OBSERVE, UNDERSTAND AND REPRESENT AN ARCHITECTURAL SHAPE: METHODOLOGICAL AND PRACTICAL APPROACHES

Geometry is something that you can begin to learn from what surrounds you. It is possible to find geometry everywhere, the problem is “can you ‘see’ it?”

In this article I will introduce the learning path to teach the fundamentals of Descriptive Geometry that over the years I have built for first-year students of the different courses of study in architecture at the Polytechnic of Turin. I had the opportunity to teach the same discipline in different fields of study with very different addresses (industrial design, graphic and virtual design, history and conservation of architectural heritage and environment, architecture, design parks and landscapes),so had to calibrate language and applications in order that they were contextual.

Each message is mediated between sender and receiver hence teaching has to take account not only the context within which is delivered but also the cultural background of the students. My first lesson of each corse is a 'game', the wording of the hidden form: two students must describe to their classmates a physical real object that only they can see and the other have to represent it. They are allowed to use only geometric terms and not to talk by similarities with known forms. Specifically, the object I propose to describe is an irregular pentagonal prism section (and its description greatly depending on the cultural formation of the players). After many attempts his 'home-type' shape is recognized but not yet the object because they lack a lot of more information. The fact is that the concept of form goes beyond the geometry of its volume and beyond other parameters involved -the dimension, the mechanism, the material- all elements useful to the understanding of the shape in its broadest sense.

To build a common language becomes here essential and to evaluate his effectiveness in each contexts. Choice of activities, language and of the verification mode must then be calibrated because it constitutes a sufficiently fluid common base to be transversal to the respective subsequent characterizations. There are different teaching models, the chosen one uses practical experience leading to theoretical acquaintance with also a new way to observe and think or, as said a young participant at the workshop for college students and kindergarten children, a 'new pair of eyes'.

Starting from the orthographic projections it is important to teach not only to represent what exists and it shows but also to plan where to place other elements in a space already defined and partly busy: the main goal is to develop the ability to visualize space. For example, the lesson on rotation surfaces is followed by applications ranging from vaults to trees, from a particular technology to a design object. Having regard to the specific complexity, a simple exercise of physical modeling (a cut orange that by cutting planes will became a sail vault and its peel, with outer orange coloring as like the estradosso and its insider lighter color as the intradosso) allows us to understand and to see those basic geometries (axis of rotation, section planes perpendicular to the axis, section planes to which belongs the axis) that will subsequently be identified in their own context and the fruit becomes tangible geometry.