Elective Course
Credits: 3-0-3 (3 semester hours)
Type of Course: Lecture
Instructors: Mark Cottle
Prerequisites: None
Course Overview
What may be understood to constitute 'the detail' in contemporary architectural practice? What relation do 'the little things' have to 'the big things'? What role does the detail play -- what status does it enjoy (or not) -- in contemporary building? How is the concept of the detail enacted within the conventions of various cultures of construction?
A suspicion: that traditional thinking about details might no longer accurately reflect the way contemporary architects have actually been working -- in considerations of part to whole, and small to large, and in fabricating or experiencing an architectural environment.
We are all perhaps aware of the outlines of conventional discourse surrounding the detail, and very likely have recognized in Carlo Scarpa the exemplar of what Kenneth Frampton has called 'the adoration of the joint' (in such articles as Marco Frascari's 'The Tell-the-Tale Detail', Via 7).
But what, then, are we to make of Rem Koolhaas's advocacy for what he calls 'the non-detail'? Has the making of buildings become so coarse-grained that we no longer have the time or the interest to consider 'the finer things'? Or has the interest at the smaller scale shifted elsewhere -- away from the exigencies of construction?
Even a cursory examination of his own built work suggests a series of interests at the smaller scale, interests that might be construed to emerge from concerns other than those predicated by the modes and means of production.
We will take a close look at the production of a number of contemporary design practices -- starting with Gigon/Guyer, Kazuyo Sejima, Enric Miralles, Rafael Moneo, Rem Koolhaas, Toyo Ito, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Peter Zumthor -- but also with a number of younger, less established or 'signature' practices -- to see how the conventional model plays out in the work. And to see if we can find other registers, other conceptual models, that help organize their consideration of 'the little bits' in relation to the larger whole.
Learning Objectives
(See above)
Course Requirements
Successful completion of the following: discussion of assigned readings, formal analysis of exemplary built projects, and design project (which may be done in teams). Attendance at all class sessions. Grading will be calculated according to the following formula: one third attendance and participation in class, one third analysis, and one third design project.
Selected Bibliography
-Alberti, Leon Battista. On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1988.
-Benjamin, Walter. 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' and ' The Storyteller', Illuminations. Edited and with an Introduction by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.
-Construction Intention Detail: Five Projects from Five Swiss Architects, edited by Mark Gilbert, Kevin Alter. Zurich: Artemis, 1994.
-Ford, Edward R. The Details of Modern Architecture. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1990.
-Frampton, Kenneth. Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995.