WORKSHOP IN ARCHITECTURE

USC School of Architecture, 2000 - 2003

A university-wide architecture studio/seminar for non-majors.

course description:
The study of architecture is vast and multi-disciplinary. It can encompass geology, geography, psychology, technology, history, chemistry, biology, physics and art. An introduction to architecture must therefore be broad and lay down the essential groundwork that can later be developed and built-upon. Through design exercises, this course will introduce the basic concepts of what it means to make architecture.
some questions...

-How does architecture communicate ideas and intentions?
-What is the responsibility of architecture?
-What does an architect need to know?
-How do we evaluate architecture? How do we know when it is ‘good’?
-How does the architect conceive, create, and execute a project?
-How does the inspiration of an architect become an design idea?
-How does an idea become a architectural concept? How does a concept become actual architecture?
-What is a vision? How does an architect develop a vision over time?
-How does an architect communicate intentions to the people that build the work?
-How does the story of architecture (history) shape the work of contemporary architects(future)?
-What parts of architecture can be taught, what parts must be experienced?
-What is the difference between a fine artist and an architect?
-What is the difference between a building and a work of architecture?

this class will...
-introduce the basic concepts of the architectural design process.
-introduce the tools and skills used by architects.
-use one design project throughout the term as a tool for learning architectural topics.
-include independent research on a designer throughout term.
-be about growth and learning through architecture.

each class may include...
-an introductory slide lecture of two designers, architects or artists. Their work will demonstrate the particular issue of architecture we are examining that day.
-a discussion of the reading assignment due that day.
-a group review of the project assignment due that day.
-an in-class exercise.
topics... tools...
inspiration
place site model & drawings
past research & analysis
composition collages & models
movement narratives & story boards
concept sketchbooks & brainstorming
program diagrams & abstract drawings
space models & perspectives
scale scale drawings, figures & models
line freehand & isometric drawings
shape massing & figure ground studies
light light, shadow & color studies
construction basic structure & material studies
presentation models, drawings and renderings
evaluation reviews & critiques

the project:
A PLACE TO LIVE
This design project will be developed throughout the course of the term. The final design project will be modest in scale, no more than 2000 square feet.
spaces for the following activities should be accommodated in your design:
-a place to sleep
-a place to eat
-a place to bathe
-a place to socialize
-a place to work
-a place to cultivate...?

exercises:
This expanding sequence of exercises will reveal the breadth of architecture. The basic concepts and forms of communication in design will be introduced through working on a broad range of projects. Each exercise is separate, but part of the same design project.

01. opening & absence
take an activity; make an opening for it

02. space & enclosure
take the opening; make a space for the opening that accommodates the activity

03. topography & landscape
take the space; locate and orient it on the site

04. building & structure
take the space on the site; design & develop a small (under 2000s.f.) place to live

05. movement & path
take the site & building; make connections, create a narrative, design the movement

research on a designer:
On the second day of class each student will select, or be assigned, a 20th century architect to study in depth throughout the term. You will be responsible for collecting books, articles, essays, biographies, images and information by and about this person and their body of work. You should set aside some time every week (or day) to read and study this material (i.e...have it in a pile by your bed to go over before going to sleep). By the end of the term you should a have a deep understanding of this person, their work and the meaning behind it. You should also develop your own personal insights, interpretations, and reactions. For the final exam you will be assigned an essay to write during class on this person, their work, and it’s relation to the concepts introduced in this class.
alvar aalto
tadao ando
luis barragan
marcel breuer
charles correa
diller & scofidio
charles and ray eames
peter eisenman
buckminster fuller
frank gehry
zaha hadid
le corbusier
louis kahn
rem koolhaas
maya lin
julia morgan
richard neutra
mies van der rohe
aldo rossi
carlo scarpa
r.m. schindler
robert venturi & denise scott brown
frank lloyd wright

some suggested reading:
Josef Albers / "Interaction of Color"
Reyner Banham / "Theory and Design and the First Machine Age"
Leonardo Benevolo / "History of Modern Architecture" books I and II
Deborah Berke and Steven Harris / "Architecture of the Everyday"
Jan Birksted / "Relating Architecture to Landscape"
Kent Bloomer and Charles Moore / "Body, Memory, and Architecture"
Geoffrey Broadbent and Charles Jencks / "Signs, Symbols, and Architecture"
Italo Calvino / "Invisible Cities"
Alan Colquhoun / "Essays in Architecture: Modern Architecture and Historical Change"
Le Corbusier / "Towards a New Architecture"
Kenneth Frampton / "Modern Architecture: A Critical History"
E.H. Gombrich / "Art and Illusion"
Karsten Harries / "The Ethical Function of Architecture"
George Hersey / "The Monumental Impulse: Architecture's Biological Roots"
Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson / "The International Style"
Isabelle Hyman and Marvin Trachtenberg / "Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-Modernism"
Johannes Itten / "The Elements of Color"
Louis I. Kahn / "Conversations with Students"
Rem Koolhaas / "Delirious New York" / "OMA: S M L XL"
Agnes Martin / "Writings"
Lewis Mumford / "Sticks and Stones: A Study of American Architecture and Civilization"
Lewis Mumford / "The City in History"
Kate Nesbitt, editor / "Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture"
Cesar Pelli / "Observations: For Young Architects"
Steen Eiler Rasmussen / "Experiencing Architecture"
Colin Rowe / "Collage City"
Aldo Rossi / "The Architecture of the City"
Andrew Saint / "The Image of the Architect"
Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour / "Leaving Las Vegas"
Vincent Scully / "Architecture: the Natural and the Man Made"
Ben Shahn / "The Shape of Content"
James Steele / "Architecture Today"
Scott Swank / "Shaker Life, Art, and Architecture"
Manfredo Tafuri / "History and theories of Architecture"
Bernard Tschumi / "Architecture and Disjunction"
Robert Venturi / "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture"
Andy Warhol / "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol"
Lawrence Weschler / "Seeing is Forgetting: Robert Irwin"
Mark Wigley / "The Architecture of Deconstruction"
James Wines / "De-Architecture"
Frank Lloyd Wright / "The Future of Architecture"

some quotes to think about:
"Born of the most mysterious tendencies of our instinct, artistic inspiration remains entirely free. No one in the name of the past can assign it a direction or impose limits upon it. It will always evade rules and theories by some route no one has thought of. But just as the most unexpected dreams we have in our sleep, always on reflection, stem from some thought we had while awake, so the works which this inspiration engenders will always later find their explanation in what preceded them."
Roger de la Fresnaye

"The contemporary talent draws what it needs from predecessors, but the aim is a new amalgam that touches deep levels. Profound works articulate a philosophy of life, a vision of the way things ought to be."
William J.R. Curtis
"Any architecture that does not express serenity is a mistake."
Luis Barragan

"Architects who have acquired practical skills without scholarship have never achieved authority, while those who have relied only upon theories and scholarship have obviously been hunting the shadow, not the substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of both have obtained their objective and gained authority"
Marcus Vitruvius

The external and internal appearance of an edifice should be illustrative of, and in accordance with, the purpose for which it is destined"
A.W.N. Pugin

"So far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was and is and always will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality...Poetry is being, not doing...Nobody else can ever be alive for you, nor can you be alive for anybody else...There is the artist's responsibility and the most awful responsibility on earth.
e.e. cummings

"Architecture is to create moving emotional relationships with inert materials"
Le Corbusier
"Architects tend to see more with their senses and less with their intellect the longer they are involved with design."
Esther McCoy

"Architecture is cubic harmonious expression of thought."
Henri Provesal

"The architect does not respond directly to the problems put before him. He responds through a personal interpretation of the situation and his interpretation can never be objective, it must always be subjective."
Joseph Rykwert

"Art lives by its skeleton, grasp the skeleton and you grasp the art."
Viollet Le Duc

"Architecture is a translation of an epoch into space."
Mies van der Rohe

"Far higher than the material is the spiritual. Far higher than function, material and technique, stands form. These three material aspects might be impeccably handled, if form were not, we would still be living in a brutish world."
Hermann Muthesius

"Observing ones environment and involving ones environment, working within it and against it are all important."
Robert Venturi

"That which takes us by suprise - moments of happiness - that is inspiration...Inspiration is there all the time for everyone whose mind is not clouded over by thoughts...Most people have no realization whatever of the moments in which they are inspired...It's a peaceful thing. Do not think that it is reserved for a few or anything like that. It is an untroubled mind. Of course an untroubled state of mind cannot last so we say that inspiration comes and goes but really it is there all the time waiting for us to be untroubled again."
Agnes Martin

"Then one day I started writing, not knowing that I hand chained myself for life to a merciless master. When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation."
Truman Capote

"In those days, he who was born a poet, became an architect..."
Victor Hugo

"Aesthetic intention and the creation of better surroundings for life are the two permanent characteristics of architecture...But because architecture gives concrete form to society and is intimately connected with it and with nature, it differs fundamentally from every other art and science...With time the city grows upon itself; it acquires a consciousness and memory."
Aldo Rossi

"Writing is any and every organization of form that stimulates an organized experience of reading. Writing is thus no longer limited to script, but includes speech and architecture as well."
Jacques Derrida

"Space is all one space and thought is all one thought, but my mind divides its spaces into spaces into spaces, and thoughts into thoughts into thoughts. Like a large condominium. Occasionally I think about the one Thought and the one Space, but usually I don't. Usually I think about my condominium...I really believe in empty spaces, although, as an artist, I make a lot of junk...If I see a chair in a beautiful space, no matter how beautiful the chair is, it can never be as beautiful to me as that plain space..."
Andy Warhol

"I tell you that I have a long way to go before I am - where one begins...You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Resolve to be always beginning - to be a
beginner!"
Rainer Maria Rilke

materials:
This is a list of basic architect's supplies that you will need for this class. Additional materials will be needed for specific exercises. paper:
-white trace paper - 12" roll and pad 11x17 min.
-sketchbook - 8-1/2" x 11" min.
-bond paper - 11" x 17" (copy paper)
tools:
-architects scale - inches.
-adjustable triangle: 12"x12" min.
-t-square or parallel rule, and drafting surface.
-drafting tape.
-lead pointer.
-"x-acto" knife and blades
-metal straight edge ruler - 18" min.
-"Elmers" glue
-glue gun
drawing:
-"sanford" draughting pencils.
-drafting pencils 2h, h, b, 2b, 4b, 6b ("staedler", "berol", "stabilo")
-charcoal
-lead holder.
-drafting leads: f, b, 4b.
-black "Sharpie" markers: ultra fine, extra fine, fine and super.
-"steadler" white eraser.
-kneaded eraser.
-eraser shield.