Theory of architecture

Research focus

The Peer review has evaluated this group as Average

The general theme connecting the studies of the group’s members is the research about the principles on which found the architectural project. The research dealt by a concept of architectural design as a cognitive process with a rational basis, the idea of a necessary relationship of continuity between architecture and history, a realist vision and the compulsory modern condition of the project. Within the context of this tradition of studies, it is possible to research the principles of an architectural theory based on the idea of methodological continuity as defined by E.N.Rogers. The goal of the research, as the investigation’s instruments, are not historical and documentary. The aim is essentially operative; the instruments used are the critical analysis applied to examples identified in relation to the themes tackled and the architectural project, an occasion for in-depth study and verification applied to different locations and occasions. Keeping firmly in mind the principle that the plan is always, in its accomplishment, a non-divisible unit, the issues that, in our judgment, represented the central nodes of the discipline have been studied. In this last four-year period some subjects that emerged from a MIUR-cofin research from 1998, titled “Architecture theory considered as project’s basis”, have been studied in depth. - As to the general question of the method in architecture, that represents the red thread of the research, the hypotheses developed over the years have been verified through an analysis of various authors’s work, from the masters of the Modern Movement to the architects of the Milan’s School, and through examination projects and plans prepared as part of the didactic Laboratories. - The question of the definition of the theme and significance of buildings is closely linked to that of the relationship between architecture and location, urban type and form, building and context, idea of architecture and idea of city. If we consider the architectural plan as, essentially, an act of construction and transformation of a place, the problem of the urban significance of architecture, of the definition of the principles governing the development of the urban habitat and the instruments of analysis of a typological and morphological kind represent central elements of the analysis of architecture, and a primary goal of every project. 103 - The role of building in architectural design is a central issue tackled through various researches. The study is based on two conceptual categories that traditionally belong to different disciplines, namely architectural typology and structural typology; the aim is to clarify the role played by the construction with respect to the representative purposes of the architectural form, in which context the typological definition represents an essential element. This problem is studied first and foremost in relation to the public building and to civil architecture, to verify how the constructive choices, associated with the need to build halls with large spans, contribute to define an idea of architecture for community activities. - More specifically aesthetic questions, associated with the significance of the forms, the utility of the principle of decorum, the problem of representation and the expressiveness of the architectural form, are linked to this theme. Since the academic year of 2005 a part of the group is working in a research on the quality in architecture, aimed at circumscribing this notion that concerns the overall relationship between the different elements of the project, being hard to reduce to a mere application of regulations. A field of application shared by all research units is the residence’s theme that embodies all the problems and scales of intervention of the architectural plan. The local unit of Milan studies some examples of Milanese architecture through the analytical criteria outlined above: the residential neighborhoods planned and built in the years after World War II, that introduced a new idea of city building, closely related to the European experiments of the Modern Movement, animated by the discovery of the vital relationship with the history of places, sustained by an ethical ideality linked to the dramatic nature of the problems characterizing the postwar years, experimenters of a way to build parts of the city through types of residence and relationships with green areas, in search of new building techniques and a coherent, new “modern” and shared expressive form. - Another theme studied in depth by a part of the group concerns research on the relationships between architecture and city and in general on the city’s idea and on the issues related to the settlements’s shapes. On this theme, together with the main question related to the urban foundation’s studies, is kept special attention towards L. Hilberseimer’s work (for the contribution to architectural construction’s theory relevant for its sense and uptodateness) and to the nature of the long collaboration he had with L.Mies van der Rohe (in particular on the projects of Lafayette Park in Detroit and the IIT Campus in Chicago). Within the context of these researches, studies have been effectuated on the form of the territory and on the relationship between city and countryside applied to the Ticino area. These research themes, with particular attention to the methodological aspects, are applied to the projects on the themes of public constructions as university campuses, sports centers and schools.

Dipartimento di afferenza

Dipartimento di Progettazione dell’Architettura

Docenti afferenti

Full Professors
Antonio Monestiroli
Adalberto Del Bo
Associate Professors
Raffaella Neri
Assistant Professors
Martina Landsberger