Simply design a home. this is the sense of "Just a House".
"Simply".?! Needless to say, it's not a difficult word. It is one of the first concepts that one learns to express in a language, and we often resort to it. Nevertheless, the etymology and the articulations of its meaning deserve some consideration.
The etymology tells us that the simple is not an origami, folded a thousand times in a studied way: instead it is something bent only once. But why should the fundamental image be that of the folded-one-time-only and not that of the un-folded instead? It would seem more logical. But this image of the single fold is very eloquent: the simple is not something already square, clear, that you understand by itself, without any effort. The simple is something that is not difficult to open to one's own knowledge, but which must be opened.
A simple person we imagine it sober, that lives in a frugal way and without too many pretensions or soaring talents: a qualification that oscillates between the value and the defect. A simple message is ready for understanding. but it is ready to understand those who know and understand it thanks to their sensitivity acquired through knowledge. For example, simple understandings as medicinal herbs are the basis for complex pharmaceutical compounds: in themselves they contain few principles, clear to the science of those who have studied them. Alchemy. !!!
Perhaps it is in this sense that the appreciation of "simple things" is to be reassessed, as is usual to say, be they pleasures, feelings, habits: to exercise understanding, to understand the secret of the folds of the world.
. And if you can not open a folded sheet in half, you'll never know how to make an origami.
ON ARCHITECTURE:
". the time has come for architecture to recognize its nature, to understand that it derives from life and has as its purpose life as we live it today, to be therefore an intensely human thing ... "
Frank Lloyd Wright, Autobiography, 1932
If you can not draw a square you will not know how to draw 100! You will not know how to dial. Drawing a square or circle in a sheet presumes to know how to decide the proportions of a figure in a frame. Black on the white sheet. Munari thought was.
The composition is based on exactness that are the result of experience and knowledge, only then is acquired that sensitivity that allows the gesture of a hand to move freely, keeping the rules under control. In this case, a house is a small architecture, governed by numerous rules: functional, constructive, economic, eco-environmental, and aesthetic at the end.
The house is the street where we would like to walk, the square where we would like to stop, the shelter where to rest, the fire near which to warm up, where to eat, laugh, joke. But it is also the place through which we occupy a part of the city or territory. It manifests itself to others and represents us. he is at the same time a guest of the city and hospitable towards him.
The course aims to put students in a position to have the right attitude in front of the famous white sheet.
In this sense, the references will be fundamental as an exercise in knowledge and quotation. Architectures and architects will be put back into play, although recognized masters have not been taken into great consideration within the schools of architecture, if not from historical courses, probably because they are not very academic and can not be traced back to language and style.
This is the case of Frank Lloyd Wright, rather than characters like John Lautner, or Neutra, Shindler, and many others.
ON BEAUTY:
"... Beauty always follows from a total fullness of the nature of expression: which is an intrinsic expression. Never the excess should be confused with exuberance ... who knows this difference between excess and exuberance, feels the nature of the poetic principle ... the more a horse is a Horse; a bird, Bird; a man, a man; a woman, Donna, the better it will be: and the more a project is a creative revelation of pure nature, whatever the means or form of expressing, the better it is. Therefore, "creative" implies exuberance. It is not only truthful to express but to interpret, in full, the sense, the truth and the force of Nature; raised from the poet to its supreme efficacy. The best project will be the project that most profusely reveals the truth of the intimate being. The project that endures longer; that humanity recalls ... "
Frank Lloyd Wright, Autobiography, 1932
The area to work on is located near the first hills near the city, to have more elements to take into account in the contextual insertion, in the idea of urban landscape, and that contribute to the final image and the project idea that will be developed.
The type of lot identified for the course, has characteristics such as to allow the inclusion of one, two or three separate building volumes, leaving students the choice, so you can decide these, to work individually or in groups of two or from three.
In the case of groups, however, each student of the group will individually develop the project of an architectural artifact, and consequently the group's result will be the development of two or three architectural artifacts (depending on the group) of each of which will be responsible for a single student, completely separated within the lot, different in size and materials, that will have only the external arrangement in common, and the volumetric composition, chromatic, geometric, among them, related to issues related to the landscape, contextual relations, and urban.
In this way, any group experience can only be a further enrichment for the student, making any by-pass impossible, from the point of view of work and individual learning.
