Caricamento in corso...
Architectural design theory B
01UYCWH, 01UYCLU, 01UYCPM, 01UYCWG
A.A. 2027/28
Course Language
Inglese
Degree programme(s)
1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Architettura (Architecture) - Torino
1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Architettura - Torino
1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Architettura - Torino
Course structure
| Teaching | Hours |
|---|
Lecturers
| Teacher | Status | SSD | h.Les | h.Ex | h.Lab | h.Tut | Years teaching |
|---|
Co-lectures
Context
| SSD | CFU | Activities | Area context | ICAR/14 | 6 | B - Caratterizzanti | Discipline della progettazione architettonica e urbana |
|---|
2025/26
'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.
Architectural Design Theory is a course focused on the realm of thinking in and about architecture. It engages with the cultural and theoretical discourse that surrounds architectural design, drawing from both textual and visual sources. Architecture, as discussed in the course, may be understood either as a built artifact or as a design process—both are legitimate objects of theoretical reflection.
The course uses foundational definitions (of theory, design, architecture, and the architectural) as starting points to define its scope. It recognizes that architectural thought can be conveyed through texts, drawings, diagrams, and other media, and aims to keep all of these facets in play—embracing the complexity of the discipline.
The studio will introduce students to key architectural thinkers through direct engagement with bibliographic sources. Students will analyze, contextualize, and critically reinterpret the ideas expressed by these authors, translating their theoretical positions into both conceptual and design outputs. Through this method, the course bridges critical reading with visual elaboration, fostering a deep and personal understanding of architectural theory.
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.
By the end of the course, students are expected to have developed:
• Literacy in architectural discourse: Understand the role and relevance of architectural theory, both historically and today. Ability to distinguish and navigate between architectural history, design theory, architectural theory, and criticism. Gain a broad overview of the history of theory, including key figures, texts, projects, and recurring themes. Appreciate the interplay between theory and practice, and recognize architecture’s connections with related disciplines such as art, philosophy, literature, history, and psychology.
• Critical positioning: Articulate similarities and differences between theoretical positions across different periods. Capacity to identify and adopt critical positions on key issues in architectural theory.
• Theoretical grounding of design: Ability to connect design choices to theoretical principles and explain those relationships clearly. Develop a basic but effective visual and verbal vocabulary for analyzing, interpreting, and critiquing architectural works.
• Discursive competence: Skills to produce texts that articulate the connections between program and project, between process and result. Developing the ability to read and write architectural ideas as structured sequences of operations.
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.
Students are expected to possess:
• Solid reading and writing skills (at least high school level)
• Basic critical thinking abilities
• Prior experience in architectural design, analysis, and communication
• Successful completion of the courses from previous years, in particular Architectural Design Studios and a course in History of Architecture.
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...
The course centers on the study of architectural theory through direct engagement with primary sources. The aim is to understand, reinterpret, and re-present the theoretical positions of selected authors through critical reading, collaborative analysis, and individual writing.
Architecture is approached as both a product (the built artifact) and a process (design as a method of thinking and making). Students will work in groups during the first phase of the course, analyzing texts and producing a group presentation and design proposal. The second phase focuses on individual critical writing, where each student will develop a short essay on the authors and topics presented by peers.
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.
Key activities include:
• Lectures and theoretical overviews
• Group workshops and design reviews
• Student presentations and critiques
• Visual elaborations and drawing exercises
• Writing workshops and essay feedback
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 Architectural Design Theory Studio carries six credits, corresponding to approximately 60 hours of in-class activity and 90 hours of independent work. The course typically runs over 13 to 14 weeks, with weekly sessions lasting four and a half hours. The course is divided into three parts: two of five weeks and a final one of two weeks. In-class activities include lectures and theoretical input, student presentations, project development, and critique. Assignments will involve homework, usually spanning four to five weeks, allowing students to manage their time alongside other coursework. Regular attendance is strongly encouraged.
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).
• Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein. 1977. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Allen, Stan. 1999. Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
• Anderson, Stanford. 2004. The Architecture of the Urban Historical Landscape. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Banham, Reyner. 1960. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. London: Architectural Press.
———. 1969. The Architecture of the Well Tempered Environment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Betsky, Aaron. 2003. Architecture Matters. Munich: Prestel.
• Carpo, Mario. 2011. The Alphabet and the Algorithm. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Cohen, Jean-Louis. 2011. Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War. Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture / New Haven: Yale University Press.
Cohen, Jean-Louis, and Ljiljana Markovskaia. 2020. Building a New New World: Amerikanizm in Russian Architecture. Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture / New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Colomina, Beatriz. 1996. Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2007. Domesticity at War. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Colomina, Beatriz, Ignacio G. Galán, Evangelos Kotsioris, and Anna-Maria Meister, eds. 2022. Radical Pedagogies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Colomina, Beatriz, and Mark Wigley. 2016. Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers.
• Foster, Hal. 2011. The Art-Architecture Complex. London: Verso.
• Forty, Adrian. 2000. Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson.
• Frampton, Kenneth. 2001. Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2020. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. 5th ed. London: Thames & Hudson.
———. 2021. The Other Modern Movement: Architecture, 1920–1970. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Frascari, Marco. 1991. Monsters of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli.
• Gleiter, Jörg H. 2012. Ornament Today: Digital Material Structural. Bozen-Bolzano: Bozen-Bolzano University Press.
• Goldhagen, Sarah Williams. 2017. Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives. New York: Harper.
• Hays, K. Michael. 1992. Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject: The Architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hays, K. Michael, ed. 2000. Architecture Theory Since 1968. 1st MIT Press paperback ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Ingraham, Catherine. 2016. Architecture, Animal, Human. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
• Koolhaas, Rem, et al. 2018. Elements of Architecture. Edited by Stephan Trüby et al. Cologne: Taschen.
• Krasny, Elke. 2023. Living with an Infected Planet: COVID-19, Feminism, and the Global Frontline of Care. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
• Leach, Neil. 1997. Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in the Philosophy of Architecture. London: Routledge.
———. 2000. The Anaesthetics of Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2022. Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction to AI for Architects. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
• Lokko, Lesley. 2006. White Papers, Black Marks: Architects, Culture, and Identity. New York: Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
• Lynch, Kevin. 1960. The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Norberg-Schulz, Christian. 1980. Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli.
• Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2005. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. 2nd ed. Chichester, UK: Wiley.
• Rowe, Colin, and Fred Koetter. 1978. Collage City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Tafuri, Manfredo. 1976. Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. Translated by Barbara Luigia La Penta. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 1980. Theories and History of Architecture. Translated by Giorgio Verrecchia. London: Granada.
• Wigley, Mark. 1993. The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2025. We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture. With contributions by Beatriz Colomina. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers.
• Yaneva, Albena. 2009. Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An Ethnography of Design. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers.
———. 2012. Mapping Controversies in Architecture. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
Slides;
Lecture slides;
Modalità 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 disabilità 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'Unità Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione più idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.
Exam: Individual essay; Group project;
Assignments
1. Group Project
Design an ideal house for an assigned architectural thinker. This "ideal" is not about perfection, but rather about embodying the core concepts, values, and theoretical perspectives of that thinker. The result can be conceptual or pragmatic, depending on the interpretation.
2. Individual Essay
Write a short critical essay based on one or more of the thinkers presented in class (by the instructor or by peers). The essay must go beyond summary, offering a personal, critical interpretation and argument. It can focus on a single author or compare multiple perspectives, as long as the structure remains coherent and the claims well-supported.
Assessment will be based on both the work completed throughout the course. Students will be evaluated on their participation in class activities, the quality of their deliverables.
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.