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Representation of the Eternal City

Architecture has often been compared to a game of chess: each piece has a designated move and each board is identical, however, no match is ever the same. Similarly, you have begun to define your pieces and their movement on the site. It is now time for you to add another level of complexity to continue the game. You are asked to develop an architectural project from the translation. Your project should grow in complexity through the addition of programmed spaces, the recognition of structural and mechanical systems. The project will also include tactics of representation. As we know architects rarely, if ever, make buildings. We do, however, make drawings. Builders and contractors then translate such drawings, models, and text into built form. Ideally, though rarely ever, is this translation automatic, from one system (drawing) to another (building). Even if translation is automatic the meaning of such communication is still open to interpretation. The communication of meaning through built form (always ripe for misunderstanding) is always open for interpretation by inhabitants, neighbors, critics, historians, tourists, and others. As such, students will be asked to make architectural representations that are not intended to be further interpreted as built work, but is architectural in and of itself. Requirements: As appropriate.

Assigned: 28 October 2010
Due: 15 December

Visit: Veneto

Readings: Frascari, Marco. “The tell-the-tale-detail.” Via 7. (1984): 22-37. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Apologia for the Art of Healing.”

The Enigma of Health: The Art of Healing in a Scientific Age. Tr. Jason Geiger & Nick Walker. (Stanford: Stanford UPress, 1996)

Heidegger, Martin. “Question Concerning Technology” Question ConcerningTechnology and Other Essays. Tr. William Lovitt. Harper and Row, 1977. Leatherbarrow, David. “Breathing Walls.” and “Unscripted Performances.”

Architecture Otherwise. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. Pérez-Gómez, Alberto. “Coda” Architectural Representation beyond the Perspective Hinge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.

Pérez-Gómez, Alberto. “Introduction.” Architecture and the Crisis of ModernScience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983.