ARC 560 and 696 ADVANCED DESIGN

The design studio will use the idea of PROJECTIONS as its organizing principle. Rather than working on discreet design exercises in different cities, we will work with each of you to produce a portfolio of projections that document your experiences in a way that will best contribute to your continuing evolution as a designer. You will be expected to develop ways to translate the impressions and inspirations from the places that you visit into design ideas. We ask that you not use drawings to record the way things look - your camera is a far better tool for capturing visual information. Your drawings should study ideas, impressions, and inspirations, and each one should be considered part of the work that will become your design portfolio.

Every day of the semester you should view the world through a designer's eyes. Whether you are following an assigned itinerary or wandering about on your own, you should be looking for places or things that are inspirational or otherwise meaningful to you. We hope that you will experiment with ways to record these experiences as notes, gestural drawings, diagrams, graphic notations or analytical studies. Then, either at the site or later on, you should project these musings into design ideas. You may wish to invent a hypothetical design exercise that can be used to coordinate your portfolio of projections, but, for this semester, the translation from inspiration to form is more important to us than the synthesis of form.

The following is offered as a way to begin your portfolio and is not meant as a limit on the procedures or formats that we expect each of you to explore.

Choose a portfolio size that will be easy to carry but large enough to hold good sized drawings without folding them; about 12"x18" or 14"x17". Think of each piece of paper as the field on which you can record musings and projections inspired by a place or thing. Label each sheet with the date and location. The paper can be cut, pasted, Xeroxed, collaged, laminated, computer scanned, modeled . . . any procedure that will help you find new ways to translate inspiration to form.

You may wish to translate your impressions of the place directly into design ideas or you may fill the page with musings that suggest very small or subtle projections. Some experiences will compel you to complete your study on the spot while others will need the filter of time and memory to produce meaningful design possibilities. Your observations need not project themselves into similar scales or types of designs. The crossing of mass and void, plan and section, whole and part, immense and minute, light and dark . . . may be experiments that energize your projections.

We expect that an active designer will discover many meaningful experiences every day. Not all of these experiences will develop into useful projections but the purpose of your drawing activity should be to discover design ideas. If you begin an average of two studies per day you will finish the semester with over 120 projections in your portfolio. Although each should be special to you, we ask that you select about 5 of them to expand and submit, ready for exhibition, as your design project for the semester. The instructors will schedule periodic meetings, individually or in groups, to discuss your work during the course of our travels, and each instructor will provide you with a performance evaluation. Your final grade will be determined by the quality of the musings and projections in your design portfolio, due on the first day of class in Spring '06.

ARC 368R and 388R ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY

This course is designed to take advantage of the unique opportunity to observe, study, and be inspired by those places in Europe visited by the program. You will develop a basic familiarity with the rich fabric of the past; the buildings, public spaces, gardens, furnishings, artifacts, and art of several countries. But more importantly, you will develop an understanding of the cultural contexts of those creations as they have evolved over time.

For the History of Architecture course each student is expected to develop a portfolio of notes and illustrations (photos, sketches, brochures, texts, etc.), devoted to a question or small area of inquiry that they decide on after conferring with the teachers. These notes and illustrations will form the basis of a 10 to 12 page, illustrated and annotated History Paper, due on the first day of class in Spring '06. In this paper you should explore topics, themes, and questions that describe crossings in your experience of the history of the several countries visited. Grades for the course will be based as follows: 20% for annotations in sketchbooks and slide collections, and 80% for the History Paper.

You are encouraged to spend time this summer researching the architecture and history of the countries on our itinerary. Advance study of the countries will enrich your experience and better prepare you to successfully complete all of the course requirements.

ARC 479 and 389 VISUAL COMMUNICATION

The Visual Communication course will use the camera as the primary tool for design exploration. Since we expect you to resist the temptation to sit and draw buildings and places, you will be encouraged to record visual information with your camera.

In addition to the artful documentation of architectural, urban, interior, and other design creations, you should use photographs (preferably slides) to illuminate that which is difficult to see with the naked eye. One way that you can do this is to use the frame of the camera to bracket your subject. Although some of you will find various photographic gadgets helpful in your experiments, one need not make a major investment to produce great photographs. Familiarity with your tools, a little thinking ahead, and sensitivity to existing conditions will be the keys to most of your best pictures.

The evaluation and grading for Visual Communication will be based partly on your contribution to the program exhibition in Spring '06 (30%), partly on the work in your sketch books (30%) and partly on your 40 - 50 best photographs (40%). These photos should be organized, annotated and submitted on the first day of class in Spring '06.