Elective Course
Credits: 3-0-3 (3 semester hours)
Type of Course: Lecture
Instructors: Harris Dimitropoulos
Prerequisites: None
Course Overview:The basic premise of the course is that Architecture is a representational discipline and profession.
Architects rely on representational media in order to conceive, construct and communicate amongst themselves, with clients and with other professionals. The drawings/representations of our designs are also professional, legal documents. In addition to all this, buildings are designed in such a way that they communicate with the individual subject as well as with the community. Human occupation is inscribed in buildings and we can identify it in the sizes of spaces, doors, stairs, etc. as well as in the traces human beings leave on buildings while they occupy them.
The course will cover the mechanisms of representation that relate to both drawings and buildings so that the students can learn how to communicate their work and projects more effectively. It will also cover oral and visual presentation techniques.
My own research/design/creative work revolves around representational issues. More specifically, I am interested in the ways simple techniques can produce meaningful results.
Learning Objectives: The first two weeks of the course will be devoted to readings and to the introduction of the basic premises of representation. During the rest of the semester we will be looking at movies, art, advertisements and buildings and we will be discussing the representational techniques and devices that make them significant.
Course Requirements: Students will prepare three powerpoint presentations throughout the semester. These will entail the collection of material, scanning, making pdf files, etc. and the presentation of the material along with their observations. The topic of these projects will be first an ad from a magazine, then a tv show or a work of art and finally a building from a well-known architect.
Required/Suggested Readings:
The following are some of the texts we will discuss during the semester.
- Agrest, Diana, "The city as the Place of representation" in Architecture from Without Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1991.
- Roland Barthes "The Photographic Message" in Selected Writings, Introduced by Susan Sontag, Fontana Pocket Readers, "Barthes" The University Press, Oxford, 1982.
- Roland Barthes, "Semiology and Urbanism", in: The Semiotic Challenge Translated by Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, New York, 1988
- Jean Baudrillard, "Design and Environment" in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, Translated with an Introduction by Charles Levin Telos Press, St. Louis MO. 1981
- Jennifer Bloomer, Towards Desiring Architecture: Piranesi's Collegio in: "Drawing, Building, Text", Andrea Khan Editor, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1991
- Umberto Eco. "Function and Sign" Via #2.
- Robin Evans, Translations from Drawing to Building in: Translations from Drawing to Building and other essays The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1997
- Harris Dimitropoulos, In the Future Perfect, Architecture and the Post-Historical Avant Garde.
- Martin Jay, Scopic Regimes of Modernity in: "Vision and Visuality", Discussions in Contemporary Culture, Number 2, DIA Art Foundation, Edited by Hal Foster. Bay Press, Seattle, 1988.