Required Course
Credits: 3-0-3 (3 semester hours)
Type of Course: Lecture
Instructors: Douglas C. Allen
Prerequisites: None
Course Overview:
This course is organized chronologically and topically into four thematic periods. At the end of each thematic section, students prepare a three page essay drawn from a list of questions given by the instructor.
Introduction: Architecture and the City: Constitution and Representation:
A. The City in the Ancient World: Origins of the City: Orient and Occident: The City in the Aegean World: The Polis and the Knowledge of the Good: The Founding of Rome: The City and Ritual Myth; Territorial Expansion: Colonial Cities in the Roman World; Cities in Africa and Arabia; Cities in the Islamic World; The Feudal City in Europe; The Feudal City in China and Japan
B. A New World from the Old: The Idea of the City in the European Renaissance; The Present in the Past: Villa and Forum; The Italian Renaissance City: The State as a Work of Art; Baroque Rome: Street, Monument, Piazza; The Renaissance City in France: The Royal Places; Le Notre and the Grand Project London: The Residential Square; The City in the Enlightenment; The Colonial City in the Americas; Origins of American Urbanism; Establishing a National Order
C. The City in the Industrial Age: The Park and the Town; Territorial Transformations: Paris and Napoleon III; The City of the Dreadful Night: Landscape and Urban Reform; Reactionary Tactics: Suburbs; Utopia and Reform: Garden Cities for Tomorrow; City Beautiful: Architecture and Urban Reform City Functional: Sociology and Urban Reform
D. The City in the Modern Age : Plan Voisin and the Radiant City; CIAM: A Utopian Manifesto; Zoning and the Industrialization of City Planning; Equity, Race, and Place; Edge Cities and the Crisis of the Object; Reactionary Tactics: New Urbanism; Atlanta
Learning Objectives
This course provides an introduction to the city as a collective work of architecture. The city is considered to be the architectural manifestation of a political association, distinct from aggregate domestic or pre-political settlements. To that end, this course seeks to build an awareness of the relationship between diverse cultures and the collective representations of institutions, including the implications of political and economic policies on the development of the city over time, and to develop a fundamental understanding of the theories and principles involved in the making of urban form. This course is organized chronologically from the point of view of the American city at the close of the twentieth century. As such, emphasis is placed upon those ideas and artifacts having the greatest influence on current architectural thought and practice, with a critical view to the open question of the role of architecture in the future of the city.
Course Requirements
Students are expected to attend class regularly, read the material assigned, and participate in discussions when called upon. The grade is determined by the completion of four essays of three pages each over the course of the semester.