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• Manas Keluskar

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• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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ARCHITECTURAL IMAGINATION Manas Keluskar,1512

1. Reason behind selection of the course. Architecture engages a culture’s deepest social values and expresses them in material, aesthetic form. This course will teach me how to understand architecture as both cultural expression and technical achievement. It consists of vivid analysis of exemplary buildings, and hands-on exercises in drawing and modeling, which will bring me closer to the work of architects and historians. Architecture is one of the most complexly negotiated and globally recognized cultural practices, both as an academic subject and a professional career. Its production involves all of the technical, aesthetic, political, and economic issues at play within a given society.

2. A. Abstract: The first part of the course introduces the idea of the architectural imagination. Perspective drawing and architectural typology are explored and you will be introduced to some of the challenges in writing architectural history. Addressing technology as a component of architecture. You will discover ways that innovative technology can enable and promote new aesthetic experiences, or disrupt age-old traditions. Technological advances changed what could be built, and even what could even be thought of as architecture. Then the course will confront architecture’s complex relationship to its social and historical contexts and its audiences, achievements, and aspirations. They will teach about architecture’s power of representation and see how it can produce collective meaning and memory. Part I: Form and History Module 1: The Architectural Imagination: An Introduction Module 2: Reading Architecture: Column and Wall Module 3: Hegel and Architectural History Module 4: Aldo Rossi and Typology Part II: The Technology Effect Module 5: The Crystal Palace: Infrastructure and Detail Module 6: The Dialectics of Glass and Steel Module 7: Technology Tamed: Le Corbusier’s Machines for Living Part III: Representation and Context Module 8: Drawing Utopia: Visionary Architecture of the 18th Century Module 9: The Pompidou Center in the City of Paris Module 10: Presenting the Unrepresentable

3. Chapters covered

Learnings from this course Part I: Form and History This part of the course introduces the idea of the architectural imagination as a faculty that mediates sensuous experience and conceptual understanding. I was introduced to some of the challenges involved in writing architectural history, revealing that architecture does not always have a straightforward relationship to its own history. The four modules in Part I are: 1. The Architectural Imagination: An Introduction 2. Reading Architecture: Column and Wall 3. Hegel and Architectural History 4. Aldo Rossi and Typology

Module 1: The Architectural Imagination: An Introduction In the Introduction I explored the idea of the architectural imagination as a faculty that mediates sensuous experience and conceptual understanding. 

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I examined two examples of the architectural imagination, perspective drawing and architectural typology, and complete a series of exercises that asked me you to apply and expand my knowledge. Lecture 1.1 Aesthetic Perception Lecture 1.2 Wittkower's Palladian Diagram Lecture 1.3 Typology Lecture 1.4 Perspective Lecture 1.5 The Ideal City

Prompt One of the best ways to learn how to read a plan is to try your hand at drawing your own. Choose a space that you are intimately familiar with. It could be your home, your workplace, or a favorite public space, but make sure to choose a space that has at least three discrete and adjacent rooms. By hand, draw a floor plan of your space. Carefully choose the height of your cut line so that the plan includes all the information you find important. Make sure to indicate locations of doors, windows, and walls.

Module 2: Reading Architecture: Column and Wall In Module 2 "Reading Architecture: Column and Wall" with Professor Erika Naginski, I looked in more detail at Rudolf Wittkower's practice of a Kant-inspired interpretation of the project of architecture, and how Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism revolutionized our understanding of geometry, modular pattern, and the ways in which diagrams can be used to explain the work of the architect. I observed how Wittkower traces the development of Leon Battista Alberti's thinking on architecture using four (chronological) commissions: the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and San Sebastiano and Sant'Andrea, both located in Mantua. Lecture 2.1 Wittkower's Theory of Architecture    

Lecture 2.2 Wittkower and Alberti Lecture 2.3 Tempio Malatestiano Lecture 2.4 Santa Maria Novella Lecture 2.5 San Sebastiano & Sant'Andrea

Exercise 2.1 explored the question of column and wall (central in Wittkower's investigation of Alberti, and a fundamental concept of Renaissance construction). Questions were asked to see if I can distinguish between different structural systems of a building Exercise 2.2 resumed our discussion from Module 1 of linear perspective as a form of knowledge and what the Italian architecture historian Giulio Carlo Argan called "the ideal of the Renaissance architectural imagination."

Module 3: Hegel and Architectural History In Module 3 "Hegel and Architectural History," I learnt how to explore a model for a philosophy of art history as expressed by the German idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The very idea of art as having a history, a progression, comes from Hegel, and also learned more about his attempt to "gather up all the cultures and all the epochs of art into a single, coherent, unified system... a system wherein art discloses truths about the world by giving those truths appearance"      

Lecture 3.1 Hegel's History Lecture 3.2 Hegel's Spirit Lecture 3.3 Symbolic Architecture Lecture 3.4 Romantic Architecture Lecture 3.5 Classical Architecture Lecture 3.6: The End of Art

Exercise 3.1 Form / Function = Beauty (Concept Check) Exercise 3.1 is a true/false activity that consists of two steps:  

Review each statement. Determine if the statement is true or false.

Exercise 3.2 Understanding Hegel Exercise 3.2 is a multi-part activity that consists of three steps:   

Complete the matching questions related to Hegel's three categories of architecture. Read the free response prompt that immediately follows the questions. Compose and submit your response.

Module 4: Aldo Rossi and Typology In Module 4 "Aldo Rossi and Typology," the final module in Part I: Form and History, I was given one more example of the architectural imagination at work. The modern Italian architect Aldo Rossi, perhaps, shares Hegel's understanding that architecture is one of the fundamental human postulates of our existence in the world. For Rossi, too, architecture is a central medium of human thought and human memory. However, in Rossi's work, I found the suggestion that architecture's origin is not simply behind us, as Hegel insisted, but that architecture is constantly finding its origin again and again, and that this beginning must constantly be reimagined. The imagination uses historical precedents to create new architectural projects.

I returned to the idea of typology, which was briefly introduced with the example of Palladio's villas in Lecture 1.3. I examined Rossi's particular understanding of this concept of type through two of his projects: the Cemetery at Modena and the Monument to the Italian Partisans at Cuneo, both in Italy.     

Lecture 4.1 "That is Architecture" Lecture 4.2 The Cuneo Monument Lecture 4.3 The Architectural Type Lecture 4.4 Anteriority and the Analogous City Lecture 4.5 Architecture after Architecture

Exercise 4.1 Typology - Part I (Concept Check) Exercise 4.1 is a true/false activity that consists of two steps:  

Review each statement. Determine if the statement is true or false.

Exercise 4.2 Typology - Part II Exercise 4.2 is a self-assessment activity that consists of two steps:  

Compose and submit a response to the following prompt using the Open Response Assessment tool (ORA). Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided.

Exercise 4.3 Build a Model OR Transform a Type There are two prompt options. Choose ONE: Prompt A or Prompt B. Regardless, of which prompt you choose, the basic process will be the same:  

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Create your model (Prompt A) OR your diagrams (Prompt B). Compose and submit your analysis using the Open Response Assessment tool (ORA). As with previous s, only your analysis will be entered into the ORA tool. You will use the same ORA tool regardless of which prompt you choose. The ORA tool appears after Prompt B. Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided.

Prompt B: Transform a Type Prompt B asks you to draw and compare diagrams that display transformations of architectural types. You will apply the concept of architectural type, first, to analyze an architectural project, and then, to transform that project to produce variants of the type deduced from a preceding formal organization.

Part II: The Technology Effect This part of the course addresses technology as a component of architecture's realization and understanding. Architecture is embedded in contexts where technologies and materials of construction -- glass and steel, reinforced concrete -- are crucial agents of change. But a society's technology does not determine its architectural forms. I discovered ways that innovative technology can enable and promote new aesthetic experiences, or disrupt age-old traditions. I witnessed architecture's ways of converting brute technical means into meaningful perceptions and textures of daily life. The interactions of architecture and modern technologies changed not only what could be built, but also what kinds of constructions could even be thought of as architecture. The three modules in Part II are: 5. The Crystal Palace: Infrastructure and Detail 6. The Dialectics of Glass and Steel 7. Technology Tamed: Le Corbusier's Machines for Living

Module 5: The Crystal Palace: Infrastructure and Detail In Module 5 "The Crystal Palace: Infrastructure and Detail," I began to explore the core question of Part II: architecture's fundamental relation to materiality. As Professor Picon states, "Few buildings have marked as important a moment in the history of architecture as the Crystal Palace. Not only was the building emblematic of a new way to build, using iron at a scale unprecedented, it was also a major turning point in terms of its use, since it hosted the first world fair and introduced a whole new spatial experience."      

Lecture 5.1 Exhibitions, Iron, and the New Construction Lecture 5.2 The Project Lecture 5.3 Joseph Paxton Lecture 5.4 The Building Lecture 5.5 The Exhibition Lecture 5.6 The Aftermath

Exercise 5.1 Architecture and Technology - Continuity and Disruption () Exercise 5.1 is a activity that consists of two steps:  

Compose and submit a response to the following three-part prompt using the Open Response Assessment tool (ORA). Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided.

Exercise 5.2 Architecture and Technology - The Synthesis () Exercise 5.2 is a activity that consists of two steps:  

Compose and submit a response to the following prompt using the Open Response Assessment tool (ORA). Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided.

Module 6: The Dialectics of Glass and Steel In Module 6 "The Dialectics of Glass and Steel," I learnt how architects interpreted the historian Gottfried Semper's model of the primitive hut, and appropriated it as one example of a "universal" organizing type. In the lecture material, I explored this concept through the lens of three projects: the AEG turbine factory, designed by Peter Behrens; the Fagus Factory, designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer; and, lastly, the Seagram Building, designed by Mies van der Rohe.     

Lecture 6.1 From Stone to Steel Lecture 6.2 Behrens's Theory Lecture 6.3 The AEG Factory Lecture 6.4 The Fagus Factory Lecture 6.5 The Seagram Building

Exercise 6.1 Factory as Primitive Hut (Concept Check) Exercise 6.1 is a multiple choice and short answer activity that consists of two parts. Part I   

Read Prompt I. Review each question. Select the best option for each question.

Part II  

Read Prompt II. Respond to Prompt II using the short answer space provided.

Exercise 6.2 Close Reading () Exercise 6.2 is a activity that consists of two steps:  

Compose and submit a response to the following prompt using the Open Response Assessment tool (ORA). Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided.

Module 7: Technology Tamed: Le Corbusier's Machines for Living In Module 7 "Technology Tamed: Le Corbusier's Machines for Living," I learned of another modern architect's extraordinarily inventive use of new materials and construction systems. For the Swiss-born architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, otherwise known as Le Corbusier, the inherent properties of reinforced concrete were crucial for the development of his architectural ideas, most notably as expressed in his domestic buildings. When I considered Le Corbusier's "machines for living," I didn't think just of how machines look (the socalled "machine aesthetic"). Instead, I thought of a machine as an organized assemblage of parts that connect and perform in different ways--long horizontal windows that frame panoramic views, a grid of columns that lifts floor slabs above the earth, ramps and stairs that guide the human body through a spatial "narrative," a roof terrace for exercise or leisure. I also recalled Alberti's use of geometry and proportional systems to organize diverse building parts, or Palladio's logic of the villa type. Le Corbusier brings similar compositional techniques into his habitationmachines.     

Lecture 7.1 The Dom-ino Lecture 7.2 Villa La Roche - Jeanneret Lecture 7.3 Villa Garches Lecture 7.4 The Five Points of a New Architecture Lecture 7.5 The Villa Savoye

Exercise 7.1 Five Points ()

Exercise 7.2 Pied-à-Terre Exercise 7.2 is a activity that consists of three steps:   

Draw your architectural plans in response to the prompt. Submit your analysis of your plans. Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided by the faculty.

Your response: spaces created using Le Corbusier's 5 principles

Part III: Representation and Context This part of the course confronts architecture's complex relationship to its social and historical contexts and its audiences, achievements, and aspirations. As a professional practice deeply embedded in society, architecture has social obligations and the aesthetic power to negotiate social change; to carry collective memories; even to express society's utopian ideals. I learned about what they call architecture's power of representation, and see how architecture has a particular capacity to produce collective meaning and memories. The three modules in Part III are: 8. Drawing Utopia: Visionary Architecture of the 18th Century 9. The Pompidou Center in the City of Paris 10. Presenting the Unrepresentable Module 8: Drawing Utopia: Visionary Architecture of the 18th Century In the final three modules of this course, I dealt more directly with architecture's relationship to its various social and historical contexts, and I was accounted for what we have been calling architecture's power of representation. In Module 8 "Drawing Utopia: Visionary Architecture of the 18th Century," I looked at the work of what were known as the French "visionary architects" of the 18th century. In particular, Professor Naginski asked me to examine their use of architecture as a way of communicating meaning, what they called l'architecture parlante, or "speaking architecture."     

Lecture 8.1 Ledoux's Utopian City of Chaux Lecture 8.2 Representing Utopia: More and Vitruvius Lecture 8.3 Filarete's Sforzinda Lecture 8.4 Boullée's Architecture Parlante Lecture 8.5 The Production of the Sublime: Cenotaph to Newton

Exercise 8.1 Utopia (Concept Check) Exercise 8.1 is a classification activity that consists of two steps:  

Review the following potential attributes or associations of utopia. Assign each to the appropriate category (YES, if it IS an attribute or association of utopia and NO if it is NOT).

Exercise 8.2 From Salt Works to Ideal City - Part 1 (Concept Check) Exercise 8.2 is a drag-and-drop activity that consists of the following steps:  

Look at the following TWO designs for Ledoux's Saline de Chaux. For each design, map the seven programmatic elements to the corresponding position within each design by dragging the element to the appropriate red box (zone).

Exercise 8.3 From Salt Works to Ideal City - Part 2 Exercise 8.3 is a self-assessment activity that consists of two steps: 

Compose and submit a responses to the following thee prompts using the Open Response Assessment tool (ORA).

Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided.

Module 9: The Pompidou Center in the City of Paris In Module 9 "The Pompidou Center in the City of Paris," I examined closely one particular example of architecture's engagement with the culture industry: the Centre Georges Pompidou by the architects Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano. This module puts to the fore not only architecture's reflection of mass culture, but also architecture's ability to engage deeply with politics, how a building can be not just an inert object but an active mediator between its historical context and our understanding of that context.      

Lecture 9.1 Introduction Lecture 9.2 Plateau Beaubourg and the Events of May '68 Lecture 9.3 The Project Lecture 9.4 Baudrillard's Periodization Lecture 9.5 Beaubourg as Simulation Lecture 9.6 Conclusion

Exercise 9.1 Schematization (Concept Check) Exercise 9.1 is a drag-and-drop and short answer activity that consists of the following steps:  

Look at Renzo Piano's first sketch for the Pompidou Center and label the six architectural elements using the drag-and-drop feature (Prompt - Part I). Complete the short-answer question by analyzing those six features based on the prompt instructions (Prompt - Part II).

Exercise 9.2 Architecture as Representation Exercise 9.2 is a self-assessment activity that consists of three steps:   

Respond to the prompt. Submit your response using the Open Response Assessment (ORA) tool. Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided by the faculty.

Module 10: Presenting the Unrepresentable In Module 10 "Presenting the Unrepresentable," I was challenged to conceptualize a work so minimal that some might not think of it as architecture at all; and yet, the project is tasked with the demand to carry the memory of perhaps the most profound of all human traumas. The Memorial to Murdered Jews of Europe designed by architect Peter Eisenman is a project that uses the very abstraction and materiality that is inherent to the medium of architecture. This becomes the device with which to raise questions of architecture's power of representation rather than answer them.      

Lecture 10.1 Introduction Lecture 10.2 Site and Project Lecture 10.3 The Bitburg Controversy Lecture 10.4 Modes of Abstraction Lecture 10.5 Forms of the Sign Lecture 10.6 Conclusion

Exercise 10.1 Memory and the Refusal of Redemption Exercise 10.1 is a self-assessment activity that consists of three steps:   

Respond to the prompt. Submit your response using the Open Response Assessment (ORA) tool. Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided by the faculty.

Exercise 10.2 Symbol, Icon, Index Exercise 10.2 is a self-assessment activity that consists of three steps:   

Respond to the prompt. Submit your response using the Open Response Assessment (ORA) tool. Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided by the faculty.