Spring 2008

ARCH 100A
FUND OF ARCH DESIGN
DI NAPOLI

Three hours of lecture and five hours of studio per week. Prerequisites: ENV DES 11A-11B. Must be taken in sequence. Introductory courses in the design of buildings. Problems emphasize the major social, technological and environmental determinants. 100A focuses on the design process, social factors and site planning. Studio work is supplemented by lectures, discussions, readings and field trips. (F,SP) 

Extended Course Description

The work of the Studio will be directed towards an understanding of environmental design as a creative process that engages the following considerations:

• sense of place--site and context
• program--function and inspired-use/ celebration of use
• human dimension--experience, human spirit, and social values
• making--poetics of construction: materials, assembly and detail
• concepts--conceptual thinking and project basis
• iterative design process: intuitive + rational
• personal values and agenda.
   

Through the studio’s design work and projects you will explore how these aspects can come together in the discipline of design and, with the skilled use of formal language, form and inform the very essence of a building, its spaces, and experience.

General: Architecture 100A--Fundamentals of Architectural Design--is the third studio in the sequence of four required design courses in the undergraduate architecture core curriculum. This studio continues the development of skills initiated in the earlier studios and serves as a bridge to the complex programs, contexts, and tectonic investigations characteristic of the work in Architecture 100B, and to the personal challenges undertaken as an elective in the Architecture 101 Independent Design Studios.

As a bridge, it is necessary to continue an understanding and appreciation for the fundamentals of program, site, context, structure, and materials/construction in the formation of concepts and in the development of a design. At the same time, it is equally important that the course be structured with special subject areas that specifically develop one’s aptitude as a designer and one’s ability to think in an informed, critical manner. The following are areas of special emphasis:

• Concepts/Conceptual Thinking: Foremost among the pivotal areas for personal development as a designer is the value placed on concept and conceptual thinking--the development of a conceptual basis for one’s design work. This is an understanding that addresses a sense of the whole and how the formal expression is in the service of ideas and issues that have value and provide meaning. This studio will explore how ideas originating from program, site, social/cultural/political circumstances, personal values and interests in architecture, human and experiential considerations, tectonics, etc. have the potential to become powerful factors in informing/forming a strong conceptual basis for architectural form, space, experience, and meaning.
• Design Process--Intuitive/Rational: An essential mechanism in the formation of concepts is one’s ability to think about these originating factors in a creative manner. Accordingly, the first part of the coursework for each project will focus on and encourage your intuitive, more lyrical and poetic side in the creative process and in the formation of concepts. In parallel, we will explore the essential interplay between 'the intuitive' and 'the rational'--the different thought processes of the brain--providing an understanding of how one can successfully move conceptual and poetic ideas and inspiration into the realm of architecture and built work.
• Human Dimension: The importance of the human dimension/realm and social condition--beyond the pragmatic and functional to the celebration of the human spirit--will continue to be the grounding or inspiration for the making of spaces and places.
• Sense of Place: The full nature of 'contexts'--the particular physical; social, cultural and political; environmental; psychological; as well as the less tangible conditions of a site and its surroundings--constitutes a rich source of inspiration for the development of a concept and in the evolution of a project.
• Making: Architecture calls for the engagement of ‘making’--a poetic act of revelation related to experience and meaning, as well as derived from techne--a bringing forth into existence. Architecture cannot form places without the tectonics of making. The studio will explore the importance and influence of the nature of materials, structure, and details [together with light] on building form and space, and the resultant experiential quality.
   

ARCH 100B
FUND OF ARCH DESIGN
IWAMOTO

Three hours of lecture and five hours of studio per week. Prerequisites: ED 11A-11B. Must be taken in sequence. Introductory courses in the design of buildings. Problems emphasize the major social, technological and environmental determinants. 100B stresses structures, materials, and energy considerations. Studio work is supplemented by lectures, discussions, readings and field trips. (F,SP) 

ARCH 101
CASE STDS IN ARCH
SPINA

Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Three hours of lecture and five hours of studio per week. Prerequisites: 100A-100B. Problems in design of buildings of intermediate complexity. Each section deals with a selected topic, such as housing, site planning, institutional buildings, community development, and interiors. Studio work is supplemented by lectures, discussions, readings and field trips. (F,SP) 

ARCH 102
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
STONER

Three hours of lecture and five hours of studio per week. Prerequisites: 100A-100B. The development of architectural concepts into detailed design including the integration of structure, construction, and building systems, and the production of construction documents. Studio work is supplemented with lectures, discussions, readings and field trips. 

Extended Course Description

INVISIBLE CORVIALE: Architecture Senior Thesis Option 2008

The intention of the course is to provide an opportunity for senior undergraduates who have completed the required series of studios to pursue a more synthetic and theoretically based final project, wherein all coursework is directed toward a final report that combines design work and writing. For this inaugural year, we will examine the weight of the modernist project, literally and figuratively, though the lens of the housing project Corviale, at the periphery of Rome.The form and physicality of this project—a concrete structure 11 stories high and 1000 meters long, will be the substrate for a set of intellectual and aesthetic propositions that challenge the very “ground” upon which it is laid. Just as Italo Calvino extended the visible city of Venice into dozens of alternative architectures in his classic work Invisible Cities, we will evoke out of the singularity of the far less romantic Corviale a set of imaginative architectural propositions that address contemporary theory, vision and aspsiration.

We will conduct the studio in three phases, the first and last in Berkeley, and the second in Rome. Each phase will generate design studies that in the end reflect an integrated set of architectural experiments. The design of the experiments themselves requires a theoretical anchor, a question and subsequent set of investigations that defines the product of this studio as a thesis. This program will be set forth in a parallel set of written essays.