International Workshop: Reading Faces, Reading Spaces 1
Component code / course code:
Semester: winter / summer
ECTS credits: 5
Lecture hours per week (SWS): 4
Lecturer: Prof. Luigiemanuele Amabile / Prof. Alberto Calderoni
Course language: English
Prerequisite: 2nd year students
Objectives (Learning Outcome): In this workshop, students will focus on constructing a series of conceptual models based on their lived experiences and known environments. The model will be understood as a tool for training and experimentation in the field of perceptual phenomena within the architectural field: configuration, form, space, and material. Each of these categories will correspond to a model at specific assigned scales (1:200, 1:50, 1:25, 1:5), realized with certain materials (light paper, cardboard, clay, mixed media) connected to the narrative aspects the model intends to structure.
The attempt will be to represent spaces from personal experience through these gestaltic categories by building models that offer an expressive synthesis.
Lecture topics (content): Perception forms the foundation of every design process. It emerges from individual observations, shaped by personal sensibility and experience. The ability to perceive spaces, situations, buildings, and projects—both real and imagined—plays a crucial role in every stage of design development. Architecture is experienced with all the senses, and the accumulation of these perceptions builds a reservoir of memories and references that can be drawn upon during the design process.
Rudolf Arnheim describes the experience we have of ourselves and our bodies as the first point of reference for explaining some fundamental characteristics of architecture that feed our perception: “the organization of our bodies is the form that determines our understanding of all physical bodies”. How can we read and understand architecture through our body? What paths are available to us? One of these can be the construction of physical models.
Teaching format (e.g. online/in person lecture/Seminar/Lab etc.):
Examination: Different sketches, models at specific assigned scales (1:200, 1:50, 1:25, 1:5), presentations
Examination criteria: Quality of the presentation and the depiction, quality of the models (design, character,
materiality)
