Elective Course
Credits: 3-0-3 (3 semester hours)
Type of Course: Lecture
Instructors: Athanassios Economou
Prerequisites Graduate Standing
Course Overview:A sequence of lectures concerning the architecture of form from both an historical and a mathematical perspective. The course examines three aspects of form: proportion, symmetry and arrangement. The formal theory is applied mathematics, in particular modern group theory and combinatorics as well as recent studies in the history of mathematics. Whenever possible, the presentations are graphic and not symbolic, employing diagrammatic models from graph theory and lattice theory, as well as shape grammars. Design examples are used to illustrate principles and for analysis. The examples are culled from classical Greece to works of the modern period.
Architectonics is conceived to be to architecture what systematic musicology is to music. In part the term derives from Semper's "tectonics" the theoretical grounding for painting, sculpture and architecture - the Tectonic Arts which he distinguished from Music on the one hand and Dance on the other. The extended term Architectonicks was introduced in the seventeenth century by the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More, as a category distinct from Letters and Musick with the sense of the science of architecture.
Learning Objectives: (See above)
Course Requirements: Apart from the substantive content, the sequence of lectures serves to introduce the student to scholarly habits of mind and a sense of ongoing research in the field. Students are expected to attend the lectures, participate in the discussions and complete one project during the semester.
The class is open to M.Arch, MS. Arch and PhD students. Although the course presents a formal and systematic exposition of symmetry, no mathematical background is assumed on the part of the students.