L’insegnamento dell’architettura agli ingegneri a Pavia dall’Unità d’Italia alla fine dell’Ottocento

In 1859 the Second Italian War of Independence led to the annexation of Lom-bardy to the Kingdom of Sardinia, starting the process of Italian unification. In No-vember 1859, the so-called Casati Law was promulgated, reorganizing the entire course of national education, from elementary schools to universities. Until that date the University of Pavia was the only one in Lombardy; in it a degree course in mathematics was held. This course was aimed at the training of engineers, together with the subsequent compulsory traineeship with a professional engineer. With the entry into force of the Casati Law, the training course for the engineers was reor-ganized: a three-year course to be attended in the Faculties of Sciences preceded a two-year period in the newly established Application Schools. In the University of Pavia this led to the suppression of all application courses, and to the maintenance of the Drawing course only; this course developed over the three years, moving from geometric drawing, to architectural and machine design, and to topography drawing. In 1875 the new regulations of the Faculties of Sciences and of the Appli-cation Schools established that the duration of the studies for the aspiring engineers should be two years in the former and of three in the latter. In the University of Pavia in addition to the biennial course in mathematics – in which the teaching of Drawing was preserved, adding ornamental drawing to architectural one – the first year of School of Application was also maintained. Special courses in Graphic stat-ics, Applications of descriptive geometry, Docimastic chemistry and later also in Kinematics applied to machines were then established. On the basis of yearbooks and archive documentation, the paper analyses in detail the architectural and engi-neering teaching in Pavia with reference to the personalities of the professors and the evolution over time of the educational programs.