Advanced capability to:

− Elaborate functional programs of buildings and urban spaces.

− Operate upon, and preserve, restore and repair the built heritage.

− Write architectural critiques.

− Design and execute urban sketches and urbanization, gardening, and landscape projects.

− Apply urban regulations.

Advanced capability to produce, carry out, and develop:

− Sketches, first developments, Basic Projects.

− Urban Projects

Advanced knowledge of:

− General theories about form, composition and architectural types.

− General history of architecture.

− Study methods of symbolisation processes, practical functions, and ergonomics.

− Study methods of social necessity, life quality, habitability and basic living programs.

− Ecology, sustainability, and the principles of conservation of energetic and environmental resources.

− Architectural, urban and landscape traditions of the western culture, and its technical, climatic, economical, social fundamentals.

− The relationship between the cultural patterns and social responsibilities of the architect.

− The basis of vernacular architecture; urban sociology, theory, economy and history.



TARGETS

− Be able to understand the morphology and topography of the site, as well as its context, and be able to draw conclusions and identify clues in order to develop an architectural project.

− Identify the natural features of the site (nature, rivers, sea, hills...), and their influence on the project.

− Pay attention to the sun position and take advantage of it (as much as possible) in the project.

− Identify facings and sights that may influence the project’s position.

− Be able to understand the way the site and its environs are used (main fluxes, passing areas, places of repose, cars, pedestrians, sounds/noises).


− Be able to understand the characteristics of urban spaces and nearby buildings (architectural styles, heights, uses, materials...) and determine their influence upon the project.

− Be able to value the buildings in the site and decide whether to maintain them partially. In the event of maintaining any of these elements, be able to achieve the most accurate planimetric information, their geometry, materials... that could allow the restoration of the maintained elements.

− Be able to analyze and make a critical analysis of a public building program.

− Achieve the proper knowledge to engage a determined project and be able to understand its problems and what is important to take into account.

− Acquire the ability to understand the lesson that lies in the pre-existence (both natural and built) of the site in which student is going to “work” on.

The target will be to recognize in the site history the principles of the existing building, and of its evolution, necessary information in order to operate properly on it.

− Acquire, from the architectures analyzed in class, skills that would allow the architect to confidently address the architectural project.


The aim is that the student could recognize, according to the circumstances of the particulars of the analyzed architectures, a kind of timeless and useful lesson for the incoming projects/exercises.

The topics to be developed in “architecturalDesign9” will have a double feature. First, they will consist of restoration and/or renovation of the existing heritage – urban and architectonic patrimony. Second, they are going to become a landscape intervention.

According to that, the specific sites in which the projects/exercises will take place will share a double condition: they will be in the historical city centre, and, at the same time, in a sense, will have a natural feature as well.

Projects/exercises will be proposed in determined sites in which the city still has “open- problems” caused by several historical circumstances and that have not reached a precise solution suitable to the city ́s personality, and therefore, are to be improved.


They would be projects that could be called:

− Reconstruction of the site.

− That will need different architectural types, public and private, 
dealing with urban and complex places.

In this last year of Bachelor in Architectural Fundamentals, “architecturalDesign9”
 we understand that working in urban places, with those formerly explained characteristics come along with the complexity every student should have at 9th semester.

City is the framework in which the life of a determined society takes place, this framework is formed by the architecture and public spaces this society demands in each moment.

The character of each city comes from the stratification over time of this architecture and public spaces, along with some other elements, such as nature, topography, climate, light…

Character understood as its own distinctive atmosphere, also called “âme de la cite”.

Character that keeps on being and the students´ new project has to appropriate it, reinterpreting it from the new circumstances in which it is produced. This is exactly the influence the city has upon its own architectures.



THEORETICAL CLASSES

− Introduction to the program and the site of the exercise of the semester,

− The site construction, the public space.

− The nature of the site and the architecture. Learning from the site and its impact on the project.

− The reconstruction of the site.

− Public space and architecture.

− Individual & collective.

− Architectural language and the historic city.

− Architectural materiality and the historic city.

− Abstraction and figurativeness in architecture.

− Utility in architecture. 
The question for utility in architecture.

− The natural and the architectural. Site and cultural landscape.

The architectural project is made as a creative synthesis of diverse materials, heterogeneous to each other.

To deal with this complexity, an adequate methodology will become necessary to apply during the process, as a guarantee to achieve a valid result.

This methodological and discursive capacity is something to be developed by the student and will allow the student to get involved in the project and use and interpret wisely its diverse materials.

The evaluation of student ́s work will be done mostly upon the acquired and demonstrated architectural knowledge more than the “creativity” that she/he possesses.

To be able to evaluate, it is important to have a real knowledge of his everyday work in the table/pc corrections made in every determined exercise/project.

This on-deck/pc evaluation is based on the belief that a number of corrections are enough to make an accurate idea of the attitude of the student towards the work, his ongoing willingness and maturation after every correction, as well as his willingness to learn instead of passing.

The evaluation will be continuous, and based on the exercises/projects, tests, and works to be done during the semester classes.

The proposed exercise will be developed in two stages. First as a group, and second individually, and will consist of the development of the work (graphic and written) as well as the public exposition of this work to be carried out by the student at the end of the semester.



Graphics and written will comprise 50% of the qualification (25% group work, 25 individual), whereas the public speech will be the 20%.
 Discussions and debates, individual or in group, about topics from the analyzed examples that have arisen in class, as well as the proposed written exercises about them, will comprise 30% of the qualification.

Resignation:

Student could resign the evaluation call by sending an application to the teacher in charge of the subject in a period no shorter than ten days before the starting day of the official period of exams.

The project/work will begin by picking, elaborating and organizing the information related to the problems of the existing building and site, by a series of consecutive operations of analysis and valuations of the different options, taking into account the influence these sequential operations may have upon the project/exercise, and its interest when decision are to be taken.

Afterwards it comes the designing process itself, the synthesis, the moment the form arises, the moment that can be already called “architecture”. Synthesis that happens mostly in a special environment created by certain conditions as a result of the interaction in between the specific materials of the architecture as a discipline, the starting conditions of the exercise (site and program) and, on the other hand, the choice of the material, construction... both in a continuous series of creative < > critic.

Coming to terms with that methodology will be the main way of evaluation of the students´ exercises/works, first in group, and after as individual.

The exercise will be complemented with lectures on some historical architectures somehow related to the ongoing work/project.

Some levels of discussion are searched in the working group, and the comprehension of those discussed topics and the level acquired by every student will be verified individually by some writing tests.

COMPULSORY USING MATERIALS.

key: TA: workshop

Kind of teaching

in-site teaching hours

not-presential student working hours

Basic bibliography

A. Annoni. Scienza ed arte del restauro architettonico. Edizione Framar. Milano

G. C. Argan. Progetto e destino. Il Saggiatore. Alberto Mondadori Editore.

R. Arnheim. La forma visual de la arquitectura. G.G. Barcelona

E. G. Asplund. Escritos 1906/1940. El Croquis Editorial. Madrid.

A. Behne. La construcción funcional moderna. Serbal. Barcelona

A. Borie, P. Micheloni, P. Pinon. Forme et deformation. E. N. de Beaux Arts.

Le Corbusier. Vers une architecture. Vincent, Freal & Cie. Paris.

G. Cullen. El paisaje urbano. Editorial Blume

F. Choay. Alegoría del patrimonio. G.G. Barcelona.

A. Choisy. Histoire de l’architecture. Bibliothèque de l’Image.

C. De Seta, J. Le Goff, (eds). La ciudad y las murallas. Cátedra.

G. Doyon et R. Hubrecht. Architecture rurale & bourgeoise en France. Dominique Vincent et Cie, Editeur.

G. Giovannoni. L’urbanisme face aux villes modernes. Editions du Seuil. Paris

G. Grassi. Arquitectura lengua muerta y otros escritos. E. del Serbal. Barcelona

K. Gruber. Forme et caractère de la ville allemande. AAM. Editions.

E. A. Gutkind. International history of city development. The Free Press. New York.

W. Hegemann, E. Peets. Arte civil. Fundación Caja de Arquitectos. Barcelona

A. Loos. Ornamento y delito. G.G. Barcelona.

K. Lynch. La imagen de la ciudad. Infinito. Buenos Aires

J. Maderuelo. El paisaje, génesis de un concepto. Abada editores.Madrid

A. Maniglio. Architettura del paesaggio, evoluzione storica. Calderini. Bologna.

P. Marconi. Il restauro e l’architetto. Saggi Marsilio. Venezia.

A. Marson. Archetipi di territorio. Alinea Editrice. Firenze

C. Martí Arís. Las variaciones de la identidad. E. del Serbal. Barcelona

L. Mies van der Rohe. Escritos, diálogos y discursos. COAAT. Murcia

A. Monestiroli. L’Architettura della realtà. Clup. Milano.

M. Morini. Atlante di storia dell’urbanistica. Hoepli. Milano

L. Mumford. La ciudad en la historia. Ediciones Infinito Buenos Aires.

C. Norberg Schulz. Genius loci. Electa. Milano

A. Rossi. La arquitectura de la ciudad. G.G. Barcelona

C. Rowe, F. Koetter. Ciudad-collage. G.G. Barcelona.

C. Sitte. L’art de batir les villes. L’Équerre. Paris

M. Tafuri. Teorías e historia de la arquitectura. Laia. Barcelona.

R. Venturi. Complejidad y contradicción en arquitectura. G.G. Barcelona.

E. Viollet le Duc. Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française. F. De Nobele. Paris.

E. Viollet le Duc. Entretiens sur l’architecture. Mardaga. Bruxelles

B. Zevi. Saber ver la arquitectura. Poseidón. Buenos Aires