I’m pretty excited to link my past life as an architect with my present life as a historical and political geographer this spring in teaching a global history of architecture and architectural theory. It’s going to be fun!
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course will offer students an overview of the history and theory of world architecture from the monuments of ancient civilizations to the built environments of the present day. In exploring examples from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, the class will interrogate the ways that economic changes, cultural dynamics, political pressures, and geographic specificities all impact how people have designed and constructed their worlds. Upon completion of the class, students will understand a number of key design principles and have developed a facility analyzing and interpreting a global history of architecture.
COURSE SCHEDULE
INTRODUCTIONS
Who we are and what we are doing here?
WHAT IS ARCHITECTURE?
What is architecture, what is design?
Seeing Like an Architect, or, Aesthetics and Ugly Buildings
FROM SECOND NATURE to the FIRST AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
Mud and Megaliths
Egypt and the Emergence of the Urban
ANCIENT WORLDS I: GREECE
Form, Space, and the Orders
Public Space and the City-State
ANCIENT WORLDS II: ASIA
Persia, India, and Southeast Asia
China and Japan
ANCIENT WORLDS III: ROME
Monumental Rome
Planning an Empire
EARLY CHRISTIAN and ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE
The Basilica
The Mosque
🍃🌴 SPRING RECESS 🌴🍃
MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE and the INDIGENOUS AMERICAS
The Romanesque and Gothic Periods I
The Romanesque and Gothic Periods, II
THE EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE
Humanism and the Mercantile City
Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Palladio
THE BAROQUE and NEOCLASSICISM
Playing with the Rules
MODERN ARCHITECTURE I: TECHNOLOGY and IMPERIALISM
Americans Abroad: Burnham and Ford
Ornament and Crime
MODERN ARCHITECTURE II: THE SKYSCRAPER and GLOBAL MODERNISMS
From Louis Sullivan to Urban Delirium
Not One but Many Modernities
MODERN ARCHITECTURE III: REVOLUTIONARY SPACES
The Avant-Garde
May ‘68
POSTMODERNITY, POWER, and THE ‘BURBS
Suburban Security-scapes
Architecture is not Neutral
ARCHITECTURE in a CHANGING CLIMATE
Questions for the Future of Architecture