Then we have a second level of reflection, referring to political commitment.

Piergiorgio Tosoni was a generous teacher not necessarily (let’s say not only) for his personal nature, but rather for his ideological attitude. We fought so hard for the university to become for everyone, now that the masses have arrived, how do we organize ourselves? How to work? How to transform this challenge and these difficulties into new approaches, into new content?

Tens, hundreds and then thousands of students. To be formed, to be followed, to grow. With courses, with laboratories, with dissertations. An all-encompassing commitment that always saw him at the forefront. In class, in courses, in the life of the department and the faculty, following a very large number of final dissertations, in increasingly important roles within the organizational machine of the Polytechnic.

Finally, the third level is that of drawing, of manual exercise. Drawing as a tool for knowledge and exploration of the world and oneself.

Agostino Magnaghi wrote about it: “(His) abstract or realistic drawings are often executed with the casting technique, that is, the re-design of an emotional path that involves people and cities, paintings, models and schemes and construction systems. Included in the books, such drawings may appear as expedients to overcome the limits of copyright. In reality, this practice highlights, in the multiplicity of starting information, only what is essential and necessary for representation. Selecting the real through drawing – he stated it several times – with the technique of re-casting, meant removing any secondary information from the focus of the narrative contents”. Drawing, re-design, re-calculation, selection of reality.

In thirty years, the world has gone digital. None of us still use the rapidograph pen, tracing paper, cut-outs, enlarged and reduced photocopies finished with correction fluid. However, precisely because we live in a completely dematerialized world, this meticulous and attentive action seems to be of fundamental value to us. An intellectual sophistication that is woven of manual work, handwriting, and drawing and re-designing as an act of learning. Calligraphy and drawing to understand, to record, to synthesize. Attention: all this avoiding any artistry and form of complacency. We work in this way not because it is beautiful, but rather because it is right.

• John Berger, Sul disegnare, Il Saggiatore, 2017.
• Henri Focillon, Elogio della mano. In: La vita delle forme – Elogio della mano. Einaudi, 2002.
• Agostino Magnaghi, Ricordo d’un compagno di viaggio «lungo i sentieri dell’architettura. Sta in: Atti e Rassegna Tecnica, nr. 1/2/3, dicembre 2017.
• Piergiorgio Tosoni, Esperienze didattiche alla Facoltà di Architettura di Torino, 1975 / 1994. Dal catalogo della mostra: Lungo i sentieri dell’architettura, Politecnico di Torino, 2018.
• Piergiorgio Tosoni (a cura di): Il gioco paziente. Biagio Garzena e la teoria dei modelli per la progettazione, Celid, 2008.

readings of places through the reading of texts by great writers, songs, where the power of words, polysemies, metaphors and poetic structures emerge.

From word to sign, Piergiorgio Tosoni, a tireless and extraordinary draughtsman, impresses on his teaching of the project the importance of the profound meaning of representation. Here the collection of some of his exercises is a living testimony to the admirable value of his lesson. The students loved him for his kind grace and his continuous efforts to measure himself against the times of doubt, verification, and open confrontation.