Basis of architectural survey between geometry and representation. A first educative approach

This paper illustrates the educative path – aimed at learning the basis of architectural survey – we propose to the students in the first year, as part of the Drawing and Survey Laboratory (bachelor’s degree in Architecture). The primary focus of the Laboratory is to guide them in studying and using the graphic languages and related fundamental tools. In this case, architectural survey comes as a cognitive tool of fundamental importance for the analysis and understanding of architectural artefacts. The main objective of the exercises carried out during the Laboratory is to prepare student by a gradual theoretical and technical path for the direct and indirect operations of survey. During the first semester the course includes a first operation of surveying an architectural drawing (during the exercise of critical redraw of a published project), giving birth to an ideal scalar approach to the themes of survey, both manual (direct survey) and digital (PR, SfM), which combines and develops horizontal and vertical skills. Here, we discuss the main passages of the path of survey through an emblematic case study from Torino.