The state exam at Vanvitelli — Aversa

Graphic test of the 2026 first session, sat on 27 July 2026 over eight hours. Two briefs, both with a highly detailed functional programme. BRIEF 1 — A small school for dance and the performing arts, holding together teaching, research and performance. The programme calls for six dance studios of about 150 sqm each, designed for both teaching and performance and made flexible by sliding partitions able to group them into at least two clusters, forming spaces for collective performance; plus changing rooms and services, ten small teaching studies, a library-archive of about 100 sqm, a bar corner and five offices with an independent entrance. The piece that governs the project, however, is a 250-seat theatre with an independent entrance, which may sit at basement level provided it is served by a sunken courtyard giving direct access from outside. The site is flat, with no particular constraints and no height limit; the permissible gross floor area is about 4,000 sqm over at least two levels. At least three courtyards are required, declared as the way to bring nature into the architecture and countable within the gross area. The board recommends — without making it binding — using Le Corbusier's Modulor as a harmonic proportioning system, attaching the numeric scheme of the red and blue series to the brief. BRIEF 2 — A house-museum with an exhibition space and atelier for an artist, where the real subject is the coexistence of private life and public opening: an independent entrance and guaranteed privacy during social events and exhibitions. The layout is free — courtyard, separate pavilions connected by covered and air-conditioned passages, or mixed — with a first floor and, optionally, a basement with a sunken courtyard cutting through several levels. The programme includes a full living zone, a specialist zone (museum-atelier with service) either integrated or entirely independent, four bedrooms and three bathrooms, with two singles joinable by a sliding partition. Vertical circulation is itself a design theme: stair, ramp between 8% and 14%, or cordonata, understood as a promenade architecturale, with double heights in the main spaces and a daylighting system studied for the exhibition area. There are no height or size constraints, but the project area is limited to 42 × 59.4 metres — that is, an A2 sheet at 1:100. A garden surrounds the house, with a landscape idea drawn in plan and continuous with the building.

Practical test of the 2025 second session, sat on 14 November 2025 at the Santa Maria Capua Vetere site. Brief from Envelope 1: a two-family house with a central courtyard on a flat 30 × 30 metre lot, in a peri-urban setting bounded by roads on every side. The scheme calls for two dwellings over two storeys above ground (ground and first floor), with separate entrances and independent outdoor spaces, organised around a shared or semi-shared internal courtyard. The requirement that gives the brief its character is that both dwellings derive from a single block and keep an overall coherence of language: not two houses set side by side, but one volume that allows itself to be divided. The courtyard may be paved or planted. The project must comply with current rules on boundary setbacks — five metres — and accessibility. The plot ratio is 1.2 cubic metres per square metre and the maximum height 7.5 metres. Together this data all but settles the matter before any drawing begins: with a lot ringed by roads and a five-metre setback on every front, the buildable footprint is essentially given, and the available volume follows directly from the ratio. The first move in this test is arithmetic, not compositional — and from there the subject becomes how to fit two decent dwellings inside an envelope already decided.

Practical test of the 2024 first session (June 2024). A single brief: design a tower building following the principles of bioclimatic architecture, with apartments of differing sizes — one type up to 65 sqm, a second between 65 and 120 sqm, a third above 120 sqm. The value of the brief lies entirely in the site data, which is not background but design constraint. The lot is rectangular with its short sides running along the north-south axis, and the access road arrives on the short side: the geometry therefore forces the long fronts to face east and west — the hardest orientations to control bioclimatically. On top of that the lot slopes at 20% from the road, which in a tower immediately becomes a question of how the building meets the ground and where the entrance level sits. The combination of sharply differentiated apartment sizes, vertical development and imposed orientation is the real exercise: how the three types are distributed up the tower, and how the east-west fronts are treated, decide the test — and the requirement to indicate materials in section prevents stopping at the layout diagram.

Practical test of the 2024 second session, sat on 14 November 2024. Two briefs, joined by a tight height limit and an explicit demand for a technical-functional legend. BRIEF 1 — A small public building with a civic function: library, conference and/or assembly hall, and temporary exhibition spaces. The urban lot is square, about 60 × 60 metres, but not flat: the southern side is affected by a slight escarpment cutting the lot obliquely and reducing the internal area to a trapezoidal shape. The building must not exceed 12 metres in height, counting skylights, lightwells and rooftop outdoor spaces. Boundary distance rules under current national legislation apply, with the complication that every side except the south adjoins buildings erected on the boundary line: the brief therefore confronts the candidate with an almost entirely blind lot, where the only free frontage is the sloping one. BRIEF 2 — A residential building with apartments aggregated in a row, stair and lift shared by two or three apartments per core, for three cores in total. It is declared part of a "low rise – hi density" scheme: three or four storeys above ground plus a basement, with a deliberately variable height across the apartment verticals, alternating three and four floors so as to obtain private terraces at the top level. The roof is habitable as an "equipped roof garden" on the model of the Unité d'Habitation, designed as a "perforated enclosure" for communal use; the maximum height at the eaves line, including any roof-garden crowning, remains 15 metres. Apartments range between 75 and 105 sqm, with a stated preference for aggregations of differing sizes. The lot is free, flat and set in greenery. The ground floor must be emptied, with no apartments and a shared porter's lodge; devoting part of the first floor to collective space is recommended but not binding.

A sealed envelope with three alternative practical-exam themes (Section A, November session), each with its linked first written test. THEME 1 — on an elongated peripheral lot along a secondary street (54×20 m), an in-line residential building with a ground floor usable for retail and tertiary activities: depth no more than 13 m, eaves height no more than 13.50 m, at least 12 dwellings, two entrances with their stairs per group of flats, a pavement on the street and a possible rear pedestrian path; the written test asks for the structural sizing of some parts. THEME 2 — on a 120×60 m lot at the crossing of two neighbourhood streets, a small neighbourhood culture centre of about 900 sqm covered: entrance hall with info point, an events space of at least 150 sqm, a large library reading room, two offices, a screening room and internet corner, media consultation, storage and plant rooms, toilets and an automated café; an outdoor area with a rack for at least 20 bikes, five disabled parking spaces, a garden, a paved open-air reading area, a portico and a roof terrace accessible to all; the written test asks for an approximate bill of quantities. THEME 3 — on a large peripheral lot of about 15,000 sqm between three streets, a layout of collective functions and public greenery: at least 70% holds a sports centre, fenced and 50% covered with wide-span structures (hall, info and public services with a café ≥80 sqm, two pairs of changing rooms, two five-a-side pitches and a covered multi-purpose court or a gym), with greenery and pedestrian routes, taxi and bus stops, a cycle path, disabled parking and car parking; the written test asks for the sizing of the main structural system. Shared deliverables: general site plans and details at progressive scales (from 1:5000/1:2000 to 1:500), a 1:200 project extract with plans, sections and elevations, technological details and three-dimensional drawings. Transparency note: the university does not publish the exam texts; this sheet is reconstructed from a preparation archive (source below), with the usual editorial summary.

A practical-exam track for the Junior Architect (Section B): on a rectangular lot with a 30 m front on the main street and a 40 m depth, design a house-workshop combining a dwelling and a work space sized for varied activities (creative, artisan, productive). The dwelling, about 120 sqm over two levels, has on the ground floor an entrance, living-dining room, kitchen, WC and storeroom, and on the first floor two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The workshop, functionally linked to the duplex, is at least 60 sqm with a height twice that of the residential floor, with a possible mezzanine and internal double height, and holds the work space, a small office and toilets. The candidate must state the structural grid and handle the relationship between the residential and productive parts. Deliverables: a 1:200 site plan with the external green layout and the minimum parking; 1:100 plans of the two levels with the structural grid; a significant 1:100 longitudinal section through the internal stair; two 1:100 elevations; possible construction details, freehand allowed. Transparency note: the university does not publish the exam texts; this sheet is reconstructed from a preparation archive (source below), with the usual editorial summary.

First practical test of the 2012 first session, sat on 19 June 2012 (Architect N.O. qualification). Three themes to choose from, deliberately covering three different crafts: serial aggregation, collective housing and structural restoration. THEME A — A complex of terraced houses on a rectangular, gently sloping 4,000 sqm lot. Each unit measures 5.80 × 11.90 metres and rises over at least three levels, one of them below ground; the structure is reinforced concrete. Perimeter and internal circulation are left to the candidate: the theme is therefore as much about site layout as about typology. THEME B — A multi-family residence with several duplex units of about 95 sqm, served by an access gallery, over at least three storeys above ground. The lot is rectangular, 2,000 sqm, gently sloping, and the depth of the building block is set at around 11 metres. The brief explicitly asks for particular attention to privacy — which, with gallery access, is the critical weakness of the type. THEME C — Restoration and seismic improvement of a three-nave, three-apsed Romanesque church: the only one of the three themes shifting the centre of gravity from new design to diagnosis of the existing fabric and the relationship between heritage protection and structural safety. On the same day the first written test asked for a technical-descriptive report on the project — with reference to planning standards — as an alternative to a structural report.

Second written test of the 2012 first session. A single brief, critical rather than design-based: candidates are asked to analyse a work of architecture from the last thirty years that they have visited or studied, placing it within contemporary architectural language and drawing out its innovative aspects, including in technological terms. It is the kind of test that rewards a genuine repertoire of known buildings: the requirement to have "visited or studied" it, and the obligation to reach the technological level, rule out getting by on a textbook entry. The candidate must hold together a linguistic and a constructional reading of the same work.

A practical-exam track (Section A, May session): design an in-line residential building, maximum height 13.50 m, on a flat 60×80 m lot facing south onto a provincial road. The context drives the choices: to the east it borders a residential building set ten metres from the boundary, to the west an open area with tennis courts, to the north a public park. At least six flats sized between 120 and 150 sqm covered are required; the ground floor must hold retail units and the layout of the open areas with at least eight parking spaces for owners and guests, plus parking adequate to the number of retail units designed. The candidate must state the structural scheme and handle the relationship between housing, retail and open space. Deliverables: a 1:500 site-volume plan; ground-floor and typical-floor plans with the structural scheme, at least one section through the stair and two elevations 1:100; an optional furnished typical-cell study 1:50; an optional construction detail 1:20; perspective or axonometric sketches are encouraged to clarify the idea. Transparency note: the university does not publish the exam texts; this sheet is reconstructed from a preparation archive (source below), with the usual editorial summary.

Second written test, Architect Section A. Two envelopes, both critical and theoretical in nature. ENVELOPE 1 — The dialectic between language and technique. The starting point is a reflection by Le Corbusier: architecture as a fact of art and a phenomenon of emotion, beyond constructional questions, where the purpose of construction is to hold things up and that of architecture is to move us. On this basis, candidates are asked to analyse how technique in contemporary design — technology, sustainability, digitalisation — can stop being an end in itself and become language again, discussing through examples how the choice of materials and forms today produces architecture answering not only functional needs but poetic and cultural ones. ENVELOPE 2 — Memory and transformation of heritage. The premise is that designing on existing fabric is never a neutral act but a critical interpretation. Candidates must reflect on the architect's responsibility in mediating between conserving historical memory and the demand for innovation, analysing how the modern architectural mark can converse with what exists through transparency, reversibility and material contrast, avoiding the temptation of historical pastiche and addressing compatibility of use. These are the two classic poles of the theory test: the first asks you to connect technique and poetics, the second to take a position on restoration without retreating into either mimicry or indifference. Both reward candidates who bring their own examples. Editorial note: the session of this test has not been determined. The document is attributed to Aversa, but without a certain date we do not place it in a year.

Second written test, Architect Section A. Two alternative briefs, both theoretical. FIRST BRIEF — Tradition and innovation. Architecture is presented as the way of bringing past and future together, joining what has been inherited to the desire to create something new. Candidates must choose a modern work of architecture set in a historical context and discuss the relationship between tradition and innovation, reflecting on which values of tradition to preserve and proposing a design idea that avoids both pointless copying and contempt for history. SECOND BRIEF — The architect as a cultural figure. The starting point is that designing today means combining different kinds of knowledge and answering the needs of contemporary society. Candidates must explain how care for the environment and people's comfort have changed the way architecture is practised, giving a real or invented example showing how these aspects enter the design of a public building, and close by reflecting on how the architect today is not only a technician but a figure holding together culture, values and social needs. The first brief carries a useful constraint: it asks for a specific building, not a general discourse. The second allows an invented example, which shifts the weight onto the coherence of the argument rather than erudition. Editorial note: the session of this test has not been determined. The document is attributed to Aversa, but without a certain date we do not place it in a year.