Alessandra CapannaSapienza University of Rome | la sapienza · Department of Architecture and Design
Alessandra Capanna
Architect, PhD
About
39
Publications
65,105
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Citations
Introduction
Alessandra Capanna currently works at the Department of Architecture and Design, Sapienza University of Rome. Alessandra does research in International Education, Higher Education and Architecture and Theory of Architecture. Main topic of research is the relationship between Music and Architecture and related mathematical structures.
Additional affiliations
March 2000 - present
Position
- Researcher
Description
- Researcher Professor and tutor in Architectural Composition in the five-year Master's Degree courses UE, in Master's Degree course in Design and multimedia, and Phd seminars in Architecture – Theories and Projects.
January 2000 - present
Education
January 1992 - January 1995
Publications
Publications (39)
Il Padiglione Philips all’Expo di Bruxelles del 1958, che fu costruito seguendo la complessa e rigorosa elaborazione geometrica dei gusci sottili autoportanti in forma di paraboloidi iperbolici, studiati da Xenakis come risposta alle esigenze tecniche e acustiche, si identifica ancora oggi con il Poème Électronique che veniva rappresentato al suo i...
SERGIO MUSMECI (1926-1981) is one of the most daring and unconventional engineers born in the twentieth century; he was master equally of music, astronomy, aeronautics, mathematics, and philosophy, all of which informed his structures, whose shape was determined by the spatial distribution of static actions. Musmeci thought that he could reach the...
![Fig. 1. Chamber Works, drawing by Daniel Libeskind [1983]. Image...](profile/Alessandra-Capanna/publication/226330569/figure/fig1/AS:302352394407941@1449097836866/Chamber-Works-drawing-by-Daniel-Libeskind-1983-Image-courtesy-of-Daniel-Libeskind_Q320.jpg)
This paper is one of a set of lessons prepared for the course of “Theory of Architecture” (Faculty of Architecture — “La Sapienza”
University of Rome). The didactic aim was to present — to students attending the first year of courses — some methods for
the beginning stages of design and their applicability to any kind creative work. The brief multi...
The Philips Pavilion at the Brussels World Fair is the first of Le Corbusier’s architectural works to connect the evolution of his mathematical thought on harmonic series and modular coordination with the idea of three-dimensional continuity. This propitious circumstance was the consequence of his collaboration with Iannis Xenakis, whose profound i...
The school building in the urban context expresses the civil and social role of an architecture able to remark the transforming processes of social environment. In short, the school, as a complex of educational guidelines and as a place in which education is carried on, outlines the demand for social renewal and at the same time it produces new req...
In mathematics, it is quite easy to define four-dimensional geometry. With their equations, in fact, mathematicians work without any difficulty with any “n” dimension. From this point of view, it is also quite easy to describe what shape in our 3d word a hypercube, for example, can assume, taking advantage of projections of the geometric figure in...
This paper deals with the construction of a possible architectural design in four dimensions. To demonstrate the hypothesis of the real consistency of a new four-dimensional spatiality for architecture, the design process has been analyzed in form of a theorem, starting from the comparison between the elements of the project and the definitions of...
The paper is conceived as a chain of images in a world dominated by images. Even if Juhani Pallasmaa in 2005 published "The Eyes of the Skin" offering a new way to interpret perception in Architecture, and Peter Zumthor published suggestions to students in architecture is to build atmospheres, this paper deals with an ancestral way to communicate i...
The contemporary project of reuse in Rome has ancient roots. Time and history are in continuous succession and each project is contemporary when it is put into practice. At the same time, it intervenes on the built environment, it completes an already existing context and becomes context itself of what will come later. In this study are presented s...
On October 6, 1977, Le Corbusier would have turned 90 years old. As a Arab Phoenix, that day, the living module of the new era, the 1925 model of Le Corbusier’s Contemporary Housing Research, rose again. That day, the reconstructed Esprit Nouveau Pavilion - or rather its double, as its authors, Giuliano Gresleri and Josè Oubrerie stated - opened th...
In Melodie di pietre, Adriana Rossi has produced an in-depth analysis of the cloister of San Cugat on the basis of musical notions and symbolism. This provides us with an occasion for some brief reflections on the historic relationships between music and architecture.
Il saggio "Alla ricerca degli elementi" introduce la sezione OGGETTI, LIBRI, OPERE del volume 18 della collana Re-Cycle Italy: "Memorabilia Nel paese delle ultime cose", che pubblica gli atti dell’omonimo convegno che si è tenuto presso l’Accademia di architettura, Università della Svizzera italiana nel maggio del 2015.Come nel gioco della torre ch...
A new design philosophy is based on the contemporary condition that allows architects to manage complex-systems science as a tool for the development of the project. Conventional analytical - reductionist - methodology is supported and sometime substituted by non-linear processes, including computer aided software. Generative methods for urban desi...
“Music is not only what we hear and listen, but everything that happens”. George Brecht .
In the new perspective of considering sound like another building material, the paper illustrates some recent architectural installations conceived as experimental work with spatial-sound characteristics.
SoundART and SoundARCHITECTURE are measurable entities...
In recent times many architects have proclaimed a new design philosophy based on complex-systems science, in opposition to conventional analytical methodology, or reductionism, and non-linear processes including computer aided design. Some claim that with the support of computers, entire new forms of design have become possible, while others believ...
La Carta per la Qualità est un document cartographique pour la gestion du Nouveau Plan Régulateur de Rome. Il ne s'agit pas d'un document strictement réglementaire prescriptif (de ceux qui imposent contraintes et donnent des indications), mais d'un document qui donne des critères, des indications et des règles de comportement pour la réalisation de...
La presenza della scuola nel contesto urbano esprime il ruolo civile e sociale di un’architettura capace di annotare i processi di cambiamento della collettività. In particolare le scuole per l’infanzia rivestono il duplice ruolo di supporto alle famiglie, come essenziali servizi di prossimità, e di avvio alla vita sociale degli individui fin dai p...
Una lezione sulle tecniche di invenzione e sul processo compositivo analizzati in una prospettiva multidisciplinare.
La capacità di inventare, soprattutto nel particolare ambito dell’exhibit, non è necessariamente legata ad un
gesto geniale, estemporaneo, ma piuttosto si costruisce attraverso l’esercizio dell’interpretazione e della
modificazione,...
The aim of this workshop is to construct a beautiful centered hexagonal number trivet by making use of colored recycled magazine paper. What is seemingly only a funny and very simple puzzle made with circular tiles, composing intriguing and colored artistic objects, is an engaging exercise in the field of mathematics applied to ecodesign process.
In endeavoring to design a true 4-dimensional house, we must first, as might be expected, concern ourselves with questions of mathematical definition. The foremost among them being: what precisely is a Tesseract or a Hypercube? In mathematics it is easy to define four dimensional geometry. From this point of view it is also quite easy to describe w...
The Expressionist utopia of an Architect imitating the rigorous and -at the same time- extremely bizarre formative
principles of Nature, linked with the engineering “must” of a coherent and correct structure are apparent antithesis if only played as the manifestation of an irrational and uncontrolled freedom. We explore the ancient idea of Harmony...
In the evolution of contemporary project, overcoming the Law of contradiction and the Principle of Excluded Middle has introduced the concept of flexible space, connected to the notion of inclusion and of multiple choice, i.e. a structure can contain other structures, a function other functions, building categories a number of subcategories, but ab...
What kind of relationship between conceiving and knowing architectural space; what kind of affinity between numbers and shape generation, in short between mathematics and architecture?
The aim is to inquire into compositional rules and into our thinking mechanisms, which make us able to process ideas into architectural design.
Biographical sketch. Encyclopedia headword.
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-battista-milani_(Dizionario-Biografico)/
Guidebook depicting the district's built structures as well as unbuilt designs
La guida racconta la storia del quartiere dalla parte dei vinti. L’itinerario si dipana tra architetture più e meno note del quartiere che sorse come palinsesto dell’Esposizione Universale del 1942 – mai celebrata per l’avvento della seconda guerra mondiale – nel quale,...
Biographical sketch. Encyclopedia headword
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-mantero_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/
Il saggio fa parte di una pubblicazione dell’unità scientifica di Roma (responsabile scientifico Prof. P.O.Rossi), del gruppo di ricerca MIUR Cofin “Gli spazi per la conservazione e la musealizzazione degli archivi di architettura moderna. Definizione dei caratteri dell’organismo e sperimentazioni progettuali attraverso il recupero di edifici di in...
L'articolo analizza i progetti presentati al concorso internazionale di progettazione per la realizzazione di tre scuole in aree periferiche della città di Roma.
International design competition for the construction of three schools in the suburb of Rome -presentation and description of winners and selected projects to the second phase.
Alessandra Capanna summarizes the life and work of Iannis Xenakis, who passed away on 4 February 2001.He was a musician, but
above all he was a theorist and pure researcher who used mathematical thought as a basis for of his compositions. Because
of this, his way of working more closely resembles that of a philosopher of science than that of an art...
Questions
Question (1)
I mean, maybe a sort of attitude in humanistic/philosophical approach instead of scientific could be a different point of view/starting point. BUT, I am also convinced that mathematics and scientific knowledge could be an important basis on wich could born the prime idea of a project, Not only in terms of imitation of natural shapes and so on. This is exactly the field of investigation of my research concerning the propre communication for the didactics.
