'When a work reaches a maximum of intensity, of proportion, of quality of execution, of perfection, there occurs a phenomenon of ineffable space’. According to Le Corbusier, who wrote this sentence in a famous article titled ‘L’espace indicible’ and published in 1946, the ultimate quality of architecture would reside in the resistance to its description. However, to introduce us this concept – and many other things – the Swiss master has published more than seventy books, showing that words play a main role in architecture, even in the quest for the ineffable. Words are precisely what this architectural studio aims to address, with a special focus on textual tools as instrument of design. A major goal is therefore to introduce students to discursive practices in architecture, improving their competences about the current debate, by dint of both a wide overview of its most recent issues and some closer contact with the sources, namely the books that fed that same debate in the last decades. A basic skill students are expected to achieve is to get orientation within this debate and its keywords, recognizing its major trends and the features that distinguish them. Furthermore, this studio aspire to train a better knowledge and control of the textual strategies implied in the whole process of architectural production: within the project experience (where they provide concepts and tools to manage the relationship among the different stakeholders involved), when projects get built (and their outcomes are used, inhabited, commented, criticized), before it all starts (and narratives shift the perception of the world, making it possible for certain attitudes to unfold). That of the architect is a profession increasingly bound to communication issues. Some awareness about textual tools is therefore strategic to run it, in both the traditional realm of environmental modification and the looming, immaterial scenarios of its virtualization. The Architectural design theory studio aims therefore to connect the architectural practices with the theories that mutually feed each other. The challenge is to keep together the approaches that attempt to produce scientific and technical generalizations with the ones crossed by more plural and open proliferative experimentations. In order to represent and make understand the plurality of possible theoretical approaches, seminars about key issues, including students and teachers of more parallel theory studios, can be organized. The studio teaching approach entails a hands-on method that will continuously involve students in exercises and activities.

Consistently with the syllabus, the Architectural design theory studio aims to train the following competencies: _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. In order to improve students’ abilities in integrating those critical skills in their design toolbox, this 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.

This studio will unfold 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. The teaching targets above mentioned will be addressed in as many exercises: _Comparative analysis. Students will investigate some presentation texts of projects selected for their clear relationship between textual and architectural form. _Exercises in style. Students will re-write a brief presentation text of one of the projects they designed in architectural studios so far attended by applying one or more writing strategies analysed in the previous exercise. _Patent office. Students will further elaborate on the project considered in the previous exercise according to the insight gained by the re-writing operation. Approaching the design process by the text should take those projects on different paths, asking for modifications or complete transformations of the design strategies and their outcomes. Texts and diagrams describing the new proposal will be arranged in an extremely concise form, as sort of patent office entries. _Role play. The results of the previous exercise will be further worked out keeping in mind possible targets among the many characters involved in the design process: politicians, public servants, clients, investors, consultants, activists, journalists, critics...

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, the first dedicated to lectures and the other to exercises’ presentations, elaboration, and critics. Exercises will ask for some homework, usually performed during a two 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 Architecture is about physical presence and teaching it remotely sounds as a sort of oxymoron. On the other hand, designing means believing in the possibility to understand, transform, and improve actual conditions. In case the pandemic emergency will last, this studio structure can be adapted to work on the Virtual classroom of the Politecnico or other similar platforms.

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 researches and interests. _Overviews Corbellini, Giovanni, Ex Libris: 16 Keywords of Contemporary Architecture (Siracusa: LetteraVentidue, 2019 [2008, 2015]). Corbellini, Giovanni, ‘Form Follows (Non)Fiction’, in Telling Spaces, ed. by Giovanni Corbellini, (Siracusa: LetteraVentidue, 2018). Corbellini, Giovanni, Lo spazio dicibile (Siracusa: LetteraVentidue, 2016, English version forthcoming). _Histories Carpo Mario, The Alphabet and the Algorithm (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011) Colomina, Beatriz, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994). Venturi Robert, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: MoMA, 1966). Vidler, Anthony, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992). _Cities Koolhaas, Rem, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978). Rowe Colin; Koetter Fred, Collage City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978). Venturi, Robert; Scott Brown, Denise; Izenour, Steven, Learning From Las Vegas, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977 [1972]). _Poetics Corbellini, Giovanni, Bioreboot: The architecture of R&Sie(n) (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009). Moneo, Rafael, Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004). Koolhaas, Rem; OMA; Mau, Bruce, S, M, L, XL, ed. by Jennifer Sigler (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995).

Slides;

Modalita di esame: Elaborato scritto individuale; Elaborato progettuale in gruppo;

Exam: Individual essay; Group 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. 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, which provides orientation tools rather than first-hand knowledge). Those who didn’t attend the whole studio’s activities will add to the mandatory three books other volumes collected in the same bibliography for an amount of at least one hundred pages for each exercise skipped (self-evaluation and peer reviews included). These extra books must include ‘Ex Libris: 16 Keywords of Contemporary Architecture’. Grading criteria will include the following skills: _Curiosity, or the attitude to spontaneously delve into 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 (which include the capacity to draw schemes and diagrams of the examples referenced). _Depth, or the ability to analyse and unfold specific issues. _Comparison, or the ability to manage different issues, ‘surfing’ the waves of the contemporary debate. Plainly repeating passages of the books read doesn’t guarantee good marks.

Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilita o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unita Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione piu idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.