COURSE DESCRIPTION FOR THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2019-2020
Jacob van Ruisdal (Dutch,1628/9-82) Bleaching ground in the countryside near Haarlem, 1670-75
Ferdinand Hodler (Swiss, 1853-1918), Lake Geneva from Chexbres, 1904
Between dream and reality, an aesthetic experience of daily life…
The ambition of the design studio will focus on a series of open-ended questions surrounding the “design of space” and “the setting in space of ideas” within the discipline of architecture. As both individuals and as a collective group, we will explore how ideas, concepts, and themes can help conceive architectural spaces and places. Most importantly, we will focus on how to give them physicality, which has been one of the most important ways to legitimize our role as leaders within the built environment.
During this year, we will study the discipline of architecture as a process that involves an acute sense of creativity both at the intuitive and rational levels of design. Hence, the education of an architect will be framed as part of a larger series of questions surrounding concepts pertaining to history and theory, abstract and real context, structure and construction, art and urbanism. From these, key design strategies can be extracted, understood and redirected toward the creation of your own work.
Your second-year design experience constitutes the basis for introducing the fundamentals of architecture, a journey that will balance tradition and innovation, theory and pragmatics, design and construction. Four suggested design projects and a number of punctual charrettes will test your creative energy. The overall topic of this year will be framed through the prompts of rural and urban domesticity: Fall 2019: the design of an ex-libris (brand), the Wayne Thiebaud project, (art) case study analysis project (precedence), and the wall house project (design); Spring 2010: an urban loft renovation (urban design); and a contemporary café/restaurant (campus design) will be the programmatic-functional vehicles to test ideas over this year.
The broader intention of this lab is not only to fulfill a series of curricular requirements but most importantly to pursue an architecture in search of poetry and spatial delight. Second year visual archives are to be found under atelierdehahn.com/Academics
Learning objectives
By the end of the academic year, students will have acquired the following:
- Awareness of the potential of an architecture in search of poetry, differentiating building from architecture;
- Understanding what constitutes an idea, a concept, a partie, and a design strategy;
- Ability to distinguish between what appears to be real and its representation, what is essential and what is exceptional;
- Ability to attribute to a project a clear set of theoretical premises and defined strategies;
- Understanding the filiation of the five basics 20thcentury spatial configurations of architecture,
- And an appreciation that research leads to the coherence and authenticity of any design project –YOUR project in particular.