Architecture Preservation Studio

The built heritage can play a key role in the transformation processes: learn to recognize and understand the value of all stratifications represents the first step to activate a “care process”. Search a correct balance between preservation and transformation is the first way to guarantee to the existing buildings an active role in the contemporary city, without compromising the deep identity. The complexity of the issues involved requires an “holistic” approach and an interdisciplinary view, able to promote focused intervention strategies and a continuous interaction with different expertise, where the architect is in charge of the overall direction.

In the Architecture Preservation Studio the students are requested to assume this central role, managing the issues related to the knowledge (through the geometrical survey, the structural analysis, the recognition of the materials and main decays problems) and using them to develop a conscious and respectful project. The goal of the course is to give to the students the essential tools necessary to acquire and experiment a methodological process where the focus point is represented by the building and its uniqueness. The three disciplines involved of Restoration (Architectural Restoration), Construction Science (Reliability and Vulnerability) and Topography (Site survey, Setting out and Monitoring) will work together by testing, on a practical case study, theories and practical aspects, leading the student to work on an architectural project that requires managing different tools and techniques.