Architecture Seminars
The following seminars will be offered by the Architecture section during the 2009-2010 school year. Clicking on a seminar title will load a PDF document with more information.
Winter 2010
Arch 603 (Europe Study Trip '10 Prep Seminar) Jacqueline Gargus
This seminar is a pre-requisite for the KSA study trip, 14 June – 17 July, 2010. During the seminar, the theoretical basis and material development of various strains and foci of modern and contemporary architecture will be examined. Students will do research on buildings that will be visited during the study tour, and they will work collectively to produce books which will serve as course manuals. Additionally, students will be instructed in sketching and visual note taking.
Arch 603 (Advanced Analysis of Contemporary Architecture as Cultural Discourse) Jeffrey Kipnis
"Most important library in decades," (New Yorker, OMA Seattle Library); "Most important new museum since the cold war began," (New York Times, Zaha Hadid Cincinnati Museum). As participants in the cacophonous theater of current architectural practice how are we to situate such journalistic hyperbole? What are the issues that underwrite and distinguish the latest work of Nouvel, Alsop, OMA, Eisenman, Hadid, Gehry, Holl, ITO, Morphosis, Denari, Herzog and DeMeuron, Lynn, MVRCV, Zumthor, Coop Himmelblau, RUR, FOA, UN Studio, Office DA, Cohen, SANAA, d'Ecoi, NOX, not to mention newcomers like PLOT, Gnuform, Bow Wow, Woolston, Roche, EDGE, etc., etc., etc. What exactly are affect, mood, atmosphere, the easy, and the post-critical; for that matter, what exactly is the critical in architecture? Is architecture a service, an art, a political tool or a purely intellectual endeavor? Can architecture support democracy? Can it increase freedom?
Arch 603 (Lookin' Good) Robert Livesey
Although formal analysis was recently thought to be dead, it has had resurgence with publications such as Peter Eisenman's Ten Canonical Buildings 1950-2000. In it Peter purports to give "close reading of critical architectural ideas". The trouble is that the book is filled with inaccuracies and therefore misreadings. He just is not reading close enough. So in this class we will give up reading, in favor of just "lookin'". We will use "lookin'" to understand why things are the way they are, and as a device for postulating particular forms and organizations. Students will learn to recognize analytical approaches that will apply to any building and can be used for design strategies.
Arch 700 (VE - DAY, Value and Economics in Architecture) Beth Blostein
In 1896, the sentiments of Louis Sullivan prophesied a change in the relationship between architecture and economics. In his disdain for commercial office buildings, he describes floors "piled tier upon tier, one office just like all the other offices- an office being similar to a cell in a honeycomb, merely a compartment, nothing more". But today, in the face of both global financial and environmental crisis, once-taboo issues of economics must be critically engaged by architects. From vantages outside the discipline, quantification (in the form of a bottom line, cost per square foot, and energy and resource consumption) often becomes the sentinel of economics and is used to assign value to design, but treading these murky waters opens new territory for architectural practice, program and typology, and roles for the architect within the design and realization process. Using significant works of architecture and Building Information Modeling systems, this seminar will situate the aspects of architecture that are quantifiable with and against those that are seemingly not. We will look for ways to practice architecture that argue for and negotiate both realms.
Autumn 2009
Arch 603 (History Seminar on Architectural Narrative) Ashley Schafer
As a means to consider how we might move beyond conceived notions of “sustainability,” this seminar will focus on ecologies rather than environment. Specifically, we will look at ecological discourse. Studying systems of relations between populations of people, animals, plants, and their environment(s) as well as contemporary design practices that incorporate ecological thinking.
ARCH 603 (History Seminar on Architecture and Landscape) Jane Amidon and John McMorrough
This seminar will study overlaps and divergences between how the respective disciplines of architecture and landscape architecture position themselves relative to a set of key terms: History, Future, Image, Ground, Performance, Form, and Territory.
ARCH 698.03 (Seminar on Architecture and Urban Culture) Kay Bea Jones
This architecture and urban styles seminar invites participation by students from non-design fields with deep interest in the city and public space. Issues to be considered include social organization, occupancy and usage, viability, cultural values, ownership and maintenance, security, and other challenges to the public domain in the international digital age. The seminar will employ scholarship, discussion, and walk-based models to map public spaces in Columbus, Rome, and Florence.
ARCH 700 (The Appearance of Performance Furnishing, Arraying, and Decking It Out) Stephen Turk
This seminar will investigate the appearance and changing nature of the idea of performance in the architectural discipline over the course of the last quarter century. The seminar will be structured in part as a research workshop with the idea of producing an organized set of documents focusing on these historical developments and in part as a design workshop in which students develop theses about these topics and produce experimental furniture exploring these issues.
ARCH 700 (Decisive Parametrics: A Grasshopper Primer) Marc Syp
This course will teach parametric modeling with an emphasis on established formal strategies, typological investigation, and a clear decision-making process, and parametric modeling in Grasshopper, a visual scripting plug-in for Rhino.