Abstract:

Introduction:
During the a.y 20/21, the catalogue of elective courses of the Bachelor degree in architecture (Politecnico di Torino, Italy) has been increased to provide students with up-to-date educational opportunities. Geometrical modelling in architecture is one of them. It is an interdisciplinary class, held by Authors, based on an integrated approach between drawing (Icar/17) and geometry (Mat/03). The main goal is to offer a critical analysis of architecture by means of geometry, here intended as a shared and common language between the two scientific approaches (Pavignano et al. 2020; Cumino et al. 2021).

Educational framework:
The class runs between theoretical and applied approaches to geometrical shapes and architectural representation: all its activities are supported by and lead to designing of physical and digital models. The class offers an introduction to some prototyping techniques: origami and paperworks (Cumino et al. 2015), LBM laser cut (Tagliari & Florio 2013), FDM 3D print (Bertola et al. 2021).
The educational approach is problem-solving/hands-on/learning-by-prototyping based and benefits from ex-cathedra lectures and practical sessions. It was developed to enhance students’ critical selection of methodologies and tools, with specific regard to implementing maths (geometry) as a specific instrument for architectural shape reading: to use the interdisciplinary language of geometry for study, interprete, represent and share the architectural shape, using and designing proper physical and digital artefacts too.

Course development:
Due to the spread of COVID-19 pandemy, in a.y 20/21 the class was held online, losing the opportunity to work directly with our students. The learning-by-prototyping practical approach was mediated by the internet.
Students were asked to analyse and communicate different buildings and to represent them with physical and digital models. They were able to directly prototyping only origami and paperworks models, hence, teachers supported students with LBM and FDM models prototyping, becoming moderators between students’ projects and machines.
Students worked on 3 exercises: designing/modelling an origami related to a chosen architecture (OA), team analysing/modelling (physical and digital) of the St. Coletta School by M. Graves (AM), digital and physical modelling of 1 of 5 architectures by F. L. Wright.
The evolution of pandemy led us to redesign the course that is now ‘on going’ in presence. In this paper we want to expose the challenge we undertake to redesign a workshop-like course into an online one and then to critically compare the difference between a.ys 20/21 and 21/22. Moreover, we will compare the mediation process of a.y 20/21 with the direct approach to educational topics of the current one.

Discussion and conclusions:
In this paper we discuss limits and potentialities of the first approach to rapid prototyping where students completely missed the possibility to interact with machines to validate their critical workflows. We will focus on some exercises, highlighting potentialities and weaknesses of this workflow and we will compare online schedules/exercises with the onsite ones, evaluating if online didactics have strengthened the onsite one.
We will support our analysis with successful students’ reports on the course, who expressed their opinion on the online-based learning and provided some interesting feedback on their models, directly seen only during their examination.

Keywords:

Bachelor in Architecture, Geometry, Physical Models, Digital Models, Rapid Prototyping.