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Architectural History and Criticism

The exhaustive list of topics in Architectural History and Criticism in which we provide Help with Homework Assignment and Help with Project is as follows:

Experiencing Architecture Studio

            Work in class on concrete formwork

Due: Site "heavy" built in chipboard, "final" massing of studio sketched in chipboard, first-pass openings sketched on trace overlays

Campus Tour: Relationships betweeen spaces

Inter-group Exhibit: "Pre-final" 1/2-scale models

Due: First-pass columns on 1/4-scale plans and 1/8-scale models; BH talk on using SketchUp in designs

Last class

Photo and advising day; BH talk on spatial zones, organizing plan and site by abstraction

Photo day; Begin construct 1/2-scale Final Model base

First Mid-Review: 1/4-scale plans and 1/8-scale model showing "heavy," "hollow," and structure

Due: 1/8-scale sketch plans, card-stock spaces on context model; BH talk on site attitudes

Due: "Final" 1/4-scale plans; BH talk on 1/2-scale "show" plans and "tectonic nature" of concrete

South End Field Trip

Pin-up: Massing in chip on 1/2-scale final model. Desk crits on opening sketches

Optimist's Daughter reading; BH demo on drafting, cutting. Make scale figures, build 1/8-scale cube models. Students and TAs talk about choices of designer

 

Inter-group Exhibit: SketchUp site images; BH talk on columns as structure and idea

Second Mid-Review: 1/2-scale plans and 1-in-scale Detail Models

Due: First sketch of site apportionment; BH demo on fome-cor; Build 1/16-scale gesture model

Due: 1/4-scale plan of site on trace; TA demos on column experience; Column experience on 1/4-scale plans

Inter-group Pin-up: Second-pass 1/4-scale plans and 1/8-scale models; Class work on beams and planes

Final Review: With faculty, alums, and guests, all day in the review spaces

Pin-up: First arrangement of work-space "cubes" on 1/8-scale models; BH demo on SketchUp

Due: 1/2-scale plans; BH demo on concrete formwork and casting; Talk in groups on 1-in-scale Detail Models

Carpenter Center tour: Spaces within a structural order

Due: Written statement on choice of designer, facilities; Begin 1/8-scale context model;BH demo on using trace to "surprise yourself"

Due: Completed 1/2-scale model base; BH talk on proportion and openings

 

Analysis of Contemporary Architecture

            Aldo Rossi and Carlo Scarpa

Le Corbusier buildings and cities

Suburbia, sprawl, Congress for New Urbanism, DuanyPlater-Zyberk

Introduction

De Stijl and Schrader Schroder house

Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry

 

Post Modernism: less is a bore

Final review exhibition

James Stirling

Alvar Aalto

Case-study house program

Philip Johnson and the International Style of 1932

Aldo Van Eyck

Field trip to Yale, overnight stay with Sunday trip to Exeter Library

William McDonough, green building practices

 

Louis Kahn

Mies van der Rohe: Berlin and America, less is more

Eero Saarinen, Paul Rudolph

 

Five Architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier

Urbanism CIAM and Team X

Walter Gropius: Bauhaus and Harvard

Adolf Loos, Peter Behrens and the German Werkbund

Louis Sullivan: Adler and Sullivan

 

Deconstructivist architecture

Visit Gropius House, Lincoln, MA

Frank Lloyd Wright

 

Work in class on concrete formwork

Due: Site "heavy" built in chipboard, "final" massing of studio sketched in chipboard, first-pass openings sketched on trace overlays

Campus Tour: Relationships betweeen spaces

Inter-group Exhibit: "Pre-final" 1/2-scale models

Due: First-pass columns on 1/4-scale plans and 1/8-scale models; BH talk on using SketchUp in designs

Last class

Photo and advising day; BH talk on spatial zones, organizing plan and site by abstraction

Photo day; Begin construct 1/2-scale Final Model base

First Mid-Review: 1/4-scale plans and 1/8-scale model showing "heavy," "hollow," and structure

Due: 1/8-scale sketch plans, card-stock spaces on context model; BH talk on site attitudes

Due: "Final" 1/4-scale plans; BH talk on 1/2-scale "show" plans and "tectonic nature" of concrete

South End Field Trip

Pin-up: Massing in chip on 1/2-scale final model. Desk crits on opening sketches

Optimist's Daughter reading; BH demo on drafting, cutting. Make scale figures, build 1/8-scale cube models. Students and TAs talk about choices of designer

 

Inter-group Exhibit: SketchUp site images; BH talk on columns as structure and idea

Second Mid-Review: 1/2-scale plans and 1-in-scale Detail Models

Due: First sketch of site apportionment; BH demo on fome-cor; Build 1/16-scale gesture model

Due: 1/4-scale plan of site on trace; TA demos on column experience; Column experience on 1/4-scale plans

Inter-group Pin-up: Second-pass 1/4-scale plans and 1/8-scale models; Class work on beams and planes

Final Review: With faculty, alums, and guests, all day in the review spaces

Pin-up: First arrangement of work-space "cubes" on 1/8-scale models; BH demo on SketchUp

Due: 1/2-scale plans; BH demo on concrete formwork and casting; Talk in groups on 1-in-scale Detail Models

Carpenter Center tour: Spaces within a structural order

Due: Written statement on choice of designer, facilities; Begin 1/8-scale context model;BH demo on using trace to "surprise yourself"

Due: Completed 1/2-scale model base; BH talk on proportion and openings

 

 

History and Theory of Architecture

Discussion: the pyramids

History and time

Chang'an

Discussion: Timgad and Roman urbanism

 

Discussion: the profession of the architect in classical antiquity

Discussion: ritual plans

Southeast Asia and Angkor Wat

From Armenia to Borobudur

Midterm exam

Early Hindu architecture

Gothic architecture: Cistercians & cathedrals

Pits and granaries: the sacred section

Colonial worlds

800 BCE: Iron and the New World Order: Greeks, Etruscans, Assyrians

Buddhism: Out of India

Grains, animals and the village world

Midterm review

Discussion: the plan of St. Gall

The Gravettians and the hunting tradition of the north

Cities, gods and empires

Early Islam: 800 CE

First societies

1500 BCE: After the Cataclysm: Knossos and Karnak

500 BCE: Persia and Central Asia

Discussion: architecture history textbooks

Discussion: The MIT Chapel

Rome (continued)

Rome

 

Early Christian transitions

The Americas

Fire, water and chariots

Discussion: first societies

TOPICS

Discussion: buildings and representations in time

The Holocene and the agro-pastoral emergence

Late medieval Europe: Renaissance in perspective

Review session

UNESCO & cultural nationalism

Final Exam

 

 

 

 

 

Religious Architecture and Islamic Cultures          

Part I: The Formative Period

The Life and Message of the Prophet.

The Mosque of the Prophet in Medina and other Early Mosques.

Religious Architecture: Visual Impressions and Intellectual Contours.   

Simple Origins and Influences of pre-Islamic Traditions.

            Rituals of Worship: The Vocabulary of Religious Architecture.        

Part II: The Classical Period

The Splendors of the Abbasids at Baghdad and Samarra.

Iran and Central Asia: Developments on the Eastern Frontier.

The Survival and Revival of pre-Islamic Modes of Construction and Expression.

The Introduction of the Mausoleum.        

An Islamic Architectural Language: Monumentalizing the Hypostyle Type.       

Religious Monuments of the West: Ifriqiya and Spain.

Imperial versus Provincial Expressions of Power.          

The conquests and the adaptation of ancient motifs as assertive elements of a new faith.

The First Islamic monument: the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Competing ideologies, myths, and world views. 

First Caliphal Expressions: Umayyad Mosques (715-50).

Islamization of the Empire and Arabization of the State.

Fatimid Cairo: New Traditions and Old Forms.

Muqarnas: Decorative Purposes and Symbolic Meanings.        

Part III: The Medieval Period

           

The Achitecture of the Great Seljuqs: The Four-Iwan Plan, Fom Palatial to Religious. 

Crusades and Counter Crusades.

The Articulation of the Idea of Jihad.

The Architecture of the Sunni Revival: Eastern Influences and Western Traditions.

The Introduction and Spread of the Madrasa and the Khanqah.

Religious Architecture of India under the Sultanates.     

Cairo: The Capital of Islam.

Mamluk Religious Architecture.  

Ayyubid and Early Mamluk Religious Architecture.        

The Mongol Invasions and Consequent Islamization.

The Mosques, Madrasas, and Mausolea of the Ilkhanids.          

Discussion: The Political and Social Roles of Religious Architecture.    

Part IV: The Age of the Gunpowder Empires

           

Timurid and Uzbek Architecture: A Tradition of Monumentality.

Anatolia: The Islamization of the Northern Frontiers.

From the Rum Seljuks to the Early Ottomans.   

Imperial Ottoman Mosques and Kulliyes.

Discussion: Religion and the City.

Short film, The Islamic City.        

Imperial Safavid Mosques and Madrasas of Isfahan.

Short film, Isfahan.          

Mosques and Mausolea of the Great Mughals of India. 

Part V: The Modern Period

           

           

Historicism in Contemporary Religious Architecture: The Building of Mosques in the West.           

Discussion: The Religious Image of Islam.

Some Contemporary Mosques and their Messages.          

 

The Architecture of Cairo

           

History and geography.

The Nile and the site of Cairo.

The legacy of ancient Egypt.

Egypt on the eve of Islam

Hellenism.

Christianity and the Copts.

The coming of Islam: Arabia and Egypt.       

            Foundation of al-Fustat

 

What is a misr?

Abbasids and Tulunids (8th and 9th Century)

 

Imperial ambitions: IbnTulun and al-Ikhshid.

The foundation of al-Qata‘i.

The Mosque of IbnTulun.

Buildings of the Ikhshidids.The Mosque of ‘Amruibn al-‘As: the first mosque in Africa.

The vocabulary of the mosque: the minaret, the mihrab and the minbar.

The Nilometer.           

           
 Part 5 - Modernization and After - Muhammad 'Ali to the Present

 

            Competing Neo Styles in the Early Twentieth Century

 

The emergence of vernacular style in the 1940's.   

            Historicism in Twentieth-Century Cairo

 

Cairo's expansion and modernization.

The works of HasanFathy, Ramses WissaWasef, and their students.

Population explosion and urban chaos.

Problems of preservation and accommodation.

The image of Cairo: past and present.

Cairo From Napoleon to Muhammad `Ali

 

The architectural and urban works of Muhammad Ali.

The Mosque at the Citadel.

The Westernization of the palatial architecture.      

            The Modernization of Cairo

 

Orientalism and the fascination of Egypt.

Ethnographer-painters and the romanticization of Cairo.

The Comité de preservation des monuments du Caire and preservation.

Cairene architecture in the late nineteenth century.

Historicism and the Mamluk revival.

Other Orientalizing styles.

Cosmopolitan architecture.       

 

            The Ancient City

                        Religion in the Greek City

            Religion in the Roman City          

            Civic space I: The Agora   

Introduction to the Study of Ancient Cities   

            Polis: The City of Athens  

            Urbs: The City of Rome    

            Recreational Space           

            City and Country: Theories of the City

            Conclusions 

Civic space II: The Forum

            Feeding the City     

            Domestic Space     

           

            MArch Portfolio Seminar

           

           

            Review of Web Portfolios in class

The Art of Description     

            Architects on Buildings    

            Written Intentions

            TOPICS         

                        Medium + Message          

            Web Tutorial Text and Image    

            Printed Matter       

            Review Portfolios in class            

 

            Architectural Design: Material Essence: The Glass House

            TOPICS

            Show and Tell

Material and Tectonic Transformations: The Herreshoff Museum

Pin-up with Tim Eliasson

            Trip to Tri-Pyramid, Concord

            Pin Up

            Field Trip: Fort Worth

            Project 3 Concepts/Design Generation

            Desk Crits

            Pin-up with Guest Critics

            Project 3.2: Design Organization

            Andrew Scott in St Louis

Tony Hunt Lecture

            Desk Crits

            Mid Project Review

            Project 4: Skin and Bones

Materials Language

            Desk Crits

Introduction to Studios

            Project 1: Introduction

            All Studios - Field Trip to T. Island

            Pin Up of First Individual Ideas/Concepts but in Groups

            Group Esquisse

Hybridization

Desk Crits

            Group Presentations of Design Strategies

Assignment of Faculty

            Research, Development and Testing

            Working Pin Ups with Faculty

            Workshop

Prototype/Fabrication

            Review of Group Work with Critics

            Project 2A: Introduction

Wellesley Visit

Site Studies/Model

            Desk Crits

            Pin Up

            Project 2B: Site and Material Studies

            Tim Eliasson Lecture

Peter Cook Lecture

            Peter delTredici: Plants

Desk Crits

            Desk Crits

            Project 5: Prototype and Fabricate

Make and Test: Workshop

Pin-up

            Desk Crits

            Review

Final Project:

Design Synthesis/Presentation

            Desk Crits

            Mock-ups

            MArch Thesis Reviews

            Final Review

Studio

Review: Reliance Pavilion

First Studio: Project 1 Group Introduction

Studio

Field Trip:

Prototype / Production

Studio

Studio

Pin Up of First Ideas / Concepts

Working Review

Studio / Shop Time

Informal Pin Up

 

 

 

 

Studio

Lecture: Tim Eliason / Tri-Pyramid

Last Studio

Studio

 

Review: Program / Concept

Research, Development and Test

Working Review

 

 

Field Trip to Thomson Island

Team Presentations x 12 of Design Strategies

 

Research, Development and Test

Lecture / Demonstration:

Field Trip: Peabody / Essex Museum

Lecture: George Brin / RISD

 

Show and Tell

Final Review

Group Esquisse

 

Studio

 

Working Review

Studio

Studio / Shop Time

 

 

Immaterial Limits: Process and Duration

            Informal pin-up in groups of 3

3 Models, Set 2 due

 

Desk critique

Desk critique

3 Models, Set 1 due

Leave for Chicago

Introduction to a Quarry

Desk critique for Problem 1 Part 2

Desk critique

Desk critique

Level 2 Forum, Trajectory 2 posted

Presentation by Saul Griffith

Desk critique

 

Fabrication

Desk critique

Desk critique

 

Fabrication

Pin Up 2 Models Due in sketch model form at 1"=1/32"

 

Desk critique

 

 

Final Review

 

 

Models due

 

Problem 1 Part 1 Due

 

Desk critique

Scale jump to 1" = 1/8" Models and Drawings

Desk critique

Lecture by Brigitte Shim

Desk critique

 

Student Process Presentations

Defamiliarization Representations Due

 

Desk critique

Introduce Studio Issues and Problem

 

 

Fabrication

 

 

 

Pin Up

 

Mid Review

Desk critique

 

Review Problem 1 Part 2

Desk critique

Desk critique

Desk critique

 

Architectural Design: Collage - Method and Form

Sequence 2: Expansion

Separation and Reattachment

King and Worker

Close Examination and Description

Reconstitution of Descriptions

Sequence 3: Relational

Two-person Paper Collage and Museum Field Trip

Sequence 1: Extraction

First Collage

Framing

Three Dimensional Interpretation

Large Collage

Aesthetic Extraction

Final Review

Obliteration and Recovery

 

Precedents in Critical Practice

Shrinking Cities Competition

Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour, Denise Scott Brown: Learning from Las Vegas

dECOi

Program ? Performance (Relations, Effects, Atmospheres)

West 8: Toronto Central Waterfront competition entry

R&Sie(n) Architects

Jürgen Mayer H.

Office dA 

OMA: Seattle Central Library and Très Grande Bibliothèque

Downsview Park Competition

Herzog & de Meuron: American works

ZahaHadid: Vitra Fire Station; and BMW Central Plant

UN Studio

Diller Scofidio + Renfro: early work; drawings; and ICA Boston

Drawing ? Scripting

Urban Plan ? Map of Operations

CAP (Ali Rahim and HinaJamelle)

Peter Eisenman: Cannaregio Project; and two early houses

Hernan Diaz

Bernard Tschumi: The Manhattan Transcripts; and one building by Tschumi

Jean Nouvel: La Fondation Cartier

Steven Holl: early drawings; and Simmon Hall

MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program finalists

Atelier Bow-Wow: Made in Tokyo; and one building by Bow-Wow

Machado and Silvetti: two projects in Boston

MVRDV

Introduction

LO-TEK

Mapping of contemporary discourse

Atelier FCJZ

FOA: Yokohama Terminal

Introduction

City ? Global Economy

Reiser-Umemoto: Atlas of Novel Tectonics; and projects

Image ? Surface

 

Analysis of Historic Structures

            Metal Structures II

 

Projects/Discussion

Projects/Discussion (cont.)

Timber Structures I

Final Presentations (cont.)

Final Presentations

 

Concrete Structures

Metal Structures I

Masonry Structures I

Timber Structures II

Introduction

Masonry Structures II

 

Thinking About Architecture: In History and at Present

            Metaphysics and anti-metaphysics      

            Debate 1      

            Social contract       

            Defining the architect                  

            Course introduction         

            Modernity   

            Heidegger    

            Debate 3      

            Course wrap-up Avant-garde    

            Debate 2      

            Psychology  

            Husserl         

            Drawings & Numbers: Five Centuries of Digital Design

            Alberti's Improbable Image-making Technologies

            Discussion of Final Presentation Topics

            Alberti and the (Untrustworthy) Power of Man-made Images

            Introduction: Drawings, Numbers, and the Power of (Printed) Images

            The Primacy of the Word: Vitruvius and the Mystery of his Missing Images

Image-making Technologies, Architecture, and Identical Replication

            On Some Semi-automatic Machines for the Drawing of the Architectural Orders Oddly Invented in the Seventeenth Century

           

Selected Topics in Architecture: Architecture from 1750 to the Present

            LECTURE TOPICS               

            Constructing the Past

Body as Metaphor in Architecture                   

            Ludic Spaces

The Architecture of Play             

            Lines Across the City

Exploring Forth and Digging Under                 

            Prelude to an Architecture of Globalization: The Transatlantic Slave Trade                

            Landscape

 

The Politics of Site                       

            Architecture and Industrialism, Part 1: The Ghosts of Technology                     

            Architecture as Ornament                      

            Architecture and Industrialism, Part 2: Masses, Classes and Regions                

            Domesticity

 

Gender in Space               

            Making of the Modernist Avant-Garde and the Operative Historian                 

            Body Talk

 

Architecture and the State                  

            Post-War Narratives of "Development"                     

            Final Lecture                       

           

Contemporary Architecture and Critical Debate

           

Second Interim Exam

 

Technofantasy / Megastructure

Architecture and Deconstruction

Introduction

 

Phenomenology and Place

1968

Aldo Rossi and the Archetypes of Memory

Kenneth Frampton and Critical Regionalism

 

 

Bodies

ManfredoTafuri and the Venice School

Modernisms Elsewhere

 

 

 

First Interim Exam

CTRL [Space]

 

Vernacularism

 

 

Voyages into the Surface - Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown

Minimalism and Monumentality - Louis Kahn

Final Paper (4500 words) Due

Traces on the City

 

Environmentalism

Superstudio - Italy between First and Third Worlds

Megacities

 

 

Theory Outtake 3

 

 

The New York Five

 

Critiques of Modernism

Architecture and Post-Modernism

Blobs, Curves and the Formless

 

 

 

Theory Outtake 1

 

 

 

 

Late CIAM and the Architecture of the Welfare State

Theory Outtake 2