Architectura: Italy Drawn

Architectura teaches you to read a building the way architects draw it.

Forty-two measured line drawings in the EPRIS Museum's style, from every region of Italy: the Pantheon in section with the live sun of Rome falling through its oculus, the Colosseum, Trajan's Column, the Arch of Constantine and the Pont du Gard; Pisa, Florence, Siena, Assisi and Urbino; Venice, Turin, Genoa, Bologna, Ravenna, Vicenza and Palmanova; the Arch of Augustus at Aosta and the cathedral of Trento; Pompeii, Matera, Castel del Monte, the trulli, Stilo and the gate of Saepinum; Monreale, Agrigento and the nuraghe of Barumini. And Milan in detail, with a walk through it: the Roman columns of San Lorenzo, Sant'Ambrogio, the cathedral front and its section up to the golden Madonnina, the Castello Sforzesco, Bramante's tribune at Santa Maria delle Grazie, La Scala, the Galleria, and the Velasca, Pirelli and Bosco Verticale towers. Open one and it inks itself in, line by line.

LEARN Pinch to look closer and tap the pins: 599 parts, each with its proper name in Latin or Italian, its name in English, the word an Italian guide would use, a short explanation and one fact worth keeping. The narrator says each term in Italian and reads the lesson aloud.

SCHOLA A real course of study. Seven courses – Fundamenta, Roma Aeterna, Italia, Ingenium, Magistri, Peregrinatio, a journey round all of Italy, and Mediolanum, Milan in detail – in 40 books and 86 lessons. Every book ends in an examination, with questions drawn afresh each time, and prints as an A4 handout with its questions and a key for the teacher: whose detail is this, when was it begun, how tall is it, where does it stand. Choose your rigor, from Tiro to Magister; finish a course for a diploma with your name; sit the great examination on the whole atlas.

THE ATLAS A map of Italy with every plate on it, and plans of Rome and Milan. A timeline of thirty-six centuries, from the nuraghi to the Bosco Verticale. All the buildings side by side at one scale. A library of sources: official names, UNESCO entries and a reading list for every plate, and a printable A3 sheet of each drawing.

AULA Present a plate to a class on a projector or a mirrored screen: the drawing large, one part at a time, lettered to be read from the back of the room. Hide the names and ask the class first.

THREE PAPERS Nox, lines of light on the night; Charta, sepia and red chalk on parchment; Caerulea, white lines on the blueprint. The icon follows the paper.

FOR EVERYONE VoiceOver reads every plate, and questions that need the eye are asked another way. Widgets show the part of the day, your reviews due and the sun over Rome.

QUIET BY DESIGN One typeface, hairline drawings. No account, no ads, no tracking – what you learn stays on your devices, synced only through your own iCloud. Made by the editors of EPRIS Journal.

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