Università Roma Tre

The Architectural Construction Laboratory addresses the technological design of buildings by combining the aspects inherent to their technological definition with those related to user needs, construction, and environmental sustainability. The contents are defined with the aim of making students exercise both in the application of knowledge already acquired on materials and construction techniques and in the study of innovative technological solutions aimed at environmental design towards Nearly Zero Energy Buildings.
Through exercises with an increasing degree of complexity, the Laboratory deals with the design from the technological and constructive point of view of the main elements (structure, envelope, roof, wall, etc.), due to their structural and energy-environmental behavior, of materials employees and related building techniques.
The Laboratory is organized in didactic units:
• UD1 (1st part) _ The technological system: performance approach of technological design, classification of the technological system, building process.
• UD2 (1st part) _ The elements of the technological system: technological characteristics of the elements of the building structure, ground connection, vertical and horizontal envelope, in relation to the expected figurative outcomes consistent with the project.
• UD3 (2nd part) _The requirements and constructive configurations of the technological system: constructive and functional conception based on the main requirements (accessibility, fire safety, and equipment).
• UD4 (2nd part) _The building and the context: environmental characteristics, functional structures, and bioclimatic behavior of the building.
• UD5 (3rd part)_The construction nodes: technological design of the most important nodes, designed to represent the relationship and the technical-constructive feasibility of the elements of the structure and the envelope, vertical and horizontal.
The experience of the school building site is an integral part of the Architectural Construction Laboratory and will take place in the months of May-June at the Training Center for Building Masters in Rome and Province in Pomezia.

Allen E., I fondamenti del costruire, Milano 1997
Arbizzani E., Tecnologia dei sistemi edilizi. Progetto e costruzione, Rimini 2011
Deplazes A., Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures, Birkhäuser Basel 2006
Marrone P., Morabito G., La tecnologia che serve agli architetti. Come si costruisce oggi e (forse si costruirà) domani, Firenze 2008
Marrone P., Morabito G., La tecnologia che serve agli architetti 2. L’attacco a terra, Firenze 2010
Marrone P., Morabito G., La tecnologia che serve agli architetti 3. La struttura, Firenze 2011
Marrone P., Morabito G., La tecnologia che serve agli architetti 4. L’involucro, Firenze 2014
Marrone P., Morabito G., La tecnologia che serve agli architetti 4. La copertura, Firenze 2016
Manuali di Progettazione edilizia, Milano, 1995 e la serie Grande Atlante dell’Architettura, Utet.

The aim of the course is to provide all the appropriate tools for students to manage design relations between materials, building elements, working techniques, requirements and regulations involved since the concept design. All that fully aware of the strong link between typological-stylish features and technological-architectural ones of the building conceived as a whole of interrelated and organized parts, according to a systemic and performance design approach.

Watts A., Modern Construction Handbook, Springer, Vienna and New York, 2001

The Architectural Construction workshop will adopt the design choices already developed in the Architectural Design course during the first semester. The students' work will be oriented to deepen technological and environmental solutions that help to define an adequate relationship of the building with the environmental context, and a structural concept consistent with the functional and spatial organization, with solutions aimed at construction, and meeting the requirements of accessibility and fire safety. The initial project, defined in its functional, dimensional and structural characteristics, will be revisited and deepened from a technological and environmental point of view.

The Architectural Construction workshop therefore deals with a design of the main elements of the technological system of a building as defined by the Italian standard UNI 8290 through the study and representation in detail of the most significant technical aspects of the project.

Once granted the basic notions on materials, the technological culture of design, the instruments for the management of the building process and the design of construction systems and techniques, the course addresses the contents of the Technology of Architecture, whose scientific-disciplinary contents concern the theories, tools and methods aimed at an experimental architecture at different scales, based on the evolution of settlement uses, of the constructive and environmental concept, as well as of the techniques of transformation of the built environment, with explicit reference to design approaches and strategies useful for balancing the complex relationship between user, environment and technology.

Goals and organization of the course
The Architectural Construction workshop addresses the issues of ecological and energy efficiency of the contemporary architectural project, defining criteria, methods and tools oriented towards the integrated conception of typological, structural and technological solutions. In the course, students will practice both in the application of the knowledge already acquired in the first year on materials and construction techniques, and in the study of new technological solutions aimed at an environmental technological design. The technological / constructive aspects of the project will therefore be studied in depth through the understanding and design experimentation of the construction process of architectural forms, in particular through the correct use of technological systems, innovative and eco-sustainable components and materials, and the environmental sustainability of the intervention through the adoption of solutions and techniques aimed at: energy efficiency, energy production, comfort and safety.
The primary objective of the Laboratory is therefore to provide the knowledge necessary for the technological and environmental control of the design, construction and management process of architecture, highlighting the dialectic between the environmental setting of the project, technical choices and expressive purposes of architecture, through the deepening and application of "integrated design" methods, tools and techniques, understood as a unitary design process capable of managing the many specialisms of contemporary design.
At the end of the course, students must have acquired the ability to control the project from the initial to the executive phase of defining the construction solutions with reference to the phases of the building process and the entire life cycle of the building.

Arbizzani, E. (2021), Progettazione tecnologica dell’architettura, Maggioli Editore
Manuali di Progettazione edilizia (1995) e la serie Grande Atlante dell’Architettura, Utet