Sul disegno tecnico: progetto e costruzione - EN: On the technical drawing: design and construction

This paper reports some notes on the role that technical drawing assumes in the world of architectural design and its place in the delicate balance between craftsmanship and digital transition, between memory and innovation. The first part of the essay shows how an increasing number of architectural representations invade the pages of magazines and websites, favouring the autonomous image over technical drawing. Aware of the different meanings reserved for these two representation techniques, without assuming the prevalence of one over the other, but recognising their equal importance although, with a different destination, the paper asks: what happens when images have to become built architecture? How can architectural drawing fulfil its founding role as a communication tool between design and construction? Among the design tools we have at our disposal, the working drawing is fundamental. The second part focuses on knowing this language: a code based on rules that have to be respected by those who wish to be perfectly understood. The third part focuses on the constructive characteristics of buildings through the set of construction details, i.e. the tools that allow a description of every aspect of the project, even the smallest and most hidden. In recent years, increasingly advanced modelling tools have given rise to a significant moment of change, a digital transition, which has involved construction drawing techniques. There are those, whether designers or critics, who fear that these tools will fuel a transition towards a design based on impenetrable algorithms measuring a series of data collected, stored and combined, which are outside the field of architecture and end up sidelining the designer himself. Aware that technology is a fact too valuable and vibrant to be rejected, the paper proposes a reasoned and coherent elaboration of these innovative changes that nowadays permeate the technics and the way of conceiving the design and construction process.