Wandering Architecture Through the Looking Glass of Digital Representation: An Expeditious Teaching Experience in Understanding and Modelling Modern Architecture

Abstract

The present work focuses on an expeditious teaching experience of Architecture and 3D modelling aimed at the ‘Architectural Drawing II’ and ‘Computer Graphics’ students of the Building Engineering-Architecture Degree Programme of the University of Salerno, Italy.
The students, involved in the ‘Italy-South Africa Joint Research Programme, ISARP 2018-2020 – A Social e spatial investigation at the Moxomatsi village, Mpumalanga’ (SSIMM), were supported in the digital reconstruction of three iconic examples of modern architecture located in South America and South Africa, i.e., the Curutchet House (La Plata, Argentina), the Coromandel Estate Manor House (Mpumalanga, South Africa) and the Jooste House (Pretoria, South Africa).
Through an Alice-in-wonderland-type of voyage, they had the chance to first analyse the complex inner space of these architectural assets that both emerge from and fade into the landscape and then propose their own interpretation through rendered and post-processed imagery.