Design Studio: New York
Professor : Ms. Smoller
COURSE DESCRIPTION
As a discipline, architectural design functions in part as a mode of cultural communication,
imaginative experimentation and personal critique of known architectural types. This course
introduces the student to the methodology, content and craft of architectural design, so that
he/she can develop a familiarity with basic elements manipulated by the architect to these
creative ends. This two-semester sequence of studio design exercises or projects beginning
in New York and ending in Paris, will examine the synthesis of abstract formal principles,
intrinsic architectural determinants (the presence of the human body, scale, light, etc.),
external conditions (site, program-the construct of culture) and the role of structure,
materials and craft that culminates in architectural form.
These Projects introduce the designer's "tools"; models, drawings, graphics etc., that elucide
the process of the mind's synthesis with products of the hand, guided by the eye. In addition,
the studio exercises investigate the connections between architecture and other disciplines
familiar to the liberal arts student, through a study of process methodologies, inter-
disciplinary project content, readings and lectures. The studio is intended both for those
with previous academic experience in architectural design, who would like to develop
additional studio skills, and those without previous academic experience in design, who are
interested in gaining an understanding of design conditons in the urban context of New York
and Paris. Students are divided into sections based on their previous experience in design.
Two afternoons per week, students attend design studio- a place where students are given an
intensive training in the skills and critical thinking involved in architectural design.
Students, in small groups, work directly with studio instructors to develop their individual
designs. The projects given in studio are situated in New York City and Paris , so that the
student is able to take advantage of the unique urban condition present in each city.
The specific design project in New York varies each semester depending upon timely local
issues and work in other courses, although all projects emphasize architecture as determined
by a dialogue between the individual designer�s process of making space, and the "poetics of
construction" (material, structure, detail) & the "poetics of action" (program, use,
experience). The studio requires the individual student to establish/ re-establish her or his
own philosophical, technical, and formal grounds for architectural design, while addressing in
a rigorous manner the necessity for a simultaneous re-definition of the discipline of
architecture.
"Architectonic thought is not merely invention and combination, nor is it forming and molding
in accordance with prescribed laws; rather it is a process which is a law unto itself..." "We
can recognize architectonic consciousness in the artistic sense only when an intellectual
process of development becomes evident in the architectonic forms and an active striving for
an even purer intellectual expression appears in the development of these architectonic
forms."
- G. Semper
Like walking in the city, our attention is turned from one event to the next...shifting focus on
differently scaled urban phenomena (close, far, near) for distinct durations of time. The
design process is entered from the point of view of a film maker; investigating frame/
sequence/ transition/ shot, etc.. in isolation and in relation to one another.
The studio embraces the context of NYC and focuses this semester on Times Square. All
students, regardless of architectural experience, are required in the first half of the
semester to propose three works (close, far, and near) . The projects may be thought of as
one singular design or three separate schemes. In the second half of the semester, each
student chooses two issues ( i.e. sequence- framing- tectonics- proportion- structuralism-
light-surface-transparency-narrative-representation-color) to continue developing in her or
his individual design. Each student is required to present publicly a design proposal at
weekly pin-ups, the mid-review, and the final jury. This gives the student the opportunity
for feedback from invited New York architects, engineers, artists, and urban designers .
Guest Critics in the past have included: Kenneth Frampton, Steven Holl, Richard Plunz, Peter
Pran, and Bernard Tschumi.
Design Studio: Paris
Professor : Mr. Biecher
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Architectural design hardly exists without the reality of the city. Students have been
experiencing Manhattan during the first part of this program. They have discovered a city
built on a grid, being both the instrument that makes it coherent, as well as the way one can
read it, see it, understand it. Buildings are designed like solids, more or less sophisticated in
terms of shape, that rest on larger rectangles - islands, defined by the grid.
Paris has no such rule. The fabric of this city has more to do with fractal geometry than
euclidian geometry. The pattern of streets, islands and lots limits is a palimpsest on which
History has written its disjoined and heterogeneous episodes.
Unlike New York with its rigorous plan, the coherence of the parisian fabric comes from the
section. The so called parisian skin is nothing but a strip that runs along the streets, and
clearly defines the limit between public and private spaces. The nature of this skin is
complex and subtle, in relationship with its historical origins.
The Paris design studio explores the dialectical nature of architectural space within the
Parisian fabric, as well as the Parisian cultural, intellectual, architectural environment.
This exploration takes place through both analysis as well as design. The course is structured
around a series of partial and cumulative objectives. Projects are built on the sequence of
design exercises initiated in the New York, while focusing on the particular nature of
contemporary architectural space within the parisian environment.
Students work on three projects:
Project 1: Movement, based on the analysis of some of your daily movements in the city,
helps one understand the notion of limit in the urban fabric. This concerns the meaning of the
"skin."
"Movement is a translation of space. Now each time there is translation of parts in space,
there is also a qualitive change in a whole. Bergson gave numerous examples of this in Matter
and Memory. An animal moves but tuhis is for a purpose: to feed, migrate, etc. It might be
said that movement presupposes a difference of potential, and aims to fill it. If I consider
parts or places abstractly - A and B - I cannot understand the movement which goes from one
to the other. But imagine I an starving at A, and at B there is something to eat. When I have
reached B and had something to eat, what has changed is not only my state, but the state of
the whole which encompassed B, A, and all that was between them."
"Thus in a sense, movement has two aspects. On one hand, that which happens between
objects or parts; on the other hand that which expresses the duration or the whole. The result
is that duration, by changing qualitatively, is divided up in objects, and objects, by gaining
depth, by losing their contours, are united in duration. We can therefore say that movement
relates the objects of a closed system to open duration, and duration to the objects of the
system which it forces to open up. Movement relates the objects between which it is
established to the changing whole which it expresses, and vice versa. Through movement, the
whole is divided up into objects, and objects are re-uninted in the whole, and indeed between
the two 'the whole' changes."
Gilles Deleuze
Cinema 1 The Movement-Image, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1986
Project 2: Threshold, based on the design project os a small facility, applies the theoretical
notion of limit to architectural form.
"In historical terms, spatial divisions have taken on increasing importance within a society
as the need to mark the separation between a designated inside and outside are perceived as
being based on ramifications that could affect the social order. Even when these divisions are
for all intents and purposes equal - as in the case of a fence separating two similarly
proportioned pieces of land - one�s point of view is always based on where one happens to be
standing, not on the position of one's neighbor, nor on a hypothetical state of synthesis
between the two.
Generally, these divisions can be traced back to the very earliest expressions of man's
territorial instincts, so that their modern manifestation would tend to make little sense
outside the history of land-ownership, class structure, industrialization and the separation
between labor and leisure activities. Still, the one thing we can be sure of concerning spaces
that limit or resrict our access to them is that our bodies have as much if not more trouble
than our minds in accepting the idea of spatial determination. The animal within us strains
against its tethers, eager to ream freely without having to be constantly aware of where one
world ends and another begins.
Because the consciousness of space is based on knowledge that has been accumulated over a
lifetime and incorporated almost without our being aware of it, the experience of spatial
threshold takes an almost ritualistic connotations in daily life. We cross from home to work,
from bedroom to kitchen, from closed to open, from wet to dry, fron city to country, and back
agin, with a continual underlying satisfaction at the ease with which we are able to negotiate
these potntially complex transactions. In fact, it could be argued that the markings on the
internalized map we carry around of our 'world' consist of nothing so much as these zones of
transition and the patterns they create as we pass through them. We may be somewhat less
aware of the degrees of exclusivity associated with each boundary passed, but in general, our
sensitivity towards the crossing of a threshold declines in proportion to the number of times
we have traversed it already."
Dan Cameron
On crossing boundaries, Threshold, Fundacao de Serralves, Oporto, 1995.
Project 3: Simultaneous collective experience, based on the design of a large public building,
shows how new programmatic issues are necessary to keep the city alive within its
historical fabric.
"Dichotomies such as 'interior/exterior' and 'private/public' take on different characteristics
in all these various types of space, but they never disappear from view, whether or not they
are capable of integration within the cultural, social and political relationships implicit in
them(...).
Space, even private space, has always been publicly discussed, opening the door to a wide
range of hegemonistic objectives.
Like architecture (another of the arts that typically features in this type of debate),
contemporary art will always be the subject of public discussion, regardless of the greater or
lesser specialzation of the arguments of the social context in which the discourse is
produced, which may diminish or increase its general accessibility. Walter Benjamin referred
many years ago to the fact that architecture thrughout history has produced "an object
destined for a simultaneous collective experience." At the present point in the debate, it is
connected to the deconstruction of the space as a place to exhibit the power: the monument, a
phenomenon of the relationship between power and space is being replaced by a type of
critical intervention that can be summerized as the documentation of each artist�s formal and
conceptual research in designing the space in which he/she works, which is experienced
afterwards (...) collectively and simultaneously by the public."
Joao Fernandes
Space as threshold, Threshold, Fundacao de serralves, Oporto, 1995.
Urban Studies Workshop
Professor : TBA
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The urban studies option utilizes workshops and seminars taught by urban designers, urban
planners, sociologists and political scientists to introduce students to the techniques and
content of urban studies through guided research of economic, social, cultural, political and
physical factors which shape the urban environments of New York and Paris. The first term
prepares students to embark upon a major independent research project in Paris around a
topic developed in consultation with the faculty. The option stresses the combination of
research and field analysis, physical and quantitative data collection, as a means of
developing urban planning strategies.
New York City is home to 3% of the national population. It encompasses a citizenry with a
range of lifestyles and life conditions as broad as any in the world. As a metropolis, it is
commonly first among cities to experience situations others grapple with later. To
understand and administrate these five boroughs, creative people have devised
characterizations, metaphors and models among many techniques and methods to grasp the
sheer enormity and complexity of New York.
This studio will introduce techniques, methods and processes used to "engage" the city. Some
are traditionally found in planning sciences and others could be considered more experimental.
These will be presented in a rational sequence, strongly relying on examples, and as a whole
will articulate a procedure of conceptualization for entering the larger discussion about the
future of New York.
The specific design project in New York varies each semester depending upon timely local
issues and work in other courses.
ENGAGING THE CITY: Bibliography
Bassett, Edward M., Regional Plan of New York and its Environs; a Form of State Enabling Act
for Zoning. New York City, 1925.
Berman, Marshall, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New York:
Viking Penguin, 1988.
Boyer, M. Christine, Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning.
Cambridge, MIT Press, 1983.
Citywide Industry Study, New York, Dept.of City Planning/ New York City, 1993.
Crow, Dennis, Philosophical Streets, New Approaches to Urbanism, Washington, D.C.,
Maisonneuve Press, 1990.
Davis, Mike, City of Quartz, Excavating the City of Los Angeles, New York, Vintage Books,
1992.
Fishman, Robert, Bourgeois Utopias; The Rise and Fall of Suburbia,New york, Basic Books,
1987.
Garreau, Joel, Edge City; Life on the New Frontier, New York, Doubleday, 1991.
Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change,
Cambridge, Blackwell, 1990.
Jackson, Kenneth, Sodom on the Hudson, Poverty and Society in New York City, New York, 1993.
Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960.
Mollenkopf, John Hull, Power, Culture and Place: Essays on New York City, New York, 1988.
Plunz, Richard, A History of Housing in New York City, New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1990.
Sassen, Saskia, The Global City, New York, London, Tokyo, Princton Univ. Press, 1991.
Soja, Edward, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory,
London, Verso, 1989.
Freehand Drawing
Professor : Mr. Bouchard
COURSE DESCRIPTION
I. INTRODUCTION
Intuition
It is the intuition as the source of the creative process which lies at the heart of this class.
A well which cannot be explored in a lifetime, the intuition is too often neglected in our
rational world.
During the semester we are going to listen to it, to trust it, to respect it, to let it be free and
above all we are going to not censure it. We are going to learn how to use it.
Pleasure
We are going to be guided by the notion of pleasure- the pleasure of the eye, the pleasure of
the hand. We will lead the eye to send the right message to the hand; the hand as the
extension of the brain.
In order to concentrate we will learn to make a void inside ourselves and to detach. At the
same time our senses should become open like "capteurs."
There are many vehicles of exploration that we can take; drawing will be our vehicle; drawing
will be the pretext or the tool for accessing our intuition and generating a creative process.
Drawing
The drawing for me, from a personal and professional point of view, is a way of knowing
myself, the entrance to the imagination.
There is not only one way of drawing. Each person has his or her own means of expression, his
or her own reality. Drawing can be the basis of two dimensional and three dimensional
research.
This class is an invitation first to begin this research, it is an invitation to develop reflexes,
to invent and discover new tools, your own vocabulary. Secondly, it is an invitation to let
oneself be guided by one's likes and dislikes, one's own desires, emotions, passions, and
obsessions. To let them grow, to understand what they are, trying to tell us and to attempt to
find their origins in oneself. Finally it is to learn how to act upon these impulses.
During the semester we will try different media; pen, pencil, graphite, markers, brushes,
different papers and different techniques of rendering to discover those which are less
constraining, more faithful to express your ideas; those which will give you satisfaction and
pleasure.
Step by step you will limit yourself to textures and materials which best suit your way of
drawing. Beyond the technique, your own universe will emerge.
II. THEMES
Collection
Every week will have its own theme: an idea to be programmed in your "mental computer":
light/ shadow. solid/ void, scale proportion,....
Those themes are the starting point of a personal reflection, the starting point of the
collection of documents and materials: sketches, photographs, photocopies, cuttings from
magazines,etc. They are then discussed and commented on in class and they constitute the
subject of an exercise.
The goal of this process is to learn to look and see. In the beginning it needs and effort but
then it becomes a reflex which will manifest itself even when you are doing something else.
Sites
Every week we will meet at different sites in Paris related to the themes. These could be a
museum for instance: Cluny museum, Picasso Museum, Bordelle Museum, etc. The themes
accumulate and are enriched, fed with the intention that you will continue to build upon these
tools long after your stay in Paris.
Scrapbook
Sixty percent of the grade is based upon a scrapbook. The scrapbook is the materialization of
your intuition. It is a day by day, everyday process. Your collection is structured, composed,
it is the reason after the intuition. The goal of the exercise is to train yourself a simple
discipline: to catch the idea "on the fly". For that you always need to have ready the
equipment to sketch, to photograph, etc.
At the end of the semester, the scrapbook will be bound and will become the beginning of your
"patrimoine creatif", your creative bank, and eventually, in front of a concrete project, you
will find in it the starting point, an idea to rework and develop.
FInal
The final project composes the other forty percent of the class.
"From the city to the teaspoon" A souvenir book.
Back
Forward to faculty info
Professor : Ms. Smoller
COURSE DESCRIPTION
As a discipline, architectural design functions in part as a mode of cultural communication,
imaginative experimentation and personal critique of known architectural types. This course
introduces the student to the methodology, content and craft of architectural design, so that
he/she can develop a familiarity with basic elements manipulated by the architect to these
creative ends. This two-semester sequence of studio design exercises or projects beginning
in New York and ending in Paris, will examine the synthesis of abstract formal principles,
intrinsic architectural determinants (the presence of the human body, scale, light, etc.),
external conditions (site, program-the construct of culture) and the role of structure,
materials and craft that culminates in architectural form.
These Projects introduce the designer's "tools"; models, drawings, graphics etc., that elucide
the process of the mind's synthesis with products of the hand, guided by the eye. In addition,
the studio exercises investigate the connections between architecture and other disciplines
familiar to the liberal arts student, through a study of process methodologies, inter-
disciplinary project content, readings and lectures. The studio is intended both for those
with previous academic experience in architectural design, who would like to develop
additional studio skills, and those without previous academic experience in design, who are
interested in gaining an understanding of design conditons in the urban context of New York
and Paris. Students are divided into sections based on their previous experience in design.
Two afternoons per week, students attend design studio- a place where students are given an
intensive training in the skills and critical thinking involved in architectural design.
Students, in small groups, work directly with studio instructors to develop their individual
designs. The projects given in studio are situated in New York City and Paris , so that the
student is able to take advantage of the unique urban condition present in each city.
The specific design project in New York varies each semester depending upon timely local
issues and work in other courses, although all projects emphasize architecture as determined
by a dialogue between the individual designer�s process of making space, and the "poetics of
construction" (material, structure, detail) & the "poetics of action" (program, use,
experience). The studio requires the individual student to establish/ re-establish her or his
own philosophical, technical, and formal grounds for architectural design, while addressing in
a rigorous manner the necessity for a simultaneous re-definition of the discipline of
architecture.
"Architectonic thought is not merely invention and combination, nor is it forming and molding
in accordance with prescribed laws; rather it is a process which is a law unto itself..." "We
can recognize architectonic consciousness in the artistic sense only when an intellectual
process of development becomes evident in the architectonic forms and an active striving for
an even purer intellectual expression appears in the development of these architectonic
forms."
- G. Semper
Like walking in the city, our attention is turned from one event to the next...shifting focus on
differently scaled urban phenomena (close, far, near) for distinct durations of time. The
design process is entered from the point of view of a film maker; investigating frame/
sequence/ transition/ shot, etc.. in isolation and in relation to one another.
The studio embraces the context of NYC and focuses this semester on Times Square. All
students, regardless of architectural experience, are required in the first half of the
semester to propose three works (close, far, and near) . The projects may be thought of as
one singular design or three separate schemes. In the second half of the semester, each
student chooses two issues ( i.e. sequence- framing- tectonics- proportion- structuralism-
light-surface-transparency-narrative-representation-color) to continue developing in her or
his individual design. Each student is required to present publicly a design proposal at
weekly pin-ups, the mid-review, and the final jury. This gives the student the opportunity
for feedback from invited New York architects, engineers, artists, and urban designers .
Guest Critics in the past have included: Kenneth Frampton, Steven Holl, Richard Plunz, Peter
Pran, and Bernard Tschumi.
Design Studio: Paris
Professor : Mr. Biecher
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Architectural design hardly exists without the reality of the city. Students have been
experiencing Manhattan during the first part of this program. They have discovered a city
built on a grid, being both the instrument that makes it coherent, as well as the way one can
read it, see it, understand it. Buildings are designed like solids, more or less sophisticated in
terms of shape, that rest on larger rectangles - islands, defined by the grid.
Paris has no such rule. The fabric of this city has more to do with fractal geometry than
euclidian geometry. The pattern of streets, islands and lots limits is a palimpsest on which
History has written its disjoined and heterogeneous episodes.
Unlike New York with its rigorous plan, the coherence of the parisian fabric comes from the
section. The so called parisian skin is nothing but a strip that runs along the streets, and
clearly defines the limit between public and private spaces. The nature of this skin is
complex and subtle, in relationship with its historical origins.
The Paris design studio explores the dialectical nature of architectural space within the
Parisian fabric, as well as the Parisian cultural, intellectual, architectural environment.
This exploration takes place through both analysis as well as design. The course is structured
around a series of partial and cumulative objectives. Projects are built on the sequence of
design exercises initiated in the New York, while focusing on the particular nature of
contemporary architectural space within the parisian environment.
Students work on three projects:
Project 1: Movement, based on the analysis of some of your daily movements in the city,
helps one understand the notion of limit in the urban fabric. This concerns the meaning of the
"skin."
"Movement is a translation of space. Now each time there is translation of parts in space,
there is also a qualitive change in a whole. Bergson gave numerous examples of this in Matter
and Memory. An animal moves but tuhis is for a purpose: to feed, migrate, etc. It might be
said that movement presupposes a difference of potential, and aims to fill it. If I consider
parts or places abstractly - A and B - I cannot understand the movement which goes from one
to the other. But imagine I an starving at A, and at B there is something to eat. When I have
reached B and had something to eat, what has changed is not only my state, but the state of
the whole which encompassed B, A, and all that was between them."
"Thus in a sense, movement has two aspects. On one hand, that which happens between
objects or parts; on the other hand that which expresses the duration or the whole. The result
is that duration, by changing qualitatively, is divided up in objects, and objects, by gaining
depth, by losing their contours, are united in duration. We can therefore say that movement
relates the objects of a closed system to open duration, and duration to the objects of the
system which it forces to open up. Movement relates the objects between which it is
established to the changing whole which it expresses, and vice versa. Through movement, the
whole is divided up into objects, and objects are re-uninted in the whole, and indeed between
the two 'the whole' changes."
Gilles Deleuze
Cinema 1 The Movement-Image, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1986
Project 2: Threshold, based on the design project os a small facility, applies the theoretical
notion of limit to architectural form.
"In historical terms, spatial divisions have taken on increasing importance within a society
as the need to mark the separation between a designated inside and outside are perceived as
being based on ramifications that could affect the social order. Even when these divisions are
for all intents and purposes equal - as in the case of a fence separating two similarly
proportioned pieces of land - one�s point of view is always based on where one happens to be
standing, not on the position of one's neighbor, nor on a hypothetical state of synthesis
between the two.
Generally, these divisions can be traced back to the very earliest expressions of man's
territorial instincts, so that their modern manifestation would tend to make little sense
outside the history of land-ownership, class structure, industrialization and the separation
between labor and leisure activities. Still, the one thing we can be sure of concerning spaces
that limit or resrict our access to them is that our bodies have as much if not more trouble
than our minds in accepting the idea of spatial determination. The animal within us strains
against its tethers, eager to ream freely without having to be constantly aware of where one
world ends and another begins.
Because the consciousness of space is based on knowledge that has been accumulated over a
lifetime and incorporated almost without our being aware of it, the experience of spatial
threshold takes an almost ritualistic connotations in daily life. We cross from home to work,
from bedroom to kitchen, from closed to open, from wet to dry, fron city to country, and back
agin, with a continual underlying satisfaction at the ease with which we are able to negotiate
these potntially complex transactions. In fact, it could be argued that the markings on the
internalized map we carry around of our 'world' consist of nothing so much as these zones of
transition and the patterns they create as we pass through them. We may be somewhat less
aware of the degrees of exclusivity associated with each boundary passed, but in general, our
sensitivity towards the crossing of a threshold declines in proportion to the number of times
we have traversed it already."
Dan Cameron
On crossing boundaries, Threshold, Fundacao de Serralves, Oporto, 1995.
Project 3: Simultaneous collective experience, based on the design of a large public building,
shows how new programmatic issues are necessary to keep the city alive within its
historical fabric.
"Dichotomies such as 'interior/exterior' and 'private/public' take on different characteristics
in all these various types of space, but they never disappear from view, whether or not they
are capable of integration within the cultural, social and political relationships implicit in
them(...).
Space, even private space, has always been publicly discussed, opening the door to a wide
range of hegemonistic objectives.
Like architecture (another of the arts that typically features in this type of debate),
contemporary art will always be the subject of public discussion, regardless of the greater or
lesser specialzation of the arguments of the social context in which the discourse is
produced, which may diminish or increase its general accessibility. Walter Benjamin referred
many years ago to the fact that architecture thrughout history has produced "an object
destined for a simultaneous collective experience." At the present point in the debate, it is
connected to the deconstruction of the space as a place to exhibit the power: the monument, a
phenomenon of the relationship between power and space is being replaced by a type of
critical intervention that can be summerized as the documentation of each artist�s formal and
conceptual research in designing the space in which he/she works, which is experienced
afterwards (...) collectively and simultaneously by the public."
Joao Fernandes
Space as threshold, Threshold, Fundacao de serralves, Oporto, 1995.
Urban Studies Workshop
Professor : TBA
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The urban studies option utilizes workshops and seminars taught by urban designers, urban
planners, sociologists and political scientists to introduce students to the techniques and
content of urban studies through guided research of economic, social, cultural, political and
physical factors which shape the urban environments of New York and Paris. The first term
prepares students to embark upon a major independent research project in Paris around a
topic developed in consultation with the faculty. The option stresses the combination of
research and field analysis, physical and quantitative data collection, as a means of
developing urban planning strategies.
New York City is home to 3% of the national population. It encompasses a citizenry with a
range of lifestyles and life conditions as broad as any in the world. As a metropolis, it is
commonly first among cities to experience situations others grapple with later. To
understand and administrate these five boroughs, creative people have devised
characterizations, metaphors and models among many techniques and methods to grasp the
sheer enormity and complexity of New York.
This studio will introduce techniques, methods and processes used to "engage" the city. Some
are traditionally found in planning sciences and others could be considered more experimental.
These will be presented in a rational sequence, strongly relying on examples, and as a whole
will articulate a procedure of conceptualization for entering the larger discussion about the
future of New York.
The specific design project in New York varies each semester depending upon timely local
issues and work in other courses.
ENGAGING THE CITY: Bibliography
Bassett, Edward M., Regional Plan of New York and its Environs; a Form of State Enabling Act
for Zoning. New York City, 1925.
Berman, Marshall, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New York:
Viking Penguin, 1988.
Boyer, M. Christine, Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning.
Cambridge, MIT Press, 1983.
Citywide Industry Study, New York, Dept.of City Planning/ New York City, 1993.
Crow, Dennis, Philosophical Streets, New Approaches to Urbanism, Washington, D.C.,
Maisonneuve Press, 1990.
Davis, Mike, City of Quartz, Excavating the City of Los Angeles, New York, Vintage Books,
1992.
Fishman, Robert, Bourgeois Utopias; The Rise and Fall of Suburbia,New york, Basic Books,
1987.
Garreau, Joel, Edge City; Life on the New Frontier, New York, Doubleday, 1991.
Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change,
Cambridge, Blackwell, 1990.
Jackson, Kenneth, Sodom on the Hudson, Poverty and Society in New York City, New York, 1993.
Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960.
Mollenkopf, John Hull, Power, Culture and Place: Essays on New York City, New York, 1988.
Plunz, Richard, A History of Housing in New York City, New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1990.
Sassen, Saskia, The Global City, New York, London, Tokyo, Princton Univ. Press, 1991.
Soja, Edward, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory,
London, Verso, 1989.
Freehand Drawing
Professor : Mr. Bouchard
COURSE DESCRIPTION
I. INTRODUCTION
Intuition
It is the intuition as the source of the creative process which lies at the heart of this class.
A well which cannot be explored in a lifetime, the intuition is too often neglected in our
rational world.
During the semester we are going to listen to it, to trust it, to respect it, to let it be free and
above all we are going to not censure it. We are going to learn how to use it.
Pleasure
We are going to be guided by the notion of pleasure- the pleasure of the eye, the pleasure of
the hand. We will lead the eye to send the right message to the hand; the hand as the
extension of the brain.
In order to concentrate we will learn to make a void inside ourselves and to detach. At the
same time our senses should become open like "capteurs."
There are many vehicles of exploration that we can take; drawing will be our vehicle; drawing
will be the pretext or the tool for accessing our intuition and generating a creative process.
Drawing
The drawing for me, from a personal and professional point of view, is a way of knowing
myself, the entrance to the imagination.
There is not only one way of drawing. Each person has his or her own means of expression, his
or her own reality. Drawing can be the basis of two dimensional and three dimensional
research.
This class is an invitation first to begin this research, it is an invitation to develop reflexes,
to invent and discover new tools, your own vocabulary. Secondly, it is an invitation to let
oneself be guided by one's likes and dislikes, one's own desires, emotions, passions, and
obsessions. To let them grow, to understand what they are, trying to tell us and to attempt to
find their origins in oneself. Finally it is to learn how to act upon these impulses.
During the semester we will try different media; pen, pencil, graphite, markers, brushes,
different papers and different techniques of rendering to discover those which are less
constraining, more faithful to express your ideas; those which will give you satisfaction and
pleasure.
Step by step you will limit yourself to textures and materials which best suit your way of
drawing. Beyond the technique, your own universe will emerge.
II. THEMES
Collection
Every week will have its own theme: an idea to be programmed in your "mental computer":
light/ shadow. solid/ void, scale proportion,....
Those themes are the starting point of a personal reflection, the starting point of the
collection of documents and materials: sketches, photographs, photocopies, cuttings from
magazines,etc. They are then discussed and commented on in class and they constitute the
subject of an exercise.
The goal of this process is to learn to look and see. In the beginning it needs and effort but
then it becomes a reflex which will manifest itself even when you are doing something else.
Sites
Every week we will meet at different sites in Paris related to the themes. These could be a
museum for instance: Cluny museum, Picasso Museum, Bordelle Museum, etc. The themes
accumulate and are enriched, fed with the intention that you will continue to build upon these
tools long after your stay in Paris.
Scrapbook
Sixty percent of the grade is based upon a scrapbook. The scrapbook is the materialization of
your intuition. It is a day by day, everyday process. Your collection is structured, composed,
it is the reason after the intuition. The goal of the exercise is to train yourself a simple
discipline: to catch the idea "on the fly". For that you always need to have ready the
equipment to sketch, to photograph, etc.
At the end of the semester, the scrapbook will be bound and will become the beginning of your
"patrimoine creatif", your creative bank, and eventually, in front of a concrete project, you
will find in it the starting point, an idea to rework and develop.
FInal
The final project composes the other forty percent of the class.
"From the city to the teaspoon" A souvenir book.
Back
Forward to faculty info
COURSE DESCRIPTION
As a discipline, architectural design functions in part as a mode of cultural communication,
imaginative experimentation and personal critique of known architectural types. This course
introduces the student to the methodology, content and craft of architectural design, so that
he/she can develop a familiarity with basic elements manipulated by the architect to these
creative ends. This two-semester sequence of studio design exercises or projects beginning
in New York and ending in Paris, will examine the synthesis of abstract formal principles,
intrinsic architectural determinants (the presence of the human body, scale, light, etc.),
external conditions (site, program-the construct of culture) and the role of structure,
materials and craft that culminates in architectural form.
These Projects introduce the designer's "tools"; models, drawings, graphics etc., that elucide
the process of the mind's synthesis with products of the hand, guided by the eye. In addition,
the studio exercises investigate the connections between architecture and other disciplines
familiar to the liberal arts student, through a study of process methodologies, inter-
disciplinary project content, readings and lectures. The studio is intended both for those
with previous academic experience in architectural design, who would like to develop
additional studio skills, and those without previous academic experience in design, who are
interested in gaining an understanding of design conditons in the urban context of New York
and Paris. Students are divided into sections based on their previous experience in design.
Two afternoons per week, students attend design studio- a place where students are given an
intensive training in the skills and critical thinking involved in architectural design.
Students, in small groups, work directly with studio instructors to develop their individual
designs. The projects given in studio are situated in New York City and Paris , so that the
student is able to take advantage of the unique urban condition present in each city.
The specific design project in New York varies each semester depending upon timely local
issues and work in other courses, although all projects emphasize architecture as determined
by a dialogue between the individual designer�s process of making space, and the "poetics of
construction" (material, structure, detail) & the "poetics of action" (program, use,
experience). The studio requires the individual student to establish/ re-establish her or his
own philosophical, technical, and formal grounds for architectural design, while addressing in
a rigorous manner the necessity for a simultaneous re-definition of the discipline of
architecture.
"Architectonic thought is not merely invention and combination, nor is it forming and molding
in accordance with prescribed laws; rather it is a process which is a law unto itself..." "We
can recognize architectonic consciousness in the artistic sense only when an intellectual
process of development becomes evident in the architectonic forms and an active striving for
an even purer intellectual expression appears in the development of these architectonic
forms."
- G. Semper
Like walking in the city, our attention is turned from one event to the next...shifting focus on
differently scaled urban phenomena (close, far, near) for distinct durations of time. The
design process is entered from the point of view of a film maker; investigating frame/
sequence/ transition/ shot, etc.. in isolation and in relation to one another.
The studio embraces the context of NYC and focuses this semester on Times Square. All
students, regardless of architectural experience, are required in the first half of the
semester to propose three works (close, far, and near) . The projects may be thought of as
one singular design or three separate schemes. In the second half of the semester, each
student chooses two issues ( i.e. sequence- framing- tectonics- proportion- structuralism-
light-surface-transparency-narrative-representation-color) to continue developing in her or
his individual design. Each student is required to present publicly a design proposal at
weekly pin-ups, the mid-review, and the final jury. This gives the student the opportunity
for feedback from invited New York architects, engineers, artists, and urban designers .
Guest Critics in the past have included: Kenneth Frampton, Steven Holl, Richard Plunz, Peter
Pran, and Bernard Tschumi.
Professor : Mr. Biecher
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Architectural design hardly exists without the reality of the city. Students have been
experiencing Manhattan during the first part of this program. They have discovered a city
built on a grid, being both the instrument that makes it coherent, as well as the way one can
read it, see it, understand it. Buildings are designed like solids, more or less sophisticated in
terms of shape, that rest on larger rectangles - islands, defined by the grid.
Paris has no such rule. The fabric of this city has more to do with fractal geometry than
euclidian geometry. The pattern of streets, islands and lots limits is a palimpsest on which
History has written its disjoined and heterogeneous episodes.
Unlike New York with its rigorous plan, the coherence of the parisian fabric comes from the
section. The so called parisian skin is nothing but a strip that runs along the streets, and
clearly defines the limit between public and private spaces. The nature of this skin is
complex and subtle, in relationship with its historical origins.
The Paris design studio explores the dialectical nature of architectural space within the
Parisian fabric, as well as the Parisian cultural, intellectual, architectural environment.
This exploration takes place through both analysis as well as design. The course is structured
around a series of partial and cumulative objectives. Projects are built on the sequence of
design exercises initiated in the New York, while focusing on the particular nature of
contemporary architectural space within the parisian environment.
Students work on three projects:
Project 1: Movement, based on the analysis of some of your daily movements in the city,
helps one understand the notion of limit in the urban fabric. This concerns the meaning of the
"skin."
"Movement is a translation of space. Now each time there is translation of parts in space,
there is also a qualitive change in a whole. Bergson gave numerous examples of this in Matter
and Memory. An animal moves but tuhis is for a purpose: to feed, migrate, etc. It might be
said that movement presupposes a difference of potential, and aims to fill it. If I consider
parts or places abstractly - A and B - I cannot understand the movement which goes from one
to the other. But imagine I an starving at A, and at B there is something to eat. When I have
reached B and had something to eat, what has changed is not only my state, but the state of
the whole which encompassed B, A, and all that was between them."
"Thus in a sense, movement has two aspects. On one hand, that which happens between
objects or parts; on the other hand that which expresses the duration or the whole. The result
is that duration, by changing qualitatively, is divided up in objects, and objects, by gaining
depth, by losing their contours, are united in duration. We can therefore say that movement
relates the objects of a closed system to open duration, and duration to the objects of the
system which it forces to open up. Movement relates the objects between which it is
established to the changing whole which it expresses, and vice versa. Through movement, the
whole is divided up into objects, and objects are re-uninted in the whole, and indeed between
the two 'the whole' changes."
Gilles Deleuze
Cinema 1 The Movement-Image, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1986
Project 2: Threshold, based on the design project os a small facility, applies the theoretical
notion of limit to architectural form.
"In historical terms, spatial divisions have taken on increasing importance within a society
as the need to mark the separation between a designated inside and outside are perceived as
being based on ramifications that could affect the social order. Even when these divisions are
for all intents and purposes equal - as in the case of a fence separating two similarly
proportioned pieces of land - one�s point of view is always based on where one happens to be
standing, not on the position of one's neighbor, nor on a hypothetical state of synthesis
between the two.
Generally, these divisions can be traced back to the very earliest expressions of man's
territorial instincts, so that their modern manifestation would tend to make little sense
outside the history of land-ownership, class structure, industrialization and the separation
between labor and leisure activities. Still, the one thing we can be sure of concerning spaces
that limit or resrict our access to them is that our bodies have as much if not more trouble
than our minds in accepting the idea of spatial determination. The animal within us strains
against its tethers, eager to ream freely without having to be constantly aware of where one
world ends and another begins.
Because the consciousness of space is based on knowledge that has been accumulated over a
lifetime and incorporated almost without our being aware of it, the experience of spatial
threshold takes an almost ritualistic connotations in daily life. We cross from home to work,
from bedroom to kitchen, from closed to open, from wet to dry, fron city to country, and back
agin, with a continual underlying satisfaction at the ease with which we are able to negotiate
these potntially complex transactions. In fact, it could be argued that the markings on the
internalized map we carry around of our 'world' consist of nothing so much as these zones of
transition and the patterns they create as we pass through them. We may be somewhat less
aware of the degrees of exclusivity associated with each boundary passed, but in general, our
sensitivity towards the crossing of a threshold declines in proportion to the number of times
we have traversed it already."
Dan Cameron
On crossing boundaries, Threshold, Fundacao de Serralves, Oporto, 1995.
Project 3: Simultaneous collective experience, based on the design of a large public building,
shows how new programmatic issues are necessary to keep the city alive within its
historical fabric.
"Dichotomies such as 'interior/exterior' and 'private/public' take on different characteristics
in all these various types of space, but they never disappear from view, whether or not they
are capable of integration within the cultural, social and political relationships implicit in
them(...).
Space, even private space, has always been publicly discussed, opening the door to a wide
range of hegemonistic objectives.
Like architecture (another of the arts that typically features in this type of debate),
contemporary art will always be the subject of public discussion, regardless of the greater or
lesser specialzation of the arguments of the social context in which the discourse is
produced, which may diminish or increase its general accessibility. Walter Benjamin referred
many years ago to the fact that architecture thrughout history has produced "an object
destined for a simultaneous collective experience." At the present point in the debate, it is
connected to the deconstruction of the space as a place to exhibit the power: the monument, a
phenomenon of the relationship between power and space is being replaced by a type of
critical intervention that can be summerized as the documentation of each artist�s formal and
conceptual research in designing the space in which he/she works, which is experienced
afterwards (...) collectively and simultaneously by the public."
Joao Fernandes
Space as threshold, Threshold, Fundacao de serralves, Oporto, 1995.
Urban Studies Workshop
Professor : TBA
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The urban studies option utilizes workshops and seminars taught by urban designers, urban
planners, sociologists and political scientists to introduce students to the techniques and
content of urban studies through guided research of economic, social, cultural, political and
physical factors which shape the urban environments of New York and Paris. The first term
prepares students to embark upon a major independent research project in Paris around a
topic developed in consultation with the faculty. The option stresses the combination of
research and field analysis, physical and quantitative data collection, as a means of
developing urban planning strategies.
New York City is home to 3% of the national population. It encompasses a citizenry with a
range of lifestyles and life conditions as broad as any in the world. As a metropolis, it is
commonly first among cities to experience situations others grapple with later. To
understand and administrate these five boroughs, creative people have devised
characterizations, metaphors and models among many techniques and methods to grasp the
sheer enormity and complexity of New York.
This studio will introduce techniques, methods and processes used to "engage" the city. Some
are traditionally found in planning sciences and others could be considered more experimental.
These will be presented in a rational sequence, strongly relying on examples, and as a whole
will articulate a procedure of conceptualization for entering the larger discussion about the
future of New York.
The specific design project in New York varies each semester depending upon timely local
issues and work in other courses.
ENGAGING THE CITY: Bibliography
Bassett, Edward M., Regional Plan of New York and its Environs; a Form of State Enabling Act
for Zoning. New York City, 1925.
Berman, Marshall, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New York:
Viking Penguin, 1988.
Boyer, M. Christine, Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning.
Cambridge, MIT Press, 1983.
Citywide Industry Study, New York, Dept.of City Planning/ New York City, 1993.
Crow, Dennis, Philosophical Streets, New Approaches to Urbanism, Washington, D.C.,
Maisonneuve Press, 1990.
Davis, Mike, City of Quartz, Excavating the City of Los Angeles, New York, Vintage Books,
1992.
Fishman, Robert, Bourgeois Utopias; The Rise and Fall of Suburbia,New york, Basic Books,
1987.
Garreau, Joel, Edge City; Life on the New Frontier, New York, Doubleday, 1991.
Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change,
Cambridge, Blackwell, 1990.
Jackson, Kenneth, Sodom on the Hudson, Poverty and Society in New York City, New York, 1993.
Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960.
Mollenkopf, John Hull, Power, Culture and Place: Essays on New York City, New York, 1988.
Plunz, Richard, A History of Housing in New York City, New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1990.
Sassen, Saskia, The Global City, New York, London, Tokyo, Princton Univ. Press, 1991.
Soja, Edward, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory,
London, Verso, 1989.
Freehand Drawing
Professor : Mr. Bouchard
COURSE DESCRIPTION
I. INTRODUCTION
Intuition
It is the intuition as the source of the creative process which lies at the heart of this class.
A well which cannot be explored in a lifetime, the intuition is too often neglected in our
rational world.
During the semester we are going to listen to it, to trust it, to respect it, to let it be free and
above all we are going to not censure it. We are going to learn how to use it.
Pleasure
We are going to be guided by the notion of pleasure- the pleasure of the eye, the pleasure of
the hand. We will lead the eye to send the right message to the hand; the hand as the
extension of the brain.
In order to concentrate we will learn to make a void inside ourselves and to detach. At the
same time our senses should become open like "capteurs."
There are many vehicles of exploration that we can take; drawing will be our vehicle; drawing
will be the pretext or the tool for accessing our intuition and generating a creative process.
Drawing
The drawing for me, from a personal and professional point of view, is a way of knowing
myself, the entrance to the imagination.
There is not only one way of drawing. Each person has his or her own means of expression, his
or her own reality. Drawing can be the basis of two dimensional and three dimensional
research.
This class is an invitation first to begin this research, it is an invitation to develop reflexes,
to invent and discover new tools, your own vocabulary. Secondly, it is an invitation to let
oneself be guided by one's likes and dislikes, one's own desires, emotions, passions, and
obsessions. To let them grow, to understand what they are, trying to tell us and to attempt to
find their origins in oneself. Finally it is to learn how to act upon these impulses.
During the semester we will try different media; pen, pencil, graphite, markers, brushes,
different papers and different techniques of rendering to discover those which are less
constraining, more faithful to express your ideas; those which will give you satisfaction and
pleasure.
Step by step you will limit yourself to textures and materials which best suit your way of
drawing. Beyond the technique, your own universe will emerge.
II. THEMES
Collection
Every week will have its own theme: an idea to be programmed in your "mental computer":
light/ shadow. solid/ void, scale proportion,....
Those themes are the starting point of a personal reflection, the starting point of the
collection of documents and materials: sketches, photographs, photocopies, cuttings from
magazines,etc. They are then discussed and commented on in class and they constitute the
subject of an exercise.
The goal of this process is to learn to look and see. In the beginning it needs and effort but
then it becomes a reflex which will manifest itself even when you are doing something else.
Sites
Every week we will meet at different sites in Paris related to the themes. These could be a
museum for instance: Cluny museum, Picasso Museum, Bordelle Museum, etc. The themes
accumulate and are enriched, fed with the intention that you will continue to build upon these
tools long after your stay in Paris.
Scrapbook
Sixty percent of the grade is based upon a scrapbook. The scrapbook is the materialization of
your intuition. It is a day by day, everyday process. Your collection is structured, composed,
it is the reason after the intuition. The goal of the exercise is to train yourself a simple
discipline: to catch the idea "on the fly". For that you always need to have ready the
equipment to sketch, to photograph, etc.
At the end of the semester, the scrapbook will be bound and will become the beginning of your
"patrimoine creatif", your creative bank, and eventually, in front of a concrete project, you
will find in it the starting point, an idea to rework and develop.
FInal
The final project composes the other forty percent of the class.
"From the city to the teaspoon" A souvenir book.
Back
Forward to faculty info
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Architectural design hardly exists without the reality of the city. Students have been
experiencing Manhattan during the first part of this program. They have discovered a city
built on a grid, being both the instrument that makes it coherent, as well as the way one can
read it, see it, understand it. Buildings are designed like solids, more or less sophisticated in
terms of shape, that rest on larger rectangles - islands, defined by the grid.
Paris has no such rule. The fabric of this city has more to do with fractal geometry than
euclidian geometry. The pattern of streets, islands and lots limits is a palimpsest on which
History has written its disjoined and heterogeneous episodes.
Unlike New York with its rigorous plan, the coherence of the parisian fabric comes from the
section. The so called parisian skin is nothing but a strip that runs along the streets, and
clearly defines the limit between public and private spaces. The nature of this skin is
complex and subtle, in relationship with its historical origins.
The Paris design studio explores the dialectical nature of architectural space within the
Parisian fabric, as well as the Parisian cultural, intellectual, architectural environment.
This exploration takes place through both analysis as well as design. The course is structured
around a series of partial and cumulative objectives. Projects are built on the sequence of
design exercises initiated in the New York, while focusing on the particular nature of
contemporary architectural space within the parisian environment.
Students work on three projects:
Project 1: Movement, based on the analysis of some of your daily movements in the city,
helps one understand the notion of limit in the urban fabric. This concerns the meaning of the
"skin."
"Movement is a translation of space. Now each time there is translation of parts in space,
there is also a qualitive change in a whole. Bergson gave numerous examples of this in Matter
and Memory. An animal moves but tuhis is for a purpose: to feed, migrate, etc. It might be
said that movement presupposes a difference of potential, and aims to fill it. If I consider
parts or places abstractly - A and B - I cannot understand the movement which goes from one
to the other. But imagine I an starving at A, and at B there is something to eat. When I have
reached B and had something to eat, what has changed is not only my state, but the state of
the whole which encompassed B, A, and all that was between them."
"Thus in a sense, movement has two aspects. On one hand, that which happens between
objects or parts; on the other hand that which expresses the duration or the whole. The result
is that duration, by changing qualitatively, is divided up in objects, and objects, by gaining
depth, by losing their contours, are united in duration. We can therefore say that movement
relates the objects of a closed system to open duration, and duration to the objects of the
system which it forces to open up. Movement relates the objects between which it is
established to the changing whole which it expresses, and vice versa. Through movement, the
whole is divided up into objects, and objects are re-uninted in the whole, and indeed between
the two 'the whole' changes."
Gilles Deleuze
Cinema 1 The Movement-Image, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1986
Project 2: Threshold, based on the design project os a small facility, applies the theoretical
notion of limit to architectural form.
"In historical terms, spatial divisions have taken on increasing importance within a society
as the need to mark the separation between a designated inside and outside are perceived as
being based on ramifications that could affect the social order. Even when these divisions are
for all intents and purposes equal - as in the case of a fence separating two similarly
proportioned pieces of land - one�s point of view is always based on where one happens to be
standing, not on the position of one's neighbor, nor on a hypothetical state of synthesis
between the two.
Generally, these divisions can be traced back to the very earliest expressions of man's
territorial instincts, so that their modern manifestation would tend to make little sense
outside the history of land-ownership, class structure, industrialization and the separation
between labor and leisure activities. Still, the one thing we can be sure of concerning spaces
that limit or resrict our access to them is that our bodies have as much if not more trouble
than our minds in accepting the idea of spatial determination. The animal within us strains
against its tethers, eager to ream freely without having to be constantly aware of where one
world ends and another begins.
Because the consciousness of space is based on knowledge that has been accumulated over a
lifetime and incorporated almost without our being aware of it, the experience of spatial
threshold takes an almost ritualistic connotations in daily life. We cross from home to work,
from bedroom to kitchen, from closed to open, from wet to dry, fron city to country, and back
agin, with a continual underlying satisfaction at the ease with which we are able to negotiate
these potntially complex transactions. In fact, it could be argued that the markings on the
internalized map we carry around of our 'world' consist of nothing so much as these zones of
transition and the patterns they create as we pass through them. We may be somewhat less
aware of the degrees of exclusivity associated with each boundary passed, but in general, our
sensitivity towards the crossing of a threshold declines in proportion to the number of times
we have traversed it already."
Dan Cameron
On crossing boundaries, Threshold, Fundacao de Serralves, Oporto, 1995.
Project 3: Simultaneous collective experience, based on the design of a large public building,
shows how new programmatic issues are necessary to keep the city alive within its
historical fabric.
"Dichotomies such as 'interior/exterior' and 'private/public' take on different characteristics
in all these various types of space, but they never disappear from view, whether or not they
are capable of integration within the cultural, social and political relationships implicit in
them(...).
Space, even private space, has always been publicly discussed, opening the door to a wide
range of hegemonistic objectives.
Like architecture (another of the arts that typically features in this type of debate),
contemporary art will always be the subject of public discussion, regardless of the greater or
lesser specialzation of the arguments of the social context in which the discourse is
produced, which may diminish or increase its general accessibility. Walter Benjamin referred
many years ago to the fact that architecture thrughout history has produced "an object
destined for a simultaneous collective experience." At the present point in the debate, it is
connected to the deconstruction of the space as a place to exhibit the power: the monument, a
phenomenon of the relationship between power and space is being replaced by a type of
critical intervention that can be summerized as the documentation of each artist�s formal and
conceptual research in designing the space in which he/she works, which is experienced
afterwards (...) collectively and simultaneously by the public."
Joao Fernandes
Space as threshold, Threshold, Fundacao de serralves, Oporto, 1995.
Professor : TBA
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The urban studies option utilizes workshops and seminars taught by urban designers, urban
planners, sociologists and political scientists to introduce students to the techniques and
content of urban studies through guided research of economic, social, cultural, political and
physical factors which shape the urban environments of New York and Paris. The first term
prepares students to embark upon a major independent research project in Paris around a
topic developed in consultation with the faculty. The option stresses the combination of
research and field analysis, physical and quantitative data collection, as a means of
developing urban planning strategies.
New York City is home to 3% of the national population. It encompasses a citizenry with a
range of lifestyles and life conditions as broad as any in the world. As a metropolis, it is
commonly first among cities to experience situations others grapple with later. To
understand and administrate these five boroughs, creative people have devised
characterizations, metaphors and models among many techniques and methods to grasp the
sheer enormity and complexity of New York.
This studio will introduce techniques, methods and processes used to "engage" the city. Some
are traditionally found in planning sciences and others could be considered more experimental.
These will be presented in a rational sequence, strongly relying on examples, and as a whole
will articulate a procedure of conceptualization for entering the larger discussion about the
future of New York.
The specific design project in New York varies each semester depending upon timely local
issues and work in other courses.
ENGAGING THE CITY: Bibliography
Bassett, Edward M., Regional Plan of New York and its Environs; a Form of State Enabling Act
for Zoning. New York City, 1925.
Berman, Marshall, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New York:
Viking Penguin, 1988.
Boyer, M. Christine, Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning.
Cambridge, MIT Press, 1983.
Citywide Industry Study, New York, Dept.of City Planning/ New York City, 1993.
Crow, Dennis, Philosophical Streets, New Approaches to Urbanism, Washington, D.C.,
Maisonneuve Press, 1990.
Davis, Mike, City of Quartz, Excavating the City of Los Angeles, New York, Vintage Books,
1992.
Fishman, Robert, Bourgeois Utopias; The Rise and Fall of Suburbia,New york, Basic Books,
1987.
Garreau, Joel, Edge City; Life on the New Frontier, New York, Doubleday, 1991.
Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change,
Cambridge, Blackwell, 1990.
Jackson, Kenneth, Sodom on the Hudson, Poverty and Society in New York City, New York, 1993.
Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960.
Mollenkopf, John Hull, Power, Culture and Place: Essays on New York City, New York, 1988.
Plunz, Richard, A History of Housing in New York City, New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1990.
Sassen, Saskia, The Global City, New York, London, Tokyo, Princton Univ. Press, 1991.
Soja, Edward, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory,
London, Verso, 1989.
Freehand Drawing
Professor : Mr. Bouchard
COURSE DESCRIPTION
I. INTRODUCTION
Intuition
It is the intuition as the source of the creative process which lies at the heart of this class.
A well which cannot be explored in a lifetime, the intuition is too often neglected in our
rational world.
During the semester we are going to listen to it, to trust it, to respect it, to let it be free and
above all we are going to not censure it. We are going to learn how to use it.
Pleasure
We are going to be guided by the notion of pleasure- the pleasure of the eye, the pleasure of
the hand. We will lead the eye to send the right message to the hand; the hand as the
extension of the brain.
In order to concentrate we will learn to make a void inside ourselves and to detach. At the
same time our senses should become open like "capteurs."
There are many vehicles of exploration that we can take; drawing will be our vehicle; drawing
will be the pretext or the tool for accessing our intuition and generating a creative process.
Drawing
The drawing for me, from a personal and professional point of view, is a way of knowing
myself, the entrance to the imagination.
There is not only one way of drawing. Each person has his or her own means of expression, his
or her own reality. Drawing can be the basis of two dimensional and three dimensional
research.
This class is an invitation first to begin this research, it is an invitation to develop reflexes,
to invent and discover new tools, your own vocabulary. Secondly, it is an invitation to let
oneself be guided by one's likes and dislikes, one's own desires, emotions, passions, and
obsessions. To let them grow, to understand what they are, trying to tell us and to attempt to
find their origins in oneself. Finally it is to learn how to act upon these impulses.
During the semester we will try different media; pen, pencil, graphite, markers, brushes,
different papers and different techniques of rendering to discover those which are less
constraining, more faithful to express your ideas; those which will give you satisfaction and
pleasure.
Step by step you will limit yourself to textures and materials which best suit your way of
drawing. Beyond the technique, your own universe will emerge.
II. THEMES
Collection
Every week will have its own theme: an idea to be programmed in your "mental computer":
light/ shadow. solid/ void, scale proportion,....
Those themes are the starting point of a personal reflection, the starting point of the
collection of documents and materials: sketches, photographs, photocopies, cuttings from
magazines,etc. They are then discussed and commented on in class and they constitute the
subject of an exercise.
The goal of this process is to learn to look and see. In the beginning it needs and effort but
then it becomes a reflex which will manifest itself even when you are doing something else.
Sites
Every week we will meet at different sites in Paris related to the themes. These could be a
museum for instance: Cluny museum, Picasso Museum, Bordelle Museum, etc. The themes
accumulate and are enriched, fed with the intention that you will continue to build upon these
tools long after your stay in Paris.
Scrapbook
Sixty percent of the grade is based upon a scrapbook. The scrapbook is the materialization of
your intuition. It is a day by day, everyday process. Your collection is structured, composed,
it is the reason after the intuition. The goal of the exercise is to train yourself a simple
discipline: to catch the idea "on the fly". For that you always need to have ready the
equipment to sketch, to photograph, etc.
At the end of the semester, the scrapbook will be bound and will become the beginning of your
"patrimoine creatif", your creative bank, and eventually, in front of a concrete project, you
will find in it the starting point, an idea to rework and develop.
FInal
The final project composes the other forty percent of the class.
"From the city to the teaspoon" A souvenir book.
Back
Forward to faculty info
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The urban studies option utilizes workshops and seminars taught by urban designers, urban
planners, sociologists and political scientists to introduce students to the techniques and
content of urban studies through guided research of economic, social, cultural, political and
physical factors which shape the urban environments of New York and Paris. The first term
prepares students to embark upon a major independent research project in Paris around a
topic developed in consultation with the faculty. The option stresses the combination of
research and field analysis, physical and quantitative data collection, as a means of
developing urban planning strategies.
New York City is home to 3% of the national population. It encompasses a citizenry with a
range of lifestyles and life conditions as broad as any in the world. As a metropolis, it is
commonly first among cities to experience situations others grapple with later. To
understand and administrate these five boroughs, creative people have devised
characterizations, metaphors and models among many techniques and methods to grasp the
sheer enormity and complexity of New York.
This studio will introduce techniques, methods and processes used to "engage" the city. Some
are traditionally found in planning sciences and others could be considered more experimental.
These will be presented in a rational sequence, strongly relying on examples, and as a whole
will articulate a procedure of conceptualization for entering the larger discussion about the
future of New York.
The specific design project in New York varies each semester depending upon timely local
issues and work in other courses.
ENGAGING THE CITY: Bibliography
Bassett, Edward M., Regional Plan of New York and its Environs; a Form of State Enabling Act
for Zoning. New York City, 1925.
Berman, Marshall, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New York:
Viking Penguin, 1988.
Boyer, M. Christine, Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning.
Cambridge, MIT Press, 1983.
Citywide Industry Study, New York, Dept.of City Planning/ New York City, 1993.
Crow, Dennis, Philosophical Streets, New Approaches to Urbanism, Washington, D.C.,
Maisonneuve Press, 1990.
Davis, Mike, City of Quartz, Excavating the City of Los Angeles, New York, Vintage Books,
1992.
Fishman, Robert, Bourgeois Utopias; The Rise and Fall of Suburbia,New york, Basic Books,
1987.
Garreau, Joel, Edge City; Life on the New Frontier, New York, Doubleday, 1991.
Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change,
Cambridge, Blackwell, 1990.
Jackson, Kenneth, Sodom on the Hudson, Poverty and Society in New York City, New York, 1993.
Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960.
Mollenkopf, John Hull, Power, Culture and Place: Essays on New York City, New York, 1988.
Plunz, Richard, A History of Housing in New York City, New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1990.
Sassen, Saskia, The Global City, New York, London, Tokyo, Princton Univ. Press, 1991.
Soja, Edward, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory,
London, Verso, 1989.
Professor : Mr. Bouchard
COURSE DESCRIPTION
I. INTRODUCTION
Intuition
It is the intuition as the source of the creative process which lies at the heart of this class.
A well which cannot be explored in a lifetime, the intuition is too often neglected in our
rational world.
During the semester we are going to listen to it, to trust it, to respect it, to let it be free and
above all we are going to not censure it. We are going to learn how to use it.
Pleasure
We are going to be guided by the notion of pleasure- the pleasure of the eye, the pleasure of
the hand. We will lead the eye to send the right message to the hand; the hand as the
extension of the brain.
In order to concentrate we will learn to make a void inside ourselves and to detach. At the
same time our senses should become open like "capteurs."
There are many vehicles of exploration that we can take; drawing will be our vehicle; drawing
will be the pretext or the tool for accessing our intuition and generating a creative process.
Drawing
The drawing for me, from a personal and professional point of view, is a way of knowing
myself, the entrance to the imagination.
There is not only one way of drawing. Each person has his or her own means of expression, his
or her own reality. Drawing can be the basis of two dimensional and three dimensional
research.
This class is an invitation first to begin this research, it is an invitation to develop reflexes,
to invent and discover new tools, your own vocabulary. Secondly, it is an invitation to let
oneself be guided by one's likes and dislikes, one's own desires, emotions, passions, and
obsessions. To let them grow, to understand what they are, trying to tell us and to attempt to
find their origins in oneself. Finally it is to learn how to act upon these impulses.
During the semester we will try different media; pen, pencil, graphite, markers, brushes,
different papers and different techniques of rendering to discover those which are less
constraining, more faithful to express your ideas; those which will give you satisfaction and
pleasure.
Step by step you will limit yourself to textures and materials which best suit your way of
drawing. Beyond the technique, your own universe will emerge.
II. THEMES
Collection
Every week will have its own theme: an idea to be programmed in your "mental computer":
light/ shadow. solid/ void, scale proportion,....
Those themes are the starting point of a personal reflection, the starting point of the
collection of documents and materials: sketches, photographs, photocopies, cuttings from
magazines,etc. They are then discussed and commented on in class and they constitute the
subject of an exercise.
The goal of this process is to learn to look and see. In the beginning it needs and effort but
then it becomes a reflex which will manifest itself even when you are doing something else.
Sites
Every week we will meet at different sites in Paris related to the themes. These could be a
museum for instance: Cluny museum, Picasso Museum, Bordelle Museum, etc. The themes
accumulate and are enriched, fed with the intention that you will continue to build upon these
tools long after your stay in Paris.
Scrapbook
Sixty percent of the grade is based upon a scrapbook. The scrapbook is the materialization of
your intuition. It is a day by day, everyday process. Your collection is structured, composed,
it is the reason after the intuition. The goal of the exercise is to train yourself a simple
discipline: to catch the idea "on the fly". For that you always need to have ready the
equipment to sketch, to photograph, etc.
At the end of the semester, the scrapbook will be bound and will become the beginning of your
"patrimoine creatif", your creative bank, and eventually, in front of a concrete project, you
will find in it the starting point, an idea to rework and develop.
FInal
The final project composes the other forty percent of the class.
"From the city to the teaspoon" A souvenir book.
Back
Forward to faculty info
COURSE DESCRIPTION
I. INTRODUCTION
Intuition
It is the intuition as the source of the creative process which lies at the heart of this class.
A well which cannot be explored in a lifetime, the intuition is too often neglected in our
rational world.
During the semester we are going to listen to it, to trust it, to respect it, to let it be free and
above all we are going to not censure it. We are going to learn how to use it.
Pleasure
We are going to be guided by the notion of pleasure- the pleasure of the eye, the pleasure of
the hand. We will lead the eye to send the right message to the hand; the hand as the
extension of the brain.
In order to concentrate we will learn to make a void inside ourselves and to detach. At the
same time our senses should become open like "capteurs."
There are many vehicles of exploration that we can take; drawing will be our vehicle; drawing
will be the pretext or the tool for accessing our intuition and generating a creative process.
Drawing
The drawing for me, from a personal and professional point of view, is a way of knowing
myself, the entrance to the imagination.
There is not only one way of drawing. Each person has his or her own means of expression, his
or her own reality. Drawing can be the basis of two dimensional and three dimensional
research.
This class is an invitation first to begin this research, it is an invitation to develop reflexes,
to invent and discover new tools, your own vocabulary. Secondly, it is an invitation to let
oneself be guided by one's likes and dislikes, one's own desires, emotions, passions, and
obsessions. To let them grow, to understand what they are, trying to tell us and to attempt to
find their origins in oneself. Finally it is to learn how to act upon these impulses.
During the semester we will try different media; pen, pencil, graphite, markers, brushes,
different papers and different techniques of rendering to discover those which are less
constraining, more faithful to express your ideas; those which will give you satisfaction and
pleasure.
Step by step you will limit yourself to textures and materials which best suit your way of
drawing. Beyond the technique, your own universe will emerge.
II. THEMES
Collection
Every week will have its own theme: an idea to be programmed in your "mental computer":
light/ shadow. solid/ void, scale proportion,....
Those themes are the starting point of a personal reflection, the starting point of the
collection of documents and materials: sketches, photographs, photocopies, cuttings from
magazines,etc. They are then discussed and commented on in class and they constitute the
subject of an exercise.
The goal of this process is to learn to look and see. In the beginning it needs and effort but
then it becomes a reflex which will manifest itself even when you are doing something else.
Sites
Every week we will meet at different sites in Paris related to the themes. These could be a
museum for instance: Cluny museum, Picasso Museum, Bordelle Museum, etc. The themes
accumulate and are enriched, fed with the intention that you will continue to build upon these
tools long after your stay in Paris.
Scrapbook
Sixty percent of the grade is based upon a scrapbook. The scrapbook is the materialization of
your intuition. It is a day by day, everyday process. Your collection is structured, composed,
it is the reason after the intuition. The goal of the exercise is to train yourself a simple
discipline: to catch the idea "on the fly". For that you always need to have ready the
equipment to sketch, to photograph, etc.
At the end of the semester, the scrapbook will be bound and will become the beginning of your
"patrimoine creatif", your creative bank, and eventually, in front of a concrete project, you
will find in it the starting point, an idea to rework and develop.
FInal
The final project composes the other forty percent of the class.
"From the city to the teaspoon" A souvenir book.
Back