Course Number: ARC 232
Year: 2nd Year
Track: History
Credit Hours: 3
Semester(s): Spring
Prerequisites: ARC 231 or permission of the instructor
Instructor(s):
Course Description:
Considers the creation, use and interpretation of architecture from the fifteenth century through the twentieth from a variety of perspectives: environmental, functional, material, structural, formal, socio-political, and cultural.
Objectives
1. To familiarize the student with the principal architectural achievements from the fifteenth through the twentieth century.
2. To present a historical understanding of those works in their social and cultural contexts.
3. To help the student acquire and develop the fundamental critical tools of visual and historical interpretation: a descriptive and analytical vocabulary with which to express visual perception verbally; the ability to identify and evaluate different kinds of historical evidence; and a sense of the complex constitution of historical context.
4. To encourage effective oral and written communication through training in argumentation.
5. To teach the student to think critically about the aspirations, constraints, tools, and choices involved in all architectural design, past and present.
Course Structure & Topics
Lectures and discussion will proceed from a conceptual introduction to fundamental issues and terms through a chronological survey of traditions from the Renaissance to the present; these traditions are consistently linked and differentiated by the thematic perspectives listed in the course description above. The traditions covered include:
Italian Renaissance Architecture and the Architect (5 lectures)
Renaissance Architecture outside Italy and in the New World
Mannerist Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Italy and Elsewhere
Baroque Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Italy and France (2 lectures)
18th-Century Architecture and Urbanism: Neoclassical, Visionary, and Picturesque (2 lectures)
Early Architecture and Urbanism in North America
The Study of Vernacular Architecture
Implications of Industrialization for Architecture: New Materials, Structures, and Building Types
19th-Century Ethics/Aesthetics in Architecture and Urbanism: Neoclassicism, Neomedievalism, Arts and Crafts (2 lectures)
Modern Architecture and Urbanism: Experimentation, the Avant-Garde, the International Style (5 lectures)
Dissenters and the Postmodern Critique (3 lectures)
Course Requirements
In addition to mandatory attendance at lecture and regular participation in discussion, the student is expected to complete all assigned readings, occasional in-class writing exercises, a major research project, and three exams.
