Aims: This unit aims to introduce a range of analytical theories and research techniques associated with the formal design of buildings in western architecture.
Learning Outcomes:
By the time students have completed this unit they should be able to analyse a historic building or project in order to distinguish and evaluate key concepts relating to the way in which mathematical, hierarchical and aesthetic principles inform its design, and to locate such concepts against changing patterns of cultural and intellectual history.
Skills:
Evaluation of arguments in clear written English.
Content:
Lectures provide a grounding in the history of the use of formal design methods in architectural design via an exposition of textual sources, proportional analyses and recent research. General themes include the dialogue between the ideal and contingency in architectural design, with particular reference to the origin of form, abstract and aesthetic issues, formal composition, proportion and geometry. Topics include the following: Vitruvius and the foundations of classical design theory; the changing concept of proportion over time; the re-birth of classical theory in the Renaissance; modern conceptions of origin and proportion; arithmetical and geometrical modes of composition and their relation to the use of drawing; the design of the orders in antiquity; the Pantheon and other projects where ideals bend to contingency.
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