Università Roma Tre

Students (individual or in groups of two) will be involved in the project of a small public building - a museum - in the former slaughterhouse in Testaccio. The museum architecture, beyond its specialized aspects, appears particularly well qualified to experience the first approach to a complex building, for its aesthetic and functional constraints, for the presence of different uses, and for his close relationship with public space. From this point of view, locating in the former slaughterhouse is focusing on familiarity that students have with the place, in order to implement the project with the experience already acquired in terms of measures and use of space, as well as relationships with the urban context.
We will alternate lectures, focus upon individual design aspects, laboratory work, exercises on specific issues, with the aim to advance the student's architectural skills and the representation / presentation of their ideas. There will be periodic connections and shared experiences with the two parallel courses.

- Patricia Cummings Loud, Louis I. Kahn. I musei, Electa, Milano 1997.
- Giovanni Longobardi, Musei. Manuale di progettazione, Mancosu, Roma 2007.

The Studio will focus on an Architectural Design of building of medium scale and complexity. The students will be asked to pay attention to the tectonic components of its architectural space, but at the same time start to focus on a critical relationships with the urban environment and with open spaces.

F. Cellini, Manualetto. Norme tecniche, costruttive e grafiche per lo svolgimento di una esercitazione sul tema della casa unifamiliare, Città Studi, Milano, 1991
F. Venezia, Le opere, gli scritti, la critica, Electa, Venezia, 1998
K. Frampton, Tettonica e architettura. Poetica della forma architettonica nel XIX e XX secolo. Skira, Milano, 2005

Presentation of the project theme
Re-functionalization project of a pavilion of the Ex-Mattatoio complex in Testaccio (Rome) for the construction of exhibition spaces and specialized laboratories of the Department of Architecture (Laboratory for the realization of models and prototypes) with adjoining work spaces for students architects. The design experience is linked to the field of research relating to architecture for culture (in particular buildings for university education and museums), to the regeneration of public space, to the relationship between history and design.

Functional program:
- Exhibition space for models and prototypes made by student architects.
- Specialized Models and Prototypes Laboratory: workshop equipped with the instrumental resources for the creation of models and prototypes.
- Rooms for the design and production of models and prototypes: individual work spaces and for small groups of student architects.
- Atrium, connective (including staircase and elevator) and relationship spaces.
- Offices for the control and management of the specialist laboratory.
- Male / female toilets, complying with the legislation for accessibility to all.
- Storage and technical room.

Didactic setting
The teaching of the Laboratory will be based on the relationship between the typicality of formal / functional organizations and the uniqueness of physical contexts, proposing an idea of form as a result and not as an end. In the design exercise of a medium-sized building, the student will be confronted with the architectural manifestation of the institution, with the organization of public, semi-public, private spaces and functions, with the collective and individual dimension of living. The creative process will then be experienced through the dialectic between the peculiarities of the places and the principles that govern the formal genesis of architecture (the typological structure, the interaction between activities, the technical and constructive dimension).

Contents

The place as text
• The shape of the soil
• Quality of the physical environment: climate, exposure, lighting
• Spatial relationships and scale relationships: near/far/around; big/small
• Serial systems and emergencies; basic and specialized construction
• Public, semi-public, private spaces, proximity conditions

Living in space
• Functional program
• Elements of anthropometry and ergonomics
• Sensory experience and orientation: hearing, seeing, touching, measuring
• Distribution system and served/serving relationship
• Collective and individual spaces

The conformative process
• Ordering principles of space: central space and verticalism; longitudinal space and structure of the path; grid space and modularity; labyrinth and multi-directional space; grouped configuration of rooms; free configuration.
• Principles of settlement: continuity/discontinuity
• Tectonics and structural logic: subtract/root/suspend; wall/trilite; continuous/discontinuous; linear/point; introvert/extrovert; ground attack/development/crowning
• Order of movement: access/walk; travel/stay; limits/thresholds; slow/fast movement; relationship between path and goal
• Looking through architecture: looking/sighting; see/glimpse; light and spatial orientation; the window as a frame, as a joint, as a membrane and as a living space; stay under the light/go towards the light.

Arnheim, R. (1885). Arte e percezione visiva, Feltrinelli
Ching F.D.K. (2015). Architettura: forma, spazio e ordine, Hoepli
Emery, N. (2007). L'architettura difficile. Filosofia del costruire, Christian Marinotti ed.
Focillon, H. (2002). Elogio della mano, Einaudi
Forty, A. (2004). Parole e edifici, Pendragon
Frampton, K. (1999). Tettonica e architettura, Skira
Pareyson, L. (1988). Estetica. Teoria della formatività, Bompiani
Vitta, M. (2008). Dell'abitare. Corpi spazi oggetti immagini, Einaudi