Abstract:

The goal of mathematics courses of the first year of the Degree in Architecture is not only providing students with the tools to deal with the other scientific courses but also increasing their spatial, creative and critical thinking. Not infrequently, however, in Italy these courses are considered by students as extraneous or marginal in their training and hard to pass.

Therefore, it is important to design activities suitable for engaging students in order to help them keep up with the lessons and appreciate mathematics, understanding its applications and creative potential in the field of architecture.

In this article we describe some activities that have been proposed to the first year students of the Degree in Architecture of the Politecnico di Torino, showing examples of the work done by the students and reporting some data on their involvement and appreciation for the proposed activities.

The activities were designed together with colleagues from the disciplines that characterize the type of degree (History of Contemporary Architecture and Architecture Design Studio). In particular, students had to describe the profile of a building (real or designed by them) using analytical functions and geometric elements. In this way, each student was free to choose the level of mathematical complexity of the exercise, and could freely express his creativity.

The history exercise involved a historical-architectural report on a building chosen by the student, with a mathematical description of the building's profile throughout a piecewise function. The final paper was presented to classmates, in the presence of the colleague of History of contemporary Architecture. The discussion also led to interesting observations about the relationship between the type of function used to describe the building, the designer, and the historical period.

The composition exercise instead involved students in designing a building for residential use, with particular attention to the roof, whose section was made through at least three different types of functions. Again, the mathematical discussion ran alongside the architectural discussion, in synergy with the colleagues of Architecture Design Studio.

The project obtained an excellent response of participation with more than 50% of freshmen; moreover 90% of these students passed the exam at the first call with good evaluations.

Keywords:

Mathematics, architecture, creativity, higher education.