SDG Detail

Understanding the Built Environment

None

Project description

This course aims to equip students with the basic skills and knowledge needed to analyze the built environment. Through weekly seminars that are paired with practical labs on architectural writing and drawings, class visits to buildings and exhibitions, or meetings with practitioners, it explores a variety of themes from the material design of the building itself to its urban, social, cultural, and historical significance. These themes include how building designs accommodate their uses and users; how they resist physical forces like gravity, wind, earthquake; the potential of traditional and new materials; cultural questions of style and symbolism; contextual relationships to site and surroundings; technological infrastructure in architecture, such as climate control, power, and computation; and buildings as historical objects that change over time. Students practice their skills in an analytic project on a local building or urban site of their choice. This foundational course for the undergraduate Architectural Studies minor program is offered annually, and is open to minors, prospective minors, and other interested students, including graduate students.