Abstract:

This research concerns the Education of the students during the first experiences in Architectural and Urban design project. The aim of this text to illustrate the activity of urban design by defining and describing a process.

The 'process'
I think that the growing of an architect is a pedagogical action, that “it has to be specific from the beginning of the studies, because in it there are concentrated potential energies, necessary for future developments ”.
In this sense the process is a knowledge path, a long and complex itinerary that has theoretical and practical roots and that is both an artistic and technical task, in which the construction of places is the true aim of the work.
This process is neither linear nor progressive and it is contended between the words and the things, the reason and the vision, the technical severity and the aesthetical content of an artistic work. Finally the process is founded on the learning of a branch, on the researching of principles, rules and tools able to stimulate the mind and to lead it towards a final outcome.
That means to reflect the validity of the traditional theoretical operators, interpretative models and operative instruments, that nowadays are debated about owing to transformations of the housing practices and of the obsolescence of traditional models.
This is a very difficult task for us; but I think that every project process needs still today theoretical concepts, methodological procedures and practical tools, to orient the root of the student towards the final outcome, that is the architectural project. These elements are today fragile and temporary, but not for this reason they are dead.
A 'model'
The structure of the model that I want to propose could be divided into three different steps:
-the education of the 'view', that means for a student in Architecture to recognize, the physical places, to be able to give them a name, to describe them with suitable categories , to value the qualities and the hierarchies and, finally, to know the different layers that belong to places and the various patterns of the urban textures;
- the language of ‘comprehension’, that is the second important step in the teaching of the urban project, because it is an action that requires the use of ‘languages of translation’, that are able to value and select the things that we have just seen.
For this reason this phase is prefigurative and prescriptive. Only an oriented language, gives us the possibility to define a deep relationship between ‘idea’ and ‘shape’ of the elements to design;
-the act of ‘composition’, that is a necessary moment to verify the issues previously faced. This phase is important because needs correct tools that are able to orient the architect’s intention to the construction of the architectural dispositive. In other words it is founded on the real experience that includes both the technical field and the artistic action. It’s language is specifically oriented to the organization of the spatial forms and to the various ways to inhabit them.
A process model applied to urban design is an important way of managing the internal dynamics of a project. It is a means to help the designers in their role of project manager. A role which is to plan, to control and to co-ordinate a project form in terms of utility, function and quality, in relationship with the resources of the territory and the expectations of all the people involved directly and indirectly.

Keywords:

kowledge, theory, process, categories, methodologies, instruments, architecture.