Part I: Form and History

Part I: "Form and History" introduces the idea of the architectural imagination as a faculty that
mediates sensuous experience and conceptual understanding. Two examples of the architectural
imagination -- perspective drawing and architectural typology -- are explored through video
presentations and hands-on exercises.

You will be 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

K. MICHAEL HAYS: I'm in Gund Hall, which is the home of the Graduate

School of Design.

And I'm in the studio space, which is where the most intense activity takes

place of design, of analysis and research, of imagination.

We'll speak about the architectural imagination.

And I'm going to suggest that some concept like the imagination

is necessary if we want to treat architecture as a mode of knowledge.

The classical philosophers said, the soul

never thinks without phantasm, which is to say that thought needs a material

image, something to carry the thought.

So we begin to think of the imagination as bridging the gap between perception

and understanding.

What's implied is that there is actually a space in the mind

where the work of picturing takes place.

The imagination is different from other mental processes

like perceiving or remembering insofar as to perceive something requires

that something has to be there.

And that's not required of the imagination.

And even to remember something-- the event or the object or the person--

it had to have already been there in order to remember.

But the imagination creates its image.

The image isn't there until the imagination produces it.

The imagination is also different from a concept

because the imagination requires the materialization of thought.

For example, I can conceptualize freedom.

I can even explain to you what freedom is as a concept.

But it's very difficult to show you freedom.

In order to show you freedom, I would have to construct a picture.

I would have to construct a scene.

Then I could help you imagine freedom in that materialization, in that scene,

in that picturing.

So we should think of the imagination as the capacity

for producing images, the mental capacity to picture things.

And what we want to show is that there is a specific kind of imagination,

which is the architectural imagination.

Look at these two images.

Let's say you know nothing about them.

You don't know what their function is.

You don't know who their patron was.

You don't know where they are.

But you can already start to compare them nevertheless.

One is made of stone.

The other one is made of white stuff and glass, probably wood or steel.

Look at how they meet the ground.

One is nestled into the ground.

It almost seems to be emerging from the earth.

Indeed, some scholars would say that it even compares itself to the landscape

and to the mountains around it.

It almost wants to become like a mountain.

Now, the other one is also very conscious of the landscape,

but it's lifted off the earth.

It doesn't emerge from the earth, but it kind of perches on the earth.

But both of them are conscious of the ground.

Already, the architectural imagination is starting to emerge.

And then we could also say they have something else in common.

They both have a kind of wrapper, which encloses a single volume.

But the wrapper is very special.

It's a modulated wrapper.

It's made of columns.

Even though one has stone columns, one has steel columns,

even though the columns have different spacings,

the space in between the columns is important.

The proportion of space in between the columns and the rhythm of the columns

is important.

And then look at how the columns meet the horizontal beam,

or what we call the entablature.

In one case, there's a very articulated picture

of the joinery, the way the vertical column meets the entablature.

And there are several pieces in between that

make that transition from horizontal to vertical articulate.

Now, the other one doesn't have all those pieces.

But it almost seems like there's still great thought about the pieces.

But it's a kind of negation of all the articulation.

And yet, in the very negation, the intensity of that joint is still made.
So what do we have?

They're both empty, rectangular volumes defined by a wrapper.

And the wrapper is articulated by columns

and space that have a geometry, a kind of geometrical, proportional system.

They both pay a lot of attention of how they meet the ground.

And they both pay a lot of attention about how they're in a landscape.

So what has happened is that we have constructed.

And what has started to emerge is a very particular kind of imagination

that is purely architectural.

It's independent of the materials.

It's independent of the function.

It's independent of who paid for it.

And we have adapted a set of assumptions about one building

to a set of perceptions about another building.

We've worked across those two buildings.

Now, what's implied here is that template of things, in some sense,

had to preexist our understanding of those buildings.

That set of architectural characteristics

that they share in common had to, in some sense, already be there when

we start to perceive those buildings.

This is nothing less than the architectural imagination at work.

And what we have arrived at is a fundamental instance

of aesthetic judgment.

In the comparison, that set of assumptions emerged.

And it is as if it preexisted in order that you could

make the comparison in the first place.

So what's happening is that, let's say, a very old building

is shaping our perception of a very new building,

but also that that more modern building is shaping

our perception of the old building.

And it seems as if that template of items and assumptions

that we made about the wrapper, about the ground, about the landscape--

it seems as if those assumptions preexisted our perception.

Part II: The Technology Effect
Part II: "The Technology Effect" 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.

You will discover ways that innovative technology can enable and promote new aesthetic experiences, or disrupt age-
old traditions.

You will witness 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.
Part III: Representation and Context
Part III: "Representation and Context" 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.

You will learn about what we call architecture's power of representation, and see how architecture has a particular
capacity to produce collective meaning and memories.