Theory
Architecture and Knowledge ARCH 338/638.30 Course Schedule: Wednesdays, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: NYC Program Space
Prerequisites: ARCH 231/232 or ARCH 531/532 or permission from instructor.
Professor: Sanford Kwinter Course Description:
Knowledge is not a simple sum of facts, but rather the systematic ways in which these are organized to produce meaning and practical effect. Similarly, architecture is a discipline for imposing pattern and agency on the material world. Both ultimately represent means of organizing perception, as well as physical and social life. The important thing is that they do this invisibly together.
This course will study some of the principle movements and revolutions in knowledge that directly or obliquely produce the modern idioms of space and time (especially of the postwar period), as well as the revolutions in knowledge that have been emerging around us and are just beginning to be harnessed by design thinking. This is a theory course whose primary goal is to extend the traditions of phenomenological thinking into the rigorous (scientific/philosophical) disciplines that have emerged in recent decades to either explain or extend the capacities of human experience.
Topics of study will include music theory, neurology, mathematics, evolutionary theory, behavioral ecology, economics, computation, etc.
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History of Architecture and Urban Development
The Architecture of New York: 400 Years of People, Places, and Buildings ARCH 399.30 Course Schedule: Mondays, 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Location: NYC Program Space
Prerequisites: ARCH 181/182 or ARCH 581/582 or permission of instructor.
Professor: Ned Kaufman
Course Overview: The goal of this course is to understand New York better -- if not completely (an impossible goal), at least well enough to grasp the salient features of its built form and their evolution. Although we will study the evolution of New York´s architecture over time, this is not exactly a traditional history course. The real object of our study is New York as a complex and always-changing place composed of physical features, buildings, neighborhoods, people, and communities. We will take as much interest in how people relate to buildings and places as in the physical forms themselves, as much in the ordinary as in the exceptional. We will draw on sociology, cultural geography, folklore, political science, literature, and even urban mythology. And we will learn as much by walking and looking as by reading. Class meetings will include extensive field trips as well as seminars and lectures, while assignments will combine reading, writing, and on-site observation.
In this course, in short, students will learn about the evolution of New York as a physical and social organization; become familiar with a wide variety of urban environments; learn to recognize the characteristic building types, streetscapes, neighborhood characteristics, natural features, and historical processes of New York; and will develop their ability to ¨see in time,¨ recognizing the past and even the future in the physical forms themselves.
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