Urban survey between on-site and on-line approach in the bachelor’s of architecture

The contribution presents some critical thoughts on the relationships between the city, its shape, its analytical representation, and the reading of different levels of resilience of the historical structure of the city itself. To this extent, we discuss the results of a teaching activity related to the analysis of some portions of the urban context of Torino through the tools of urban survey, experienced both on-site and on-line. This experience has been conducted during the last four academic years within the context of the Architectural drawing and survey laboratory, mandatory course taught in the first year of the Bachelor degree in architecture at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. This work has been based on the application of the regulation 7310/74 by the Italian Standardisation Bureau. Even if the 7310/74 standard is no longer a novelty in the field of architectural studies, we believe that its application could allow students to understand the importance of both the reading of the historical structure of the city and its interpretation in view of the possibility to define new strategies of resilience. In a.y. 2018/19 we applied this tool on 10 blocks, in a.ys. 2019/20 and 2020/21 we worked on one block each that could explored via online tools (i.e. Google Maps, Bing Maps, etc.), in a.y. 2020/21 we worked on 4 blocks and back on-site. During its applications, we worked on 16 blocks in total. These blocks are in different parts of the historic city of Torino, thus providing students with different approaches to the same topic. These activities highlight the importance of improving the analytical knowledge of the city through the tools of urban survey, here intended as a specific declination of drawing, the language of a big ensemble of professionals (architects; civil, building, environmental engineers, surveyors, etc.).