Categoria Atlas: Courses

  • Living in the laboratory

    «Education today is a great obsession. It is also a great necessity». It is not difficult to apply these words, which sparked debate in the 1960s and 1970s on the American educational process, when the right to education and the need to discuss teaching as a matter of social integration were urgent and deeply political…

  • Utilitas, firmitas and venustas

    Alberto Bologna in conversation with Andrea Valeriani AV: The first-year workshop is probably the most complex of all those that a teacher has to deal with during the course of study because it has the dual task of teaching students both a design method and the ability to represent and communicate it. How is your Workshop…

  • The first apprenticeship. Between doing and watching others do

    The Design Laboratory I welcomes a class of about 80 students enrolled in the first year of the three-year degree course in Architectural Sciences. The course is structured in two semesters with compulsory attendance, the first taught by Vincenzo Moschetti and the second by Fabio Balducci who, with the support of a group of tutors,…

  • The conditions for a “cours préparatoire”

    Times and numbers My first reaction concerns the number of students mentioned in the course description. Such a large number makes it difficult to assess the students’ progress – something I consider fundamental – or to carry out a fair evaluation or comparative analysis of the results. At the Politecnico di Milano, we have a…

  • Preparatory work and architectural design

    The development of a first-year architectural design workshop programme is in itself a fundamental undertaking. Not only because it represents the student’s first “encounter” with the design experience, but also because, as the term “workshop” suggests, it requires the transmission of knowledge that is not linear in nature. Rather, it is made up of trials,…

  • Material Typologies

    Luigiemanuele Amabile in conversation with Tina Gregoric. What does it mean to place material conditions at the origin of architectural education? In this interview, Tina Gregoric presents the design studio as a framework that resists standardisation and must be recalibrated each time in relation to the site, the topic and the scale. Within the condensed…

  • Form is not enough

    Luigiemanuele Amabile in conversation with Bernadette Krejs. The architectural design studio is at a critical juncture. As the field of architecture confronts its role in ecological collapse and social inequity, traditional pedagogical approaches centred on form and individual authorship are increasingly being seen as insufficient. Bernadette Krejs of the Institute of Housing and Design at…

  • Precision and experimentation in the design studio

    Luigiemanuele Amabile in conversation with Mikael Bergquist Mikael Bergquist envisages the design studio as a shared environment in which architectural knowledge is developed through small groups, pair work and the consistent use of a designated space. At KTH in Stockholm, social issues, materials, technology, sustainability, and working with existing structures are considered alongside the discipline’s…

  • Teaching, conflicts, ecology

    Maria Masi in conversation with Miguel Mesa del Castillo Clavel. MM: Your work moves between architectural design, academic research, and intensive teaching activity, and is marked by a consistent interest in the relationship between space, ecologies, and society. How do these experiences influence the structure of your courses, and what relationships do they weave between…

  • The studio in numbers

    The role of the design studio within architecture schools is characterized by a dual identity. On one hand, it is a foundational and strongly constitutive element of the educational offering for students, who find in the laboratory the opportunity to engage and challenge themselves with the discipline of design. The design laboratory, in fact, defines…