Electives
Each semester, the Architecture section offers seminars, option studios and other elective courses which focus on topics that complement the core BS Architecture curriculum. These courses may also serve students from the other sections of the KSA or across the University. New topics are always in development in order to afford students the opportunity to pursue elective courses whose content is both timely and of particular interest to them.
May 2013
ARCH 5590.01: Topics in Building Technology
An introduction to the basics of the Revit Architecture software. At the end of the course students will be able to navigate the user interface, complete basic modeling tasks, and create and print sheets.
1.5 credit hours
Summer 2013
ARCH 2300/LARCH 2300: Outlines of the Built Environment
Introduction to architecture, landscape architecture, and planning as cultural practices that shape the physical environment.
Prequisite for admission to ARCH and LARCH.
3 credit hours
ARCH 2310/LARCH 2310: Introduction to Design
Introduction to the design of the physical environment through the exploration of form, space, and order using drawing and modeling techniques.
Prequisite for admission to ARCH and LARCH.
4 credit hours
Autumn 2013
ARCH 2300/LARCH 2300: Outlines of the Built Environment
Introduction to architecture, landscape architecture, and planning as cultural practices that shape the physical environment.
Prequisite for admission to ARCH and LARCH.
3 credit hours
ARCH 2310/LARCH 2310: Introduction to Design
Introduction to the design of the physical environment through the exploration of form, space, and order using drawing and modeling techniques.
Prequisite for admission to ARCH and LARCH.
4 credit hours
ARCH 5290: Topics in Architectural Theory
Investigation of topics in architectural theory.
Instructor and specific topic details coming soon.
3 credit hours
ARCH 5290: Topics in Architectural Theory
Investigation of topics in architectural theory.
Instructor and specific topic details coming soon.
3 credit hours
ARCH 5590: Advanced Topics in Lighting Technology
The course brings together instructors and students from Architecture, Engineering, Theatre, ACCAD, and outside project partners and consultants to examine lighting as it informs human needs, energy efficiency, and structures. Student teams will engage the community in outreach research inquiries and construct public site-specific installations, testing contemporary lighting applications with an emphasis on lighting function and quality. This course involves practical application of theories and techniques of lighting technology, with an emphasis on moving (or automated) lighting equipment, data, and control systems. The subtitle of this course in its autumn 2013 offering is tied to a BETHA Grant project entitled Re-visioning Light in our Lives.
Note: There may be some afternoon and evening class sessions required in order to meet the learning objectives of the course.
3 credit hours
ARCH 5590: FACES: The Appearance of Performance Furnishing, Arraying and Decking It Out
“Faces: The Appearance of Performance” will investigate the changing nature of the idea of performance in the architectural discipline over the course of the last quarter century and relate these concepts to notions of character and figure emerging out of 19th Century theories of type and evolutionary speciation. The relationship between the contemporary use of the term performance and the word’s historical connection to the concept of furnishing will be elaborated through presentations, readings and an in-depth installation project. Two parallel ideas connected to long standing disciplinary questions concerning ornament, façade and interior space will be explored: the concept of “arraying,” the preparation for environmental exposure, and the notion of “decking out,” the process of surface modification to produce perceptual effects whether in the form of camouflage, plumage display or other forms of intra and inter species signaling. Finally the return of an interest in the ways that material phenomena produce “affective” qualities will be investigated relative to postmodern notions of subjectivity, affectation in personality, contemporary media and the post-humanist body. The seminar will be structured in part as a research and discussion group and in part as a design workshop in which students produce a group fabrication project (commonly known as the “Faces” installation) that explores these issues.
3 credit hours
ARCH 5590: Figuring Volume: Space, Void, Volume
This seminar will survey a range historical of approaches to architectural interiors and test new design strategies for producing contemporary interiors; these methods will consider the in-between and the beyond as vital ingredients. Historically, the terms “space”and “void” have been employed by architects to describe their design ambitions for exterior massings, interior rooms, and the surfaces that describe them. This seminar will explore the nuanced similarities and differences between these terms and evaluate how volume settles into this lexicon and what it implies for architectural design. In parallel we will review the development of representation from the technical to the projective. We will explore multiple techniques that exploit and define the interior figure and examine the value of Volume within the architecture’s arsenal of spatial tricks.
While architecture will be our focus, we will look to contemporary art projects such as Christo’s Big Air Package, in Oberhausen, Kapoor’s Leviathan in Paris and DS+R’s Inflatable Pavilion in Washington DC to explore the immense and intricate qualities of volume at play. The seminar will combine lectures, discussion and design workshops to abstractly focus on the dynamics of the sequencing of volumes, choreographed junctures, and orchestrating a spectacle. Through experimentation across multiple mediums and the fabrication of large physical models and/or drawings, students will learn to design provocative, volume-oriented architectural interiors with precision and dexterity.
3 credit hours
