Digital Capriccio and Mobile Apps, Future of Teaching in History and Theory of Architecture

Abstract

The paper intends to introduce the capriccio as an artstic expression in the history of architecture and arrive at the digital capriccio as a teaching tool in courses of Theory and History of Architecture. Afterward, the practical part of the teaching experience will be described where students are asked to use software packages and mobile devices apps in order to give a response to architectural concepts through digital capricci. Students are requested to produce their collages, creating a digital composition of simulated spaces that can be obtained by combining fragments of notable buildings or composing together more abstract forms, with the aim of express the concept behind an architect, a style, or a movement. The experiment follows the theory by Walter Benjamin of the “art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” bringing architecture to the same concept of being a simulacrum of the source, and intends to respond with innovative tools to the call for action in architecture teaching. The final part of the paper will simulate an exercise held in the class environment bringing to the reader to have a similar learning experience than the students.