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Kent State University Architecture Program College of Architecture and Environmental Design Steven Rugare, Assistant Professor
History of Architecture I
ARCH 10111 Spring 2012 (3 credits)
Description (from the catalog)A survey of the history of architecture from pre-history through the early middle ages in the West and through the early modern period in non-Western lands. This course presents the major architectural traditions and monuments of the Western (i.e. European) tradition up to the middle ages, situating them within a broad, interdisciplinary cultural context. It also includes substantial discussion of Islamic, Asian, African and Pre-Columbian architectural traditions and their principles. Faculty: Steve Rugare I am an Assistant Professor in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design and an Associate of Kent State’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. While I have been teaching history and theory of architecture and urbanism for 20 years, my background is interdisciplinary. I was an undergraduate at Michigan State University with a major in political philosophy and a minor in history. My graduate work at the University of California, Santa Cruz focused on cultural criti- cism, visual culture and political and social thought. In addition to this course, I teach upper level architecture electives and the graduate seminar “Forces that Shape Cities,” and I work with urban design graduate students on their capstone project research. With the CUDC, I edit publications and assist with design competitions, public programs, and other events. Since I divide my time between Kent and Cleveland, I have office hours in both places. My Kent office hours this semester will be from 10:45 to 12:00 noon on Tuesday and Thursday in Taylor 304 (the faculty office suite). I am also generally available before and after class. If you need to reach me at other times with questions about course content, please contact me by email at srugare@kent. edu. Remember that I receive a lot of emails and may not recognize your address. Please include the course number in the subject line and your full name in the body of the message. If you attach a file, be sure to give it an informative name that includes your last name (e.g. smith_paper3). Learning Objectives In this course you will be introduced to the major achievements of world architecture from prehistory to the early medi- eval period (and beyond in some cases), gaining an understanding of the design principles central to these traditions and an appreciation of their significance. More importantly, the course should help you understand how the famous monu- ments of the past served the practical and symbolic needs of the people who made them. The lectures and and readings therefore are geared toward situating monuments within a rich description of the institutional, religious and social con- cerns of their creators. The single most important take-away is for you to develop skills in interpreting evidence carefully and making informed judgements about how individual monuments fit into larger cultural formations. In addition, the lectures, readings, and assignments should help you: Understand how architectural form is dependent on environmental factors such as climate, topography and availabil- ity of materials. Understand how compositional principles and intentions in architecture relate to other arts, particularly painting and sculpture. Understand how forms and ideas developed in one cultural context may be re-interpeted in response to religious and political transformations.
Become aware with the quantitative and geometric principles that underly design traditions. Become familiar with the ways in which historians’ interpretations of topics change over time, due to their own cul- tural and political outlook. Gain limited experience of the process of architectural research and the critical evaluation of research materials. Texts and Learning Resources Required Text: Michael Fazio, Marian Moffett, Lawrence Woodehouse, Buildings Across Time: an Introduction to World Architecture, 3rd edition, McGraw-Hill, 2009. The textbook is available in in the University Bookstore, and we will use it for ARCH 10112 as well as this course. In addition, there are some readings assigned from an electronic edition of the treatise of Vitruvius, the only surviving architectural book from the ancient world. Links to these readings are available on Blackboard Learn. Excerpts from a few other books are listed as optional reading in the semester schedule below. These will either be available through Learn, or they will be on reserve at the Architecture Library. Some of the optional readings develop ideas presented in lectures but not found in the textbook. Blackboard Learn houses other key resources for the course. These include the slides for each lecture, as well as a lecture specific study guide and links to resources on the web and Google Earth. You’ll find more information on how to use these below, and I will refer you to them from time to time during the semester. Survey Course Structure and Process Courses like this one have been taught for decades. Because their goal is to be comprehensive, to show students a little bit of everything time will allow, they tend to ask for lots of basic memorization and only very limited higher order under- standing. Before the last decade, this tendency was reinforced by technology. Images of buildings and artworks resided in slide libraries. Students had to make do with the pictures in the textbook. This gave faculty an incentive to show as many images as possible in the course of a one-hour lecture. We didn’t want the students to miss anything. The underlying technology has changed. Images are easy to find, and getting easier all the time. Our ideas about teaching have changed as well. It seems less important today to expose students to potentially overwhelming amounts of informa- tion, and it seems critically important to help them develop the skills and judgement to find meaning in the infinite body of information that’s available to us all. So this is how the course will work. LECTURES: Given the number of students, we will rely heavily on lectures, but each lecture will focus primarily on one or two key “stories” that provide a conceptual framework for interpreting material relevant to the topic. The goal is to provide you with a model for understanding architectural monuments and their documentation and to help you understand the larger “narrative” of how buildings relate to cultural histories. In addition to these core examples, each lecture will contain information on the broader historical context. TEXTBOOK: For the purposes of this course, the textbook is an excellent reference, a good introduction to the topics and a col- lection of images of the major monuments that we will discuss aon a daily basis. It is therefore a good way to prepare for the lectures. However, the lectures do not repeat the story you can read in the textbook, and you will not get a lot out of the class if you try to replace the lectures with the textbook. (Similarly, the slides from each lecture are posted on Learn for review purposes, but just looking at them is not an adequate replacement for being in class.) LECTURE STUDY GUIDES: For each lecture there is a corresponding file on Blackboard Learn. This page is a guide to the material you should focus on for the both the exams and quizzes (see below). It includes the main “story” (or stories) of the lecture, study ques- tions and any key definitions or concepts listed on the slides. These serve as the basis for questions on the exams. It also includes the data (names, dates, terminology) that you should be able to associate with relevant images from the lecture for slide quizzes. Following these key items that are directly relevant to assessments, you will find background information on the historical conc- text and other issues. Finally, each study guide includes a bibliography of the sources consulted in the development of the lecture.
The graduate assistant will take attendance at the Tuesday Study/Lab sessions, and you will receive credit for attending any of the sessions other than the three that are devoted solely to pre-exam review. This semester, the College of Architecture and Environmental Design will be presenting several very distinguished lectur- ers. Attendance at the lectures in the series is optional, but you will receive a small amount of credit if you attend them and sign in with me. Please note, this is the ONLY way to earn “extra credit” in this course. (Don’t ask for any other extra credit opportunities. I will say “no.”) Grades for all exercises and assessments will be posted on the Grade Book on Blackboard Learn. Please consult this regu- larly, and let me know right away if you see any errors in data entry or calculation. It’s much easier to fix these things sooner rather than later. Midterms grades will be posted on the Grade Book for all students in the middle of October. Grades will be calculated on the following basis: Exam One 12% Exam Two 14% Exam Three 16% Term Paper 26% Each Quiz 4% Attendance Study/Lab Sessions 8% (if you attend 4 of 11) Course Schedule Readings from Buildings Across Time are referenced as “Textbook.”
Part 1 - Prehistory, the Ancient Near East, Egypt
Monday, January 9 - Course Introduction and Methodology/Interpreting Buildings and Cultures Reading: Textbook, pp. 1-7. Wednesday, January 11 - The Historiography of the Prehistoric Reading: Textbook, pp. 8-14. Monday, January 16 - No Class, MLK Day Tuesday, January 17 - Study/Lab: Review of Course Structure and Drawing Conventions Wednesday, January 18 - Determinants of Urban Patterns and Built Form in the River Valley Civilizations Reading: Textbook, pp. 14-18, 20-22. Monday, January 23 - Form and Symbolism in Ancient Egypt Reading: Textbook, pp. 23-33. Tuesday, January 24 - Study/Lab: Egyptian
Part 2 - Greece through Alexander
Wednesday, January 25 - Imperial Transactions: New Kingdom Egypt, the Bronze Age Agaean and the Questionable Origins of “The Greeks” Reading: Textbook, pp. 35-44. Optional Reading: Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought, pp. 38-68 (online). Slide Quiz One Monday, January 30 - The Greek Sense of Order and its Meaning Reading: Textbook, pp. 44-47. Optional Reading: J. J. Coulton, Ancient Greek Architects at Work, pp. 51-96 (online).
Tuesday, January 31 - Study/Lab: The Greek orders Wednesday, February 1 – Greek Aesthetic and Planning Principles in Comparison Reading: Textbook, pp. 19-20, pp. 58, pp. 105-107. Monday, February 6 - Periclean Athens and the Acropolis/Review for First Exam Reading: Textbook, pp. 47-54; Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, excerpts (online). Optional Reading: Michael Jameson, “Private Space and the Greek City;” (online). Tuesday, February 7 - Study/Lab: Exam One preparation Wednesday, February 8 - Exam One
Part 3 - Cosmopolitan Antiquity, Hellenistic and Roman
Monday, February 13 - Architecture and Planning as Imperial Instruments: Hellenism and the Rise of Rome Reading: Textbook, pp. 54-58, 59-61, 107-11. Slide Quiz Two Tuesday, February 14 - Study/Lab: Roman construction Wednesday, February 15 - The Typological Approach to Roman Architecture (and Some Reasons to Move Beyond It) Reading: Textbook, pp. 111-131; Vitruvius, Book VI of Ten Books on Architecture (online). Monday, February 20 - The Environment of Patronage: Houses in Pompeii/Augustus and the City of Rome Optional Reading: Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, excerpts from Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Tuesday, February 21 - Study/Lab: Roman Design Principles Wednesday, February 22 - Establishing the Imperial Style: from Augustus to Hadrian Monday, February 27 - From Hadrian to the Beginnings of Late Antiquity Optional Reading: H. P. L’Orange, Art Forms and Civic Life in the Late Roman Empire, pp. 3-33 (online). Tuesday, February 28 - Study/Lab: Basilicas Wednesday, February 29 - Late Antiquity and the Christian Empire Reading: Textbook, pp. 133-143. Slide Quiz Three Monday, March 5 - Byzantine Architecture and its Influence Reading: Textbook, pp. 143-151. Tuesday, March 6 - Study/Lab: Exam Two preparation Wednesday, March 7 - Exam Two
Part 4 - Non-Western Traditions Before Colonization
Monday, March 12 - Islamic architecture: Founding Principles and Cultural Adaptations Textbook, pp. 153-157, 170-171. Slide Quiz Four Tuesday, March 13 - Study/Lab: mosque design
their equal access to course content. If you have a documented disability and require accommodations, please contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester to make arrangements for necessary classroom adjustments. Please note, you must first verify your eligibility for these through Student Accessibility Services (contact 330-672-3391 or visit www.kent. edu/sas or www.registrars.kent.edu/disability/ for more information on registration procedures). Student Performance Criteria Adressed (as defined by the National Architectural Accrediting Board) A.1. Communication Skills: Ability to read, write, speak and listen effectively. A.5. Investigative Skills: Ability to gather, assess, record, apply, and comparatively evaluate relevant information within architectural coursework and design processes. A. 8. Ordering Systems Skills: Understanding of the fundamentals of both natural and formal ordering systems and the capacity of each to inform two- and three-dimensional design. A. 9. Historical Traditions and Global Culture: Understanding of parallel and divergent canons and traditions of architec- ture, landscape and urban design including examples of indigenous, vernacular, local, regional, national settings from the Eastern, Western, Northern, and Southern hemispheres in terms of their climatic, ecological, technological, socioeconom- ic, public health, and cultural factors. A. 10. Cultural Diversity: Understanding of the diverse needs, values, behavioral norms, physical abilities, and social and spatial patterns that characterize different cultures and individuals and the implication of this diversity on the societal roles and responsibilities of architects. C.9. Community and Social Responsibility: Understanding of the architect’s responsibility to work in the public interest, to respect historic resources, and to improve the quality of life for local and global neighbors.
