The first curriculum in architectural and urban composition addresses the themes and tools of research in architecture. The course of the course in the three years is structured through lessons that illustrate different positions and methods in the research in architecture at national and international level; through design experiments that investigate the themes of the project; through thematic seminars in which the PhD students develop their research and critical elaboration skills on delimited and specific questions of research in architectural composition.
The relationship between architecture and construction is the central core on which research topics are concentrated: the construction of the form, the construction of the project, the construction of the building, the construction of the city, and finally the construction of criticism, also following a important indication of Franco Purini: "(...) move from the idea of composing to build to build to compose, that is to see the construction not just as the simple fulfillment of a compositional act that has its rules, but assuming the building as fundamental data through which to rediscover and redefine the volatile, stratified and unspeakable substance of the architectural composition. "
The relationship between architecture, the arts and the techniques constitutes the cultural sphere within which the researcher establishes his own scientific horizons. The relationship between architecture and techniques represents a place of experimentation whose foundation is always the constructive principle in all possible definitions. Finally, the theme, too often evaded by scientific research, of the principles and procedures of formal construction, assumes in the contemporaneity the need to be faced, as well as a permanent relevance, for the architect's work. The question of the "construction of form" assumes a particular disciplinary connotation, defining in fact the dominant scientific field in the architectural and urban composition, the theoretical and thematic stays, as well as the studies that outline tools and actions of the composition, as possible ways for the research on the architectural project and on the urban project.