Critical Analysis of Architecture

This course introduces students to the analysis of architecture through drawing. Each student is responsible over the course of the semester for the intensive study of a small suite of buildings, contributing to the collective study of a body of work that the class as a whole will engage. In alternating classes students will: 1) discuss essays on the themes of the course and the possibilities of diagrammatic analysis;  2) produce a set of drawings of the building that they are studying, focusing on distinct aspects of the building and modes of representation, as informed by the readings. Over the course of the term, students will connect geometric abstraction to material construction to social use. Students will engage fundamental graphic tools such as descriptive geometry, figure-ground analysis, "bubble" and circulation diagrams, cut-away axonometric/oblique drawings, and the description of materials through hatch and color. At the end of the quarter, the drawings produced over the quarter are collected, revised, and submitted, along with a series of short descriptive texts.