read’ projects and to ‘write’ them as sets of logically organized operations. Aim of the course is to let students improve their abilities to integrate those critical skills in their design toolbox; to accomplish that, the studio will focus on four main targets: _Reading, or the ability to understand, analyse, and deconstruct architectural texts in relation to their contexts. _Thinking, or the ability to manipulate textual tools as triggers for a clearer design conceptualization. _Focussing, or the ability to get rapidly to the point. _Communicating, or the ability to get in tune with specific conditions, adjusting the narrative and operative connection between the project and its reasons.

Students are expected to manage high-school-level reading and writing abilities, along with the basic critical, drawing, and design skills achieved in their previous years of undergraduate learning and, specifically, having attended and passed the examinations of the Architecture design studio, the City and territory studio, and the Building construction studio.

The teaching targets above mentioned will be addressed in a couple of exercises: _Exercises in style. Students will re-write a brief presentation text of one of the projects they designed in an architectural studio they have already attended. The new text will apply one or more writing strategies extracted from well-known architects’ presentation texts. Approaching the design process by the text must take those projects on different paths, leading to modifications or complete transformations of the design strategies previously applied and their outcomes. _Patent office. Students will further elaborate on the project considered in the previous exercise according to the insight gained by the re-writing operation. Texts and diagrams describing the new proposal will be arranged in an extremely concise form, as sort of patent office entries. Along with a general architectural formulation of the design strategy proposed, students will produce other two ‘patents’ addressed respectively to the client and another specific stakeholder (administration, politician, authority, consultant, activist, journalist...). Extreme concision and target oriented thinking will offer those projects different design possibilities, which will be further probed with sketches and diagrams. This studio will unfold in parallel a series of lectures about the ‘keywords’ of contemporary architecture aimed to ‘map’ the recent debate by tracing thematic paths in contemporary architectural theories through the international publishing landscape. Lectures about the books listed in the studio bibliography will be delivered too and followed by sketching sessions with students aimed to disassemble and reassemble pivotal projects according to their theoretical reasons. Learning by drawing is part of the teaching method of this studio: the general focus will be on recognizing architectural patterns and main features within a selection of projects and learning how to translate them in fast yet communicative sketches.

This studio aims to work as an exchange environment. This means that its whole activities lean on the participation of students in critics, lectures, and seminars. In order to improve the students’ overall critical skills, each exercise will involve them in both producing materials and assessing them, self-evaluating their work, and peer-reviewing those of classmates.

The Architectural design theory studio weighs six credits, i.e. sixty hours of classroom work plus ninety hours of home workload. Classroom activities take usually 13-14 weeks in sessions of four hours and a half each, with this time typically divided into two parts, one dedicated to lectures and the other to exercises’ presentations, elaboration, and critics. Exercises will ask for some homework, usually performed during a four weeks’ time so that students can organise their effort according to other courses’ assignments. Self-evaluation and peer review activities will be performed in the week after the exercise has been presented in the classroom. Presence in the classroom is highly recommended.

The following bibliography lists some references considered useful to frame the recent architectural debate. Other bibliographic suggestions will be provided during the course also to help students to pursue their own research interests. _Overviews Corbellini, Giovanni, Ex Libris: 16 Keywords of Contemporary Architecture (Siracusa: LetteraVentidue, 2019 [2008, 2015]), pp. 150. Corbellini, Giovanni, ‘Form Follows (Non)Fiction’, in Telling Spaces, ed. by Giovanni Corbellini, (Siracusa: LetteraVentidue, 2018), pp. 15. Corbellini, Giovanni, Sayable Space: Narrative Practices in Architecture (Siracusa: LetteraVentidue, 2021 [2016]), pp. 100. _Histories Carpo Mario, The Alphabet and the Algorithm (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011), pp. 180. Colomina, Beatriz, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 390. Venturi Robert, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: MoMA, 1966), pp. 135. Vidler, Anthony, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 260. _Cities Koolhaas, Rem, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), pp. 320. Rowe Colin; Koetter Fred, Collage City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978), pp. 185. Venturi, Robert; Scott Brown, Denise; Izenour, Steven, Learning From Las Vegas, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977 [1972]), pp. 190. _Poetics Corbellini, Giovanni, Bioreboot: The architecture of R&Sie(n) (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), pp. 200 (skip 'endlessness'). Moneo, Rafael, Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004), pp. 400. Koolhaas, Rem; OMA; Mau, Bruce, S, M, L, XL, ed. by Jennifer Sigler (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995), pp. 1340.

Lecture slides; Video lectures (current year);

Exam: Compulsory oral exam; Individual project;

Students will collect their design and textual exercises into individual booklets, the overall quality of which will provide a basis for the final evaluation according to the above-mentioned studio aims, and the relative skills and knowledge. The booklet will feature only the exercises already evaluated during the studio. New improved versions of these latter can be worked out for the final booklet. Students' assessments will lean also on oral exams. Each student will be interviewed about her booklet and at least three books of the studio bibliography (except the ones collected in the ‘Overviews’ category, meant to offer orientation tools rather than first-hand knowledge). The interview will probe theoretical topics and will connect them to design solutions. Sketching will be therefore involved along with talking. The interview will confirm, increase, or reduce (within a range of +/-40%) the booklet mark and will take to the final grade. Those who didn’t attend the whole studio’s activities delivering the exercises and their reviews within the deadlines will add to the mandatory three books other whole volumes listed in the same bibliography for an amount of at least 120 pages for each activity skipped (exercises, self-evaluations and peer reviews included; 480 extra pages maximum). These extra books must include ‘Ex Libris: 16 Keywords of Contemporary Architecture’. The evaluation of the students who didn’t deliver the booklet will count on the oral exam only. Grading criteria will include the following skills: _Curiosity, or the attitude to spontaneously search for the information often taken for granted in lectures and books. _Autonomy, or the attitude to personally elaborate the knowledge acquired. _Connection, or the ability to link the level of theory with that of design, shifting from texts to projects and vice versa. It entails the capacity to draw schemes and diagrams in plan and section of the examples referenced, which must include major masterpieces of modern protagonists (such as maison Savoye or Farnsworth house). _Depth, or the ability to analyse and unfold specific issues. _Comparison, or the ability to manage different questions, ‘surfing’ the waves of the contemporary debate. _Memory, or the attitude to remember, as a very minimum requirement, the names and main works of the architects involved in the books studied. Plainly repeating passages of the books read doesn’t guarantee good marks. Honors will be granted to the students able to get an excellent confidence in managing these skills and to integrate discursive practices into their architectural design toolbox.

In addition to the message sent by the online system, students with disabilities or Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) are invited to directly inform the professor in charge of the course about the special arrangements for the exam that have been agreed with the Special Needs Unit. The professor has to be informed at least one week before the beginning of the examination session in order to provide students with the most suitable arrangements for each specific type of exam.