Case Studies in Urban Architecture Gretchen Wilkins Urban Architecture Laboratory Wednesdays 2:30-5:30pm, B45, C RMIT Architecture, Semester 1, 2013 ARCH 1440-41 or ARCH 1338-39-40
Facade studies for the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles. (Studioworks: Mary-Ann Ray and Robert Mangurian)
“The city is to be understood here as architecture. By architecture I mean not only the visible image of the city and the sum of its different architectures, but architecture as construction, the construction of the city over time. Architecture...is a permanent, universal, and necessary artifact.” -Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City “The Poverty of much urbanist thought can be reduced to a central fallacy: that the city, or Metropolis, expresses itself fully in its physical form, that as a finite concrete object alone its amenable to analysis and intervention. The city, however, is not this, but rather a perpetually organizing field of forces in movement...” -Sanford Kwinter, Mutations
DESCRIPTION: This course will study contemporary relationships between architecture and urbanism through a series of individually-structured case studies. The focus is twofold: to expose ideas, practices and outcomes of contemporary architectural and urban work, and to develop a specific response to that work through independent design research. A series of given themes will frame the first portion of the course and instigate research proposals in the second part, presented in class and through required readings and project reviews. Each case will identify a subject and project of interest (or choose from those given) and document a its conceptual, operational, and spatial intentions. This will provide a framework for a speculative project and/or practice proposal, the two presented together in the final work. In addition to weekly readings and on-going research, two formal presentations and a final publication will be required. This course is open to Bachelor or Masters students, and could work to establish a framework for Architecture Major Project studio.