Elective Course
Credits: 3-0-3 (3 semester hours)
Type of Course: Lecture
Instructors: Robert M. Craig
Prerequisites: None
Course Overview
The course investigates the background and development in England and America of the Architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Through lectures, readings, student research, and oral and written projects, the seminar will survey the theoretical background in the writings of Pugin, Ruskin, and Morris, as well as work of major English Arts and Crafts architects including Webb, Lutyens, Voysey, Baillie Scott and others. In additional, three regional areas of American Arts and Crafts activity will be discussed: the East, with Stickley’s Craftsman Movement and Hubbard’s Roycrofters, the Chicago area during the era of the Prairie School, and California with the work of Greene and Greene, Gill, and Maybeck. The course will feature both built and unbuilt architectural works as well as decorative arts of these and other designers. Readings will include surveys of the movement and monographs on individual practitioners as well as critical and analytical discussions of major architectural works. Student projects will include an oral presentation on, as a case study of, a significant figure otherwise not given major attention in the course, as well as an issue paper which is more analytical, critical, or theoretical in character. Attention will also focus on scholarship and improving student writing.
Learning Objectives
The course seeks to develop a familiarity with the literature on the Arts and Crafts Movement, including both secondary sources as well as writings authored by Arts and Crafts designers. A major focus is on traditional materials and methods of building, constructional details, and design devices which afford a sense of age or which achieve a coordinated relationship between house and garden or contribute to a sense of place or genius loci. The cultural and theoretical context in which this work evolves brings focus to the moral or ethical position influencing late 19th- and early 20th-century traditional architecture and its position in relationship to the industrial revolution and to increasing technology.
Course Requirements
Class attendance and student participation in discussions and evaluation of readings and of student papers is required. Graduate students are required to write a 3-5 page book review of a book on some aspect of the Arts and Crafts Movement, selected in consultation with the professor. All students are required to prepare the following: 1) a monograph on a major individual of the Arts & Crafts Movement from an approved list provided by the professor to be given as an oral class presentation and to be submitted the same day as a written paper conveying the content of the oral presentation; and 2) an issue paper of approximately 4-5000 words on a topic approved by the professor. The monograph is essentially descriptive and analytical and adds to the knowledge base of the survey of the movement undertaken by the course. The issue paper is more critical or theoretical and establishes an argument concerning some aspect of Arts and Crafts architecture, advancing the argument by scholarly documentation and evaluation. Students will read selected issue papers and evaluate in seminar discussion the effectiveness of the author’s writing and presentation of ideas, allowing some revision, as needed, prior to final submission of the paper to the professor.
Evaluation: Grades are based on student performance on projects, papers, and class participation as follows:
-Class attendance, participation, issue paper reviews 15%
-Book Review (required only for Arch 8821) 10% (grads only)
-Monograph 25% (UG: 30%)
-Issue Paper 50% (UG: 55%)
Required Text: Peter Davey, Arts and Crafts Architecture (Phaidon, 1995).