ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to show how a fruitful collaboration between architects and engineers, based on the conceptual design of structures, can lead to better architectural projects. Some historical research has made it possible to reconstruct the reasons for the separation between architects and engineers and to identify the moments in which the distance between the professions decreased. In order to better identify the current state of the relationship, as well as the main difficulties and possible ways of improving it, two questionnaires were prepared and administered to students and professional architects, and it emerged that the conceptual design of structures could actually be the meeting point between architects and engineers. The analysis of a project by the engineering studio Pedrazzini Guidotti, in collaboration with the architect Corinna Menn, provided further confirmation of this hypothesis.
