Building engineering-architecture

CESIRA PAOLINI

The target of the class is to give to the students, attending the second year of “Building Engineering-architecture” course, the basic knowledge of materials and building techniques in architecture. The target is also to create a complete and coherent architectural-design. The course defines the systemic reading of the building and wants to show how every constructive choice has to be contextualized during the operative praxis of design. The technical and constructive knowledge are necessary - but are not enough - for the students to planning a building.

Students must possess the knowledge of secondary schools and of the discipline of architectural drawing.

The teaching is based on the combination of two methods: the traditional lessons ex catedra with practice and the design laboratory. In this way the student can rework the notions, these three didactic tools, combined and organized in a chronological order, want to let the student know, since the first approach, that the built is a global and cultural activity. The traditional cycle of lessons is divided in three parts. Initial lessons define the operational context and the construction process, then the idea of the building as a place responding to a set of needs and built in a certain context, physical and temporal, will be introduced. In particular the complex relations between building and technology will be analyzed.
The building sistem, as the anatomy of the building organism, will make possible to specify the relationship existing between the more properly aesthetic configurative aspects, the typological and distributive problems and the technical and constructive choise.
The identification of the building as a system and the analysis of its parts is the introduction to the processes of construction, that are the results of conscious choices made for the realization of the building. In particular are analyzed these building processes and elements: load bearing walls framework, framed structures, floors, horizontal and vertical clousures, internal partition, vertical connection elements.
In the learning process the application stage is organized in two different and closely connected moments: practice and design laboratory. During the practice moment, the student can test the constructive feasibility of a generic living unit using different system as: masonry walls and reinforced concrete frames. In the design studio the student defines all the technical-constructive choices for a single-family house and verifies the details of the design, testing also in an operative way the practice building of the forecast architectural-design.

To the knowledge of topics covered in the lessons, we recommend the following resources:
E. Mandolesi, Edilizia 1, ed. Utet 1979
E. Allen, I fondamenti del costruire, Mc Graw-Hill 1990
M. Salvadori, R. Heller, Le strutture in architettura, ETAS Libri 1992
M. Pugnaletto, ­ Guida al corso di architettura tecnica 1 ­ parte prima: principi complessi per la sicurezza statica, principi per il comfort ambientale, principi per la percezione della forma, ed. Artigiana Multistampa 2004

Additional educational materials are distributed during lectures.
On website of Architettura Tecnica I, I° Canale, by e-learning platform of Sapienza - Moodle 2, didactic materials in .pdf are present.

The attendance at the course is optional, while attendance at the Design studio is compulsory.

To access the exam, students must have taken the exam of “Architectural drawing I with studio" and to have attended the design design studio. The knowledge acquired will be verified through the evaluation of the design papers produced in the design studio phase and through an interview on the topics developed during the course.
The assessment of the student will take into account the overall knowledge of the topics covered during the course and the project carried out during the design studio , as well as the elaborated products related to the phase of the exercises.