The Architectural Imagination

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Posting this as a companion to this article.  If you've already registered for the class, you can use this thread for discussion.  If you've not registered but still have some interest in the subject, this thread should be helpful for you.  I'm planning to upload and share the video's that accompany each lesson.  While it won't give you the full experience or value of the course, it will certainly be better than nothing.

 

 

I'll update this first post with links to each video as they get posted.

 

Part I: Form and History
Module 1: The Architectural Imagination: An Introduction

Lecture 1.1:  Aesthetic Perception

Lecture 1.2: Wittkower's Palladian Diagram

Lecture 1.3: Typology

Lecture 1.4: Perspective

Lecture 1.A: Perspective - A Brief Overview (Supplementary)

Lecture 1.5: The Ideal City

Lecture 1.B: Orthographic Drawings (Supplementary)

 

Module 2: Reading Architecture: Column and Wall

Lecture 2.0: Reading Architecture - Column and Wall

Lecture 2.1: Wittkower's Theory of Architecture

Lecture 2.2: Wittkower and Alberti

Lecture 2.3: Tempio Malatestiano

Lecture 2.4: Santa Maria Novella

Lecture 2.5: San Sebastiano & Sant'Andrea

Module 3: Hegel and Architectural History

Lecture 3.0: Hegel and Architectural History

Lecture 3.1: Hegel's History

Lecture 3.2: Hegel's Spirit

Lecture 3.3: Symbolic Architecture

Lecture 3.4: Romantic Architecture

Lecture 3.5: Classical Architecture

Lecture 3.6: The End of Art

 

Module 4: Aldo Rossi and Typology

Lecture 4.0: Aldo Rossi and Typology

Lecture 4.1: That is Architecture

Lecture 4.2: The Cuneo Movement

Lecture 4.3: The Architectural Type

Lecture 4.4: Anteriority and the Analogous City

 

 

Part II: The Technology Effect
Module 5: The Crystal Palace: Infrastructure and Detail

Module 6: The Dialectics of Glass and Steel

Module 7: Technology Tamed: Le Corbusier’s Machines for Living

 

 

Part III: Representation and Context
Module 8: Drawing Utopia: Visionary Architecture of the 18th Century

Module 9: The Pompidou Center in the City of Paris

Module 10: Presenting the Unrepresentable

 

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Lecture 1.1:  Aesthetic Perception

 

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Harvard Professor K. Michael Hays introduces the concept of the architectural imagination as a faculty that bridges the gap between perception and understanding.

 

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Lecture 1.2: Wittkower's Palladian Diagram 

 

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Lecture 1.3: Typology

 

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Lecture 1.4: Perspective

 

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Lecture 1.A: Perspective - A Brief Overview (Supplementary)

 

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This video provides a general overview of the three major kinds of perspective drawings

 

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Lecture 1.5: The Ideal City

 

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A review of 'The Ideal City' paintings

 

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Lecture 1.B: Orthographic Drawings (Supplementary)

 

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An introduction to Orthographic Drawings: The Plan, The Section, The Elevation

 

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Lecture 2.0: Reading Architecture - Column and Wall

 

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In Module 2 "Reading Architecture: Column and Wall" with Professor Erika Naginski, you will look in more detail at Rudolf Wittkower's practice of a Kant-inspired interpretation of the project of architecture, and how Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism revolutionized our understanding of geometry, modular pattern, and the ways in which diagrams can be used to explain the work of the architect.

 

You will observe how Wittkower traces the development of Leon Battista Alberti's thinking on architecture using four (chronological) commissions: the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and San Sebastiano and Sant'Andrea, both located in Mantua.

 

 

 

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Lecture 2.1: Wittkower's Theory of Architecture

 

 

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Lecture 2.2: Wittkower and Alberti

 

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Lecture 2.3: Tempio Malatestiano

 

 

 

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Lecture 2.4: Santa Maria Novella

 

 

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Lecture 2.5: San Sebastiano & Sant'Andrea

 

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Lecture 3.0: Hegel and Architectural History

 

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How do cultures represent themselves to themselves through their art? In Module 3 "Hegel and Architectural History," you will explore a model for a philosophy of art history as expressed by the German idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The very idea of art as having a history, a progression, comes from Hegel, and you will learn more about his attempt to "gather up all the cultures and all the epochs of art into a single, coherent, unified system... a system wherein art discloses truths about the world by giving those truths appearance"

 

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Lecture 3.1: Hegel's History

 

 

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Lecture 3.2: Hegel's Spirit

 

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Lecture 3.3: Symbolic Architecture

 

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Lecture 3.4: Romantic Architecture

 

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Lecture 3.5: Classical Architecture

 

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Lecture 3.6: The End of Art

 

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Lecture 4.0: Aldo Rossi and Typology

 

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In Module 4 "Aldo Rossi and Typology," our final module in Part I: Form and History, you are given one more example of the architectural imagination at work. The modern Italian architect Aldo Rossi, perhaps, shares Hegel's understanding that architecture is one of the fundamental human postulates of our existence in the world. For Rossi, too, architecture is a central medium of human thought and human memory. However, in Rossi's work, we find the suggestion that architecture's origin is not simply behind us, as Hegel insisted, but that architecture is constantly finding its origin again and again, and that this beginning must constantly be reimagined. The imagination uses historical precedents to create new architectural projects.

 

You will return to the idea of typology, which was briefly introduced with the example of Palladio's villas in Lecture 1.3. You will examine Rossi's particular understanding of this concept of type through two of his projects: the Cemetery at Modena and the Monument to the Italian Partisans at Cuneo, both in Italy.

 

 

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Lecture 4.1: That is Architecture

 

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Lecture 4.2: The Cuneo Movement

 

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Lecture 4.3: The Architectural Type