SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
CODES&CONTINUITIES?!
ARC500 SPRING 2017
Filip Dujardin, from the series ‘Deauville’
This may be a town near you…
Strewn across America are suburbs, neighborhoods, and enclaves that exude QUALITIES and
CHARACTERISTICS that follow European cultural themes. Not quite authentic, they represent both a familiar and
exotic value set through a vocabulary of traditional cultural elements that narrate back to another place. With
names such as: Frankenmuth (Germany), New Glarus (Switzerland) or Lindsborg (Sweden) these towns use
specific classifications of symbols to identify back to a region. In an age of mass communication, nostalgia for a
place has taken over, creating a bizarre type of CULTURAL PRESERVATION.
This seminar will question these aforementioned characteristics, elements, and significations that create an
IDENTITY of a place and its culture. How did these continuities come to be? What can we learn from them?
And how can one think of the common built and its singular manifestation?
In search of other types of ‘typical’ in architecture, over the course of the semester we will analyze
ARCHITECTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY, and FILM to understand both codes and their continuities as ideas that place
regional and typological models in tension. We will use readings around TYPE, SEMIOTICS and ANALOGIES, to
reconsider the importation of cultural models as a class of objects that are popular destinations; and we will
actively read and discuss these issues in a group setting. ANALYTICAL DRAWINGS and COLLAGES will be
created to project upon codes and continuities in culture and history.
Asst. Prof. Nicole McIntosh
[email protected]
T TH 9:30– 10:50am Sloc 307
New Scenic
Spring 2017 - ARC 500 Section M002 - Molly Hunker
Thursdays 9:30am - 12:20pm
Slocum 401
Junya Ishigami, Big Patio from “How Small? How vast? How architecture grows”Exhibition
“The medium of landscape is not a given, but produced; it is not of nature, but of fiction.”
- James Corner, Taking Measures Across the American Landscape
New Scenic is a drawing course. The term “scenic” simultaneously refers to something that relates to “natural scenery; characterized by or
providing attractive or picturesque scenery,” and something that is “theatrical” or even “fictitious.”1 In landscape representation, the scenic
tradition relies on techniques common to the genre of landscape painting, prioritizing perspective and curating particular views. This course
aims to shift the way in which the scenic is implemented in landscape representation from the perspective to the orthographic - in short,
to establish a new scenic; to imbue orthographic projections with the qualities of the scenic. The course will explore the potential of 2D
and 2.5D orthographic drawings (plans, sections, elevations) to reinterpret, remake, reconstruct, and rethink the subtlety, complexity, and
contradictory nature of today’s landscapes, through a broader understanding of the scenic. Our “landscapes” will refer to any ground
that has been affected by human occupation and cultural constructs. Our work will begin with a diverse range of existing landscapes
- amusement parks, parking lots, agricultural fields, suburban housing developments, industrial ports, wind farms, rural ranches - and will
culminate with speculative ones.
Students in the course will leverage the qualities and characteristics observed in a selection of “landscape” photographs to create drawings that,
while speculating on how architecture can represent the constructed fiction and scene of contemporary landscapes through orthographic
projection, also potently and critically interrogate the ground (and air) in which we, as architects, work. We will digitally model, draw, and
build the forms, features, textures, and colors of the photographed landscapes, and speculate upon them further through experimental
transformations. Our discussions will value deeply issues of line weight, line type, line density, hatch, color, transparency, gradient, among
many many other things.
Students in this course can expect to read texts on representation and landscape imagery, write short essays on these texts, plot drawings
(nearly) every week, and CNC mill several times during the semester.
A few selected readings / resources:
James Corner, Taking Measures Across the American Landscape
Stan Allen, “Field Conditions”
Julia Czerniak, “Challenging the Pictorial”
Monique Mosser, “The Roving Eye: Panoramic Décors and Landscape Theory”
Junya Ishigami, “How Small? How vast? How architecture grows” and “Another Scale of Architecture”
1
Per Oxford English Dictionary
ADVANCED STRUCTURAL
RESOLUTION
Credits : 3
Instructor: Mac Namara
Pre Req: ARC 311 or ARC 612
This Professional Elective is best suited to either students in
ARC 409 Comprehensive Studio or Thesis Students and
Graduate Students who have a design project with a
complex structural engineering dimension (a studio project
from the current or previous semester can be used).
The course will engage in a series of short structural design
problems in the first five weeks of the semester to learn
structural problem solving tools and techniques such as FEA
software SAP2000. The rest of the semester will produce a
full structural resolution of the students’ current design
work. Iterations of the design will be analyzed and tested
to facilitate design decisions . Final designs will be fully
analyzed and rationalized from a structural engineering
perspective, and detailed design calculations will allow a
rich, fine grained representation of the students projects.
Note this course may be used to fulfill the Technical
Elective requirement of the MArch curriculum or the
Professional Elective requirement of the BArch
curriculum.
!
Mon 2.15-5.05 PM
ARC 511 Advanced Structural Resolution
Spring ‘17
FROM STUPA TO THEME PARK: INTRODUCTION TO BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE
ARC 500 Section M302, MW, 3:45-5:05, Sloc 101
Instructor: Assistant Professor Lawrence Chua
This lecture course traces the development of Buddhist architecture from early reliquaries and monastic
halls to contemporary mega-structures and theme parks. It is organized according to a general chronology
that begins with the Buddha and his teachings and then develops across regions and themes. This
organization seeks to map out the relationship between Buddhist architecture and the teachings and
practices of Buddhism, from its genesis and development in South Asia to its dissemination, and translation
across the world. The course is designed to provide an understanding of the interaction of different
Buddhist cultures and regions in Asia, with different religious practices in Asia, and with “the West.”
This course draws on art historical and religious studies methodologies to approach Buddhist architecture but
integrates them with methodologies borrowed from political and economic history, religious studies, and
comparative literature in order to understand the ways that Buddhist teachings were translated into physical
geometries. While art history has been primarily concerned with the object, usually removed from its social,
political, and economic context, this course seeks to create an understanding of the importance of
architecture to Buddhist teachings and practices. Particular attention will be given to Buddhist theoretical
teachings and the ways that the past has been re-framed and re-deployed over time and in different cultural
contexts. We will examine the role of architecture and the built environment in the performance of ritual, the
transmission of religious meaning and the teaching of felicity, salvation, and enlightenment. At the center of
our investigations there will be three writing assignments which explore the relationship between the
“aesthetic” and “religious” aspects of Buddhist architecture, and the mediating roles that cultural, political,
economic, and historical conditions, and art historical context play in shaping this relationship.
PROVINCIALIZING CHINA: INTRODUCTION TO CHINESE ARCHITECTURE
ARC 500 Section M303, MW 12:45-2:05, Sloc 101
Instructor: Assistant Professor Lawrence Chua
This lecture course traces the development of Chinese architecture from Neolithic societies at Banpo to the
present. It is divided into six chronologically-based modules that look at 1) the early development of
architecture from primitive societies to the downfall of the Han dynasty (220CE) 2) Buddhist influence from
the 3rd to 6th century CE 3) the Tang dynasty 7th to 9th century CE 4) The period of standardization and
refinement from the 10th to 14th century 5) the Ming and Qing dynasties from the 14th to 20th century and 6)
the “Modern” era. This structure seeks to map out the relationship between the concept of China as a
continuous civilization and how that continuity has been expressed in architectural form. Methodologically,
the course integrates techniques of formal analysis with questions of political economic history in order to
create an understanding of the importance of architecture, landscape, and urban planning to the idea of
“China,” the relationships between building practices in the Chinese nation, “Greater China,” and the
Chinese diaspora, and the very notion of a singular Chinese architecture. Particular attention will be paid
to how Chinese architectural history has been framed in order to consider the ways Orientalism, modernism
and reform, historicism, formalism, Marxist historical analysis, critical regionalism, and globalization have
shaped the way we understand China and its architecture.
ARC 500 Section M005:
Posing Architecture. “The magnifying glass”
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Prof. Ivan Bernal / [email protected]/ Slocum 308F/ 443-4103
Slocum 004/ 3 credits/ Wednesday ​3:45-6:35pm​ PM
Office hours: By appointment
A detail of Willy Rizzo's photo of Salvador Dalí, 1950
​Photo image by Arnold Layne. Blog butterflyeefect
Course Description
Representation is an integral part of design. It is the main way to convey our ideas
clearly to an audience. ​This elective aims to expose students to techniques of digital
cinematography, with a special focus on architectural animation as a way to gain a deeper
understanding of time based representation.
Looking to create a narrative for specific unbuilt work of architecture through the lense of a
selection of film directors and with the aim to develop a particular sensibility to present and
portray building, students will be asked to take positions in how the work is being represented in
order to convey an ambiance, a fiction, and a reality. Using the notion of a magnifying glass to
discover and emphasise qualities and defects that cannot be easily seen, students will use
animation as a way to understand, question and critically understand architecture. Searching for
an architecture that is far more real than the architecture is.
The class will pair relevant unbuilt works of architecture to a film director. Students will produce
a short animation showcasing the architecture with specific techniques they can learn from
studying cinematic effects. This techniques then will be translated into digital cinematography
and animation. The goal is to generate a narrative for the projects which even if unbuilt, carries
a great deal of relevance within the field. This method of representation will allow the students to
deeply dive into the architecture, look at it from a different perspective, question how to
postulate it, how to frame it, how to present it. In other words, this class aims to use cinematic
and animation techniques to create a different method for studying and representing
architecture​ constructing images in time.
Façade as Idea
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Spring 2017
Course number:
Course title:
Instructor:
Professional Elective
ARC 578
Façade as Idea
Randall Korman
Course Description: Historically, the polemic of architecture has been largely centered
upon the art of the façade. However, in the 20th century, the impact of the Modern Movement
and the ideology of the freestanding object significantly changed architectural attitudes about
the making of the building façade and, in turn, urban fabric. Consequently, the vertical
surface lost its pre-eminent role as an architectural element and much of its capacity as a
communicative artifact. It is a contention of this course that a recovery of this lost sensibility
is possible only through a close and careful study of the phenomenon of the façade. Through
a series of lectures and selected readings the course will make a broad review of the building
façade in both historical and contemporary terms. Topics will include the phenomenology of
the vertical surface, the semantics of material, compositional syntax, the role of tectonics, the
relevance of context and the use of proportional systems. While it is not the goal of this
course to provide guidelines for the design of a good façade, it is a fundamental assumption
that meaningful synthesis must be preceded by thoughtful analysis and a deeper
understanding of the issues.
Prerequisites
Undergrad – ARC 407
Course Format:
Lecture / Discussion
Mode of Evaluation:
Two Exams and an Analysis Project
Meeting Times:
Tu & Thu 9:30am – 10:50am
Location:
Room 101 Slocum
Questions:
[email protected]
Grad – ARC 608
Professional Electives for Undergrads
History Elective for Grads
The Bauhaus Years, 1919-1920
A rc 500 M304, S pring 2017
MW 5:15-6:35pm
Prof. H enderson
Photogram
László
M oholyN agy,1926
This seminar is available to graduate students for history credit, and for undergrads as a PE. The
prerequisite is Arc 431 or permission of instructor. It focuses on the Bauhaus as a vehicle for
studying the radical art and culture of Germany during the tumultuous 1920s. In the space of ten
years, the Bauhaus community delved into each subsequent design tendency, from expressionism,
to de Stijl, to functionalism. It engaged in contemporary political movements—pacificism and
communism among them—and alternative lifestyles, and became absorbed with the phenomenon of
mass culture, and the explosion of new technologies, especially in the arts (think film and
photography). The Bauhaus was also a center of debate and controversy in the design arts, as when
Theo van Doesburg set up an alternative atelier at its gates, or when it was forcibly closed by a
conservative Weimar, and seven years later by the Fascists.
The Bauhaus was the touchstone of innovative design education and experiment in Europe during
the 1920s, and, in spite of its short existence, it has remained the most famous of design schools.
We will study it, and its time from several vantage points: from its innovative teaching methods, to
its politics and social history; we will examine the various arts of graphic design, typography,
theatre, dance, and photography, and, of course, architecture. The history of the Bauhaus has been
increasingly enriched in newly discovered archives, and newly written histories and memoirs, so
that we can create and nuanced and intimate view of the everyday goings on at the school. Among
those personalities we will pursue are the artists Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy and Paul
Klee, architects Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe, artists and
teachers Oskar Schlemmer, Johannes Itten.
Students will participate in weekly readings, and complete a major project during the semester.
Assistant Professor: Julie Larsen
6 credits | arc 500
monday and wednesday 2:15 - 5:05
404 Slocum Hall
Priority: All Graduate, UG (4th + 5th year)
SCALING-UP
2017 SUPER PE
image: aptum architecture / isla rhizolith, cartagena, colombia
Crafting the Digital Future of Concrete
The course explores the future opportunities for full scale architectural elements that arise from the combination of high performance concrete and
contemporary digital design and fabrication technologies.
‘SCALING-UP’, a Super PE, is a collaboration between Prof. Julie Larsen (Aptum) and the CEMEX Research Group (CRG) that is sponsoring (and
funding) the class. CRG is the research arm of CEMEX, the second largest cement company in the world. The world of concrete is moving at a rapid pace,
from complex geometries only achieved through the most innovative material science to concrete that floats on water to 3D printing with larger than
life 3D printers. At the same time, digital technology is becoming more readily available to companies, architects, contractors and individuals to dream
up the future of our built world. The concrete industry is at a pivotal point with the latest material and digital technology available and is anxious to see
how Syracuse University students can help their company Craft the Digital Future of Concrete, while in turn, Crafting the Future of Our Cities.
But what is the reality of ‘SCALING-UP’ beyond small-scale objects and pavilions when using robots and printers? Many claim they achieved the first
3D printed house but the quality of the material, costs of construction and realistic time frames are being called into question. Architects should have
the ambition to dream big but how can design ideas SCALE-UP while still achieving high quality, efficient, and cost effective architecture? What is the
Digital Future of Concrete?
Schedule: As a 6 credit Super PE (2 days a week for 3 hours each), the extended schedule allows for more in-depth research. The class will merge an
advanced design studio setting with research on building technologies (from robotic arms to multi-story printers), The first day of the week (monday)
will be ‘research + design’, the second day of the week (wednesday) will be ‘research + making’.
Suggested Skills: Digital proficiency in Rhino, Grasshopper, Maya, or equivalent is highly recommended.
Objectives: Students will learn how to design, construct and work hands-on with the most advanced concrete available today.
In doing so, they will collaborate with some of the most proliferate researchers in the concrete industry.
Internship Opportunities @ CRG in Switzerland: will potentially be available for students to participate in constructing their designs at full/half scale.
Design as research:
CIAM, TEAM X, METABOLISM.
The city of architecture
These 3 groups are representative of some of the most important research work done by the avant-garde
movements in the mid XX century. Their members are amongst the most recognized names in modern architecture,
such as; Le Corbusier, Gropius, the Smithsons, Tange and Maki; as well as less well-known names, such as De Carlo,
Candillis and Bakema.
Their aim was to radically re-define our understanding of the city, to create new tools methods and paradigms
for modern urbanism and for architecture’s role in it.
They all, share an interest in new forms of understanding the emergent social and political conditions of the
time: post war reconstruction, social democracy, welfare state etc.
Their” project” was to fundamentally re-reconfigure and re-invent the city itself and its role and relation to
emergent forms of production and social organization.
The seminar proposes to look at the work produced by these groups, not simply as formulas or final products, but
rather as research, that is, as evidence of design as a form of research and knowledge. The seminar will look at original
texts, and selected projects from these groups as evidence of this processes.
The period framed by these groups defines not only one of the most prolific periods in architectural history but also
one of the most engaged with issues of politics and the construction/definition of the social sphere as a condition of
the modern subject. Arguably they expanded the field of urbanism and architecture by exploring new methodologies
that in many cases were informed by developments in other disciplinary fields from anthropology to science, from
sociology to systems theories etc. Equally important is the research in new technologies and modes of production as
well as the fascination with the emerging field of popular culture, from science fiction to the use of mass
communication tools and images in the exploration of new forms of urbanity.
We will look at original texts, manifestos, and selected projects in order to un-pack them, a “look in reverse”, not
towards the result but towards the premises, references, methods and process that may allow a new reading and give
us maybe a new possibility of looking at these works; not as an archeology of the recent past but as part of the dynamic
history of the discipline and its engagement with the city and the political sphere.
Francisco Sanin
ARC 500 Section M006
Wednesdays12:45-3:35pm
Slocum 307
Syracuse University - School of Architecture / ARC500/SEC M003 - Spring 2017 / Assistant Professor Maya Alam / W 10:35am-2:05pm / Slocum #325
Exhibitionist
Stages towards the real-ish.
2017 Harry der Boghosian Fellowship Project - Conduct, Construct, Conjecture.
“In the Renaissance, between the idea sketchily stated and the commission for the permanent real place,
came the stage-architecture for the Court Masque,
the architecture settings and decorations for the birthday of a favorite prince or the wedding of a ducal daughter;
these events were used by the architects of the Renaissance as opportunities for the realization of the new style…
The real before the real, enjoyable consumed and creating the taste for more of the same …
Modern Architecture follows this old tradition.”
- Peter Smithson, The Masquerade and the Exhibition: Stages toward the Real,”ILAUD Yearbook, 19811
Philip Johnson, International Style, MOMA,1932
Jim Hodges, Untitled, Gladstone Gallery NY, 2011
Christo, Big Air Package, Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany , 2010-13
Ray and Charles Eames, Mathematica, 1961
It is undeniable that architectural exhibitions, their curation as well as their installations are an
incontestable component of our architectural practice. The exhibition becomes a laboratory for ideas2
and with its accompanying media (catalogues, photographs, publications etc.), a site for speculation and
ultimately production.
1 Peter Smithson, The Masquerade and the Exhibition: Stages toward the Real,”ILAUD Yearbook, 1981
2 Beatriz Colomina, The Exhibitionist House, At the end of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture, (Los Angeles : Museum of Contemporary Art,
Los Angeles & Harry N. Abrams, 1998.)
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
Timothy Stenson [[email protected]]
ARC 500 - 04 Material Marcel (Breuer Form)
Monday & Wednesday, 12:45 – 2:05, 404 Slocum Hall
From the start, and throughout his long and prolific career, Marcel Breuer developed form with
particular material specificity.
Spanning across furniture, houses, and large civic and institutional
projects, Breuer projected design from an intimate and rigorous understanding of material properties.
Indeed, for Breuer it seemed form followed material.
The primary objective of this seminar will be the
close analysis of material configuration and character in this influential architect’s design work –
beginning with the details.
To contextualize our analysis, Breuer will be examined from multiple
perspectives: historic and art-historic, educational, his work with influential collaborators, and through the
multiple stages of his practice.
It will be a contention of this course that built works of architecture are simultaneously conceptualformal constructs and material artifacts.
And further, that as artifact, the primary presence of a work’s
form is inevitably material. It follows that the projection of architecture in material terms, and its resolution
in detailed assembly, all falls within the purview of design.
In this regard, Marcel Breuer’s design
production is a veritable text book. Breuer’s designs display a didactic, yet supple materiality of form.
Close inspection reveals manifold lessons in “making” architecture.
Weekly readings, presentations and discussions will explore topics of materiality , configuration, and
assembly in Breuer’s work – at the level of systems and strategy, as well as at the intimate scale of detail.
Course work will take advantage of the Breuer Archive at Byrd Library , with its extensive collection of
original drawings and other relevant documents.
Student work will include a brief research paper, followed by an in-depth visual-material analysis of
select projects.
Syracuse School of Architecture
Bio-tectonic Building Blocks
ARC 500 /Section M007 – Spring 2017
Schedule: Wednesday 12:45-3:35
Location: 401 Slocum Hall
Focus area: bio-tectonics, advanced materials and material systems, digital design and fabrication
Assistant Professor: Daekwon Park
© Achim Menges
© Emerging Objects
© MATSYS
The materials by design approach that emerged with the development of high-performance material
since the mid-20th century started to shake the fundamental approach in developing new material
systems. The traditional linear notion of structure, properties, and performance in materials was
challenged and had to be replaced by a systematic approach, utilizing feedback loops and iterations.
Along with the materials by design approach, material scientist started to see the organic matter in a
new light at the turn of the 21st century, realizing that nature’s version of high-performance materials
are far more advanced than what the scientists have been creating. Hence, the novel solutions and
strategies in nature’s tectonics reemerged as important sources of inspiration for developing material
systems and continue to influence the field of cellular solids, functionally graded materials, and adaptive
materials.
Within this milieu, this course explores digital design and fabrication of material systems that are
informed by the novel material tectonics found in nature. Among the various strategies and tectonics
which nature repeatedly implements; hierarchical tectonics, soft tectonics, and gradient tectonics will
be the center of focus. The medium that these explorations will be applied to developing modular
building blocks that can be assembled into various building elements (e.g. column, wall, floor, roof, etc.)
The key goal is to utilize the bio-tectonics to add functions or properties (i.e. functionally augment) to
the building blocks and its assembly, beyond that of a typical masonry construction system. Some
examples of functional augmentation include heat management, permeability control, and structural
augmentation.
Through the course, the students will not only be able to develop skills and knowledge of the digital
design and fabrication process but also learn how to apply advanced geometry and tectonics in
developing novel material systems. A number of emerging digital techniques and processes including
generative design, CAD/ CAM, geometry optimization, and design scripting will be introduced as handson workshops, and the students will utilize them to develop their design research project.
This seminar explores the relationship between outdoor thermal comfort and people’s mobility mode choices. The underlying premise is that, if provided with
comfortable environments that are suitable for walking and biking, people will choose this option over alternative modes of transportation. We will further investigate
what role architects and urban designers can play in creating such spaces. As a semester-long course project we will be investigating the street network in
Downtown Syracuse and Syracuse University with the goal of developing and designing a network of pedestrian and biking paths that will further connect the two
communities.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
At the end of the seminar, participants will be able to:
-
Illustrate the role architects, planners and designers have in urban livability and sustainability.
-
Evaluate existing and new cities using generic sustainable mobility measures and comfort simulation tools.
-
Design and plan human-powered-mobility-centric street networks, with emphasis on comfort.
Syracuse University - School of Architecture / ARC500/SEC M009 - Fall 2016 / Assistant Professor Maya Alam / W 12:45pm - 3:35pm / Slocum #325
Gray Area
On Flickering, Erosion, Collapse and other uncertain Figures
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
Voltaire
Flickering Figure
“The tonal differences in the Whites produces
a flickering between the figure and the ground:
the cumulative effect of layered paint and the
slight shift in hue of the two squares of white
disengage the forms from the single surface
described by the otherwise flat plane of the
canvas.”1
Anna Neimark
- on Malevich’ White on White
Kazimir Malevich, White on White, 1918
Daniel Lee, Judgment - Juror No. 6, 1994
Figure/Ground Erosion
“The individual breaks the boundary of his skin
and occupies the other side of his senses. He
tries to look at himself from any point whatever
of space. He feels himself becoming space.
(....) He is similar, not similar to something,
but just similar. And he invents spaces of which
he is “the convulsive possession.”2
Roger Caillois
- on Mimicry and legendary Psychasthenia
Maya Alam, Circus Elephant, 2015
Roger Caillois, Butterfly “Robert le Diable”, 1963
In a time asking for definite answers, certainty becomes more of an improbability than ever. However, as art (or other aspects
of humanity), architecture has not been a stranger to persistent questions for absolutes like imitation versus creation, blendingin versus standing-out. We have become very familiar with the critique of those who claim that we are failed autonomy or we
are failing to engage - the gray area in between happens to be our current reality.
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Therefore, this seminar speculates on the possibility of a non-absolute, the in-between, a multivalent, ambiguous ish-ness
through a series of visual and representational two-dimensional and three-dimensional studies. The color Gray becomes idiom
as well as medium of investigation. “‘Gray, grayness, graying’ - gray as a verb, as a noun, as an adjective, as a process evoke an enigmatic world that is neutral and unstable, an inter mediate zone fading from darkness to light, then suddenly
back again. An endpoint that is always on the verge of becoming something else again, gray is both a beginning and an end,
diminution as well as potential (...)”3
Concepts of perception and Gestalt theory are coupled with competitive knowledge in digital technology and craft. In contrast
to the original aim of the Gute Gestalt (good form), these tools are discussed and utilized to abuse rather than strictly obey.
Established concepts like flickering1, figure/ground erosion4 and the collapse of image and the represented object5 will become
a loose framework for the assigned exercises. The created artifacts start to hypothesize on unfamiliar categories of form and
consequently new architectural possibilities for space, organization and adaptive design.
The seminar will meet once weekly and will be divided among, relevant lectures, tutorial and reviews of student work.
Students taking this class will be asked to produce a series of artifacts through prescribed techniques of digital craft while
following the readings and discussions and maintaining a critical position towards the topic.
1 Neimark, Anna, “On White on White” (Spring/Summer 2014: Log, No. 31, Anyone Corporation) pp. 62-66
2 Caillois, Roger, “Mimétisme et la psychasthénie légendaire”, trans. by Shepley (October: the First Ten Years, Cambridge, 1936, trans. 1984), pp. 30.
3 Brater, Enoch, “BECKETT’S SHADES OF THE COLOR GRAY”, (2009: Brill), pp. 103.
4 Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, “Formless: A User’s Guide to Entropy”, October Vol. 78 (MIT Press, New York, 1997), pp. 40
5 Perez-Gomez, Alberto / Pelletier, Louise, “Architectural Representation and the Perspectival Hinge” (2000, MIT Press) pp.322
Fall 2016
ARC 500.2: Slums of Utopia
MW 3:45-5:05
SLOC 325
Prof. Lawrence Chua
This upper-level seminar examines the conjoined genealogies of the global city and the concept
of utopia. From the phalanstère to Pruitt-Igoe, from the Plan Voisin to the 1960 Tokyo Bay Plan,
utopian strivings helped to propel and shape industrial modernization in its capitalist and
socialist strains, and fueled resistance against both. This course projects backwards into
historical time and forwards into speculative futures in examining utopia and urbanism from
their global peripheries. It does so in order to create a critical understanding of the ways that
visions of a high-tech world informed the aesthetic and functional development of the urban
built environment and informal communities that have grown up in response to it. In the first
part of the course, we will engage with the history of utopia (selected texts include Manfredo
Tafuri’s Architecture and Utopia; David Harvey’s Spaces of Hope; Charles Fourier’s “New
Material Conditions”). In the second part of the course, we will examine the history of global
cities and conditions: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Calcutta, Mumbai, Bangkok, and New York. In the
final part of the course, we will read three speculative novels based on these historical models
(China Miéville’s the City and the City; Paolo Bacigalupi’s the Windup Girl, and Gary Shteyngart’s
Super Sad True Love Story). Students will write short weekly responses, actively participate in
and lead seminar discussions, and work in small groups to produce representations of the
cities in the three speculative novels.
“Turntables: Remixing Hip-Hop Architectural Technology”
ARC 500, Fall 2016 - 3 Credits
Tuesdays 9:30 – 12:20, 307 Slocum Hall
Instructor: Sekou Cooke
The genesis of hip-hop culture has been traced back to 1973, in the basement of a
modernist housing block in the South Bronx, New York, where a young Jamaican DJ
decided to play two records at the same time. This simple hack of the available
technology used to play music altered its structure, sound, and meaning—so much so
that it created a new musical genre.
Architecture has similarly been interested—with the emergent prominence of maker
spaces and “hack-a-thons”—in creating new modes of practice through the careful
adaptation of available fabrication technology. Hip-hop, with all of its requisite social,
cultural, and political imperatives, presents an ideal lens through which to view and guide
this technological movement within architecture.
“Turntables: Remixing Hip-Hop Architectural Technology” continues ongoing research into
the realm of Hip-Hop Architecture. This course will first ground itself in the history, theory
and discourse surrounding the topics of Hip-Hop Technology and Hip-Hop Architecture,
and then explore the practical potentials of hacking digital fabrication tools in the creation
of architectural objects and spaces. The course will include specific exposure to cutting
edge fabrication software, as well as presentations and workshops lead by invited experts.
The course will culminate in a series of full-scale design solutions for specific community
spaces within the city of Syracuse.
Syracuse University // School of Architecture // Fall 2016
ARC500 // Corso
Not Funny Ha Ha
ARC 500 Fall 2016
Tuesdays 930am-1220pm, Slocum 404
Instructor: Greg Corso
Clockwise from Top Left: SITE Architects, Buster Keaton’s One Week, Jacques Tati’s Playtime, Buster Keaton’s deadpan technique,
“The joke is a play upon form. It brings into relation disparate elements in such a way that one accepted
pattern is challenged by the appearance of another ...”- Mary Douglas, from Implicit Meanings
The course will interrogate architecture’s relationship with the comedic. The intention is
not to learn how to make things that “look funny” but rather explore methods and tactics
of comedy as a both a lens for critique as well as a vehicle for the recalibration of design
elements (ex. scale, proportions, immediacy, the graphic, sensation, performance and
organization). The work will focus on design opportunities resulting from humor’s ability
to provoke material ingenuity, aesthetic experience, and tectonic novelty in the everyday
manifestations of the built environment.
The course will consist of a combination of discussions, analyses, readings, lectures, and
design exercises.
Syracuse University // School of Architecture // Fall 2016
ARC500 // Corso
ARC 500 SEC M010 - Mondays 2:15 pm - 5:05 pm
Assistant Professor: Daniele Profeta
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Fall 2016
in (-) depth
maps, scans and digital storytelling
“A new mode of geographical representation was created [...]which
demanded new skills to relate the image to the ground”
Oskar Messter referring to his Airborne Automatic Camera (1915)
“Not only is the physical surface of the Earth being mapped - we
are also part of the transformation effected by digital mapping
technologies”
Laura Kurgan in Mapping, Technology and Politics (2013)
“What does it mean that this seamless panning and zooming [in a
geo-browser like Google Earth] has become naturalized, that it has
become how I see and experience the world, or how I want to see and
experience my world?”
True-Color RGB composite image from Landsat 7 satellite imagery
of San Francisco metropolitan area (bands 2 - 3 - 4).
Source: http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
Todd Presner in HyperCities (2014)
While zooming-in and zooming-out in a ‘multi-perspectival
digital bubble’ seems to have become the ubiquitous mode of
self-orientation, this seminar exploits the notion that such
environment, far from being a purely descriptive, passive
representation of an “external reality”, it performs as a
cognitive agent of cultural organization. It is the technologies
through which we see and experience the world that define
the way we construct it.
True-Color Textured 3d point cloud of Downtown Historic
Philadelphia from terrestrial LiDAR scanning.
Source: http://cyark.org/
360° Environmental view from mobile LiDAR sensor developed for
use in autonomous vehicles. Source: http:// velodynelidar.com/
The course begins with a series of weekly investigations
focusing on contemporary surveying technologies such
as (but not limited to) remote sensing, satellite imagery as
well as aerial and terrestrial LiDAR. In these sessions the
students will be challenged to develop a critical position on
how these technologies, and the biases they contain, are
transforming our understanding and our relationship with
the built-environment. Building on this research, and taking
advantage of a 3d Scan-Station made available from Leica
Geosystems, during the second half of the semester the
students will acquire hands-on experience of LiDAR data
acquisition and post-processing to produce a digital record
of an urban site. This dataset will then become the site of
investigation to explore the potentials of digital storytelling,
of narrating places through animated images to expose
present realities as well as to construct possible futures.
Students taking this seminar will gain expertise in various
software platforms and methods of representation such as
Autodesk Maya, Adobe After Effects and Bentley Pointools.
Particular attention will be placed on techniques of
animation, digital annotation and video editing.
Bailouts and Blackmailing
Architectural Short-Circuits and Partnerships
Fall 2016 Professional Elective ARC500.005
Thursdays 9:30AM-12:20PM
Slocum Hall 404
Yutaka Sho
Bailouts and Blackmailing will build on the findings from the previous seminar courses taught by the
same instructor and examine how governmental and nongovernmental organizations have been
breaching and short circuiting their own rules and limits, legally and illegally. The course will also
examine cases of agents who have learned from such tactics, such as Rolling Jubilee (people bailing
out each other’s depts), Transparency Tool Kit (people blackmailing surveillance technicians who
blackmail them) and Basic Income Grant (governments giving out free money to all citizens) and
imagine their architectural equivalence. Students are to investigate architectural short-circuits around
established rules that no longer work for designers and their clients.
Nongovernmentality is at the core of this seminar series. Often, in architecture and in our daily life
alike, we find rules that constrain the players without delivering the desired results. In the beginning
we invent rules to make a good society/ design/ game/ etc. But we tend to become preoccupied by
following rules and forget what the rules originally aimed for. Rules govern the society, and not the
other way around. In these situations, short-circuits, bailouts and blackmailing out of necessity, what
can be termed greymailing, become tools to create partnerships among the players so they can
achieve nongovernmentality. In this course we will study:
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Activism, boycotts and counter-conducts
Post-disaster reoccupation and voyeurism
Corporate resource extraction and humanitarianism
Design and planning by transnational development organizations
Gifts, loans and debt forgiveness
Students will investigate case studies through scholarship on nongovernmentality and
nongovernmental practices, situations that spawned them, and their intervention tactics. We will
investigate topics of economic and political strategies that affect the built environment; power
relations in international and domestic development industry; and a special focus will be placed on
economic, cultural and political biases within our own academic environment. The aim will be
to generate a set of easy-to-understand tools to make actionable plans.
syracuse university school of architecture |
ARC 500 | TUE + THR 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
professional elective seminar | FALL 2016 1/2
Professor Richard Rosa [email protected]
The F Word
DRAFT VERSION
Making Plans
Fools, Fakes, Frauds, and Formalists
A Possible Future for Formalism
fabric fabricator facade face facet facetious facile fact faction factor faculty failure faint fairness fake false fallacy fame fantasy farce fashion fastidious fatal fatuous fauna
fawning fazed fealty feasible feature feckless feel feign felicity female feminist fencing feral fervent fetish fiasco fiber fiction fidelity fidget field fierce figural filial filmmaker
finality find finesse firebrand finite firm firmament fissure fixate fixture fizzle flagrant flake flame flash flatness flaunt flavor flaw flesh flexible flicker flight fling flip float flood
flora flow flounder flourish fluctuate fluid
fluke flurry fluster flux focus foible foil fold follow foment fondle fool foray foreboding forecast forensic foresee foreshadow
forestall forever forfeit forge forlorn formal former formidable forsake forte forthcoming fortitude fortress fortuitous fortunate forward fossil foundation font four fortune
forum foster foul founder foxy foyer fracas fractious fraction fractal fragile fragment frail fraud fraught freight frenetic frenzy frequency fresco friction frieze frizzy frolic
frontal frontier fudge frugal fulminate full fulcrum fulsome fumble function furtive fusion futile future fuzzy Formalism
Formalism |
THE SCARLET LETTER OF ARCHITECTURE
The F Word will address the concept of Formalism, its definition, history, tactics, and application in architecture today.
The F Word will explore the controversial air that continues to surround this highly debated term and try to reclaim the
timeless virtues of operating within a Formalist ethos. The F Word will address our understanding of the relationship
between Form + Content as it relates to both latent and manifest structural resonances within a work. The F
Word will distinguish inherent elements of Formalism — including the linguistic-based collusion between Syntax +
Sign — from common misconceptions and illicit misappropriations. The intention: to rediscover within a formally
multivalent architecture the potential for an advanced notion of visual literacy and an authentic concept of Formalism
for the Future. The course will raise the questions: What is Formalism in architecture? Why is there a negative
connotation to the idea of Formalism? What is the historical basis for and evolution of Formalism? If a work is not
Formalist in nature, what are the decision-making criteria for form, expression, and syntax and ultimately how does
one develop an architectural language? Does the existence of a conceived geometric sensibility make a work
Formalist? How are the rules of engagement determined? How does Formalism operate within your work? How have
digital processes affected Formalist thinking and making? What great architecture lacks an expert Formalist
sensibility? Are you a Formalist...even if you may not be able to define it?
The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects
‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in
itself and must be prolonged.
Victor Shklovsky, Art as Device, 1917
This seminar/lecture course is, through the lens of the Formal construct, concerned with developing one’s ability to
read architectural ideas and content through the abstraction of architectural convention. Fundamentally, this is an
analysis and speculation course aimed at equipping students with the ability to identify + decipher architectural ideas
syracuse university school of architecture |
ARC 500 | TUE + THR 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
professional elective seminar | FALL 2016 2/2
Professor Richard Rosa [email protected]
embedded within the conceptual and material elements of architectural thinking and making. The plan is a highly
abstract code that carefully marks ideas of spatial definition, architectural language, and historical lineage, while
definitively locating conditions of program + function, sequence + narrative, structure + material. By examining the
plan and the cut at a range of contrasting scales, the architectural response to formal, cultural, and contextual forces
can be understood as a carefully synthesized multi-layered proposition about architecture.
Some contemporary architecture tends to treat plan as the tertiary byproduct of more fashionably motivated themes.
The notion of the plan as a sophisticated palimpsest of interdependent agendas presented as a legible construct is a
contested reality. Fixation on issues outside of those inherent to the plan has contributed to an erosion of our ability to
make a meaningful or productive plan and in the process has reduced the intellectual content and discourse.
Ultimately the devolution of the plan may be fueling an increase in architectural illiteracy within the discipline. This
course aims to address this plan-void and provide a deeper understanding of the value of the plan-section cut as it
relates to design methodology. Inevitably, lessons from this course will have direct and immediate consequence
through application in the design studio.
Lectures will discuss an extensive array of organizational strategies |parti pris| exploring conditions of geometry,
structure, proportion, datum, materiality, tectonics, language, scale, tactility, hierarchy, and spatial character with a
focus on typological and cultural lineages. There will be a particular focus on morphological tendencies, effects of
transformation, transfiguration, and deformation, the idea of tracing the implied typological ideal, cosmological context,
and free plan vs. raumplan. Twentieth-century modernism and contemporary practice will be highlighted and crossreferenced with examples from a wide-range of historical periods. Techniques of making and reading plan will be
examined closely through a series of in-class lectures and drawing-making assignments as well as a research-analysis
project aimed at producing a conceptual view of the organization of architectural ideas in plan, and implicitly beyond.
The class will meet twice per week and combine lectures with discussion. In class participation will be expected in the
form of drawing, diagramming and contributing to in-class discussion which will be speculative and analytical in
nature. There will be some assigned readings that will provide a basis for accessing the terms and concept - readings
will be discussed in class. Grades will be based on in class participation, sketchbook, periodic exercises, and a final
research-analysis construct-project. Attendance at each class meeting is mandatory.
ARC 555- Intro to Building Information Modeling (BIM)
Class meeting time will be conducted Tuesdays in the Slocum Computer lab 6:30-9:20 PM
This course will give the student an in-depth look at Building Information and how it is used for
coordination, visualization and production in the architectural field. The primary software will be
Autodesk Revit version 2016. The area of emphasis is how well students can produce buildable
construction documents while being able to relay their design through perspectives and isometric views,
and data lists such as door and window schedules. Once complete the students will be competent in the
use of Revit and the understanding of Building Information Modeling.
The class is conducted as an instructor-led, step-by-step examination of each area of Revit as it relates to
architectural building systems such as wall systems, floor systems, roofing systems, and stairs/ramps.
Also, this class will cover structural systems, and the relation of architecture to mechanical, electrical
and plumbing (MEP) systems.
The class deliverable will consist of each student creating their own model on their own. This model can
be commercial or residential. It can be a real building, or a made up design of the student’s desire.
Grading will be judged by the construction documents produced. Plans, elevations, sections enlarged
dimensioned details are the most important. Effort plays a critical role, as does classroom attendance
and participation.
Reading material is Revit Architecture No Experience Required. This will be furnished for free by the
instructor.
ARC 500- Advanced BIM and 3D Design using Revit
Section M010
Class meeting time will be conducted Wednesdays in the Slocum Computer lab 6:45-9:35 PM
Building on the fundamentals learned in the Intro class, this course prepares the student for Revit
production in a live firm, sharing live models in a wide area network capacity. The students will learn
how to set up projects for their firms, and how to work with other trades in the BIM spectrum. In-depth
instruction on how to model custom content will be a main area of focus as well as reconstruction,
design options and of course free form massing and curtain systems. Once this course is completed, our
students are ready to work in any firm, big or small using Revit. Also, this course allows the students to
adding potential BIM coordinator to their resumes.
This course will be instructor led, with more lab time allocated to students working on file sharing,
custom content, and collaboration with other students. The class will have a stand-alone project that
the students can work on as a group, or as individuals. The focus is on the students’ understanding of
multi-user, collaborative model sharing, as well as development of phasing plans and custom content.
This course will be accompanied with the use of Lynda.com courseware which is provided through the
University