THE ART AND SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENA

Spring 2003
Instructor: Michael Benedikt
School of Architecture

Buildings modulate light, color, sound, and the movements of things in subtle ways. They affect what we can know when. They help us remember and predict events. They are also events in themselves: objects that reward esthetic as well as scientific attention as we live in and around them, as time passes, as the light changes…

This course might be described as an “action seminar” based a set of investigations of “architectural phenomena”—that is, of the many subtle things that buildings do to enhance our lives.

The instructor will introduce two or three new phenomena at each class session. (Yes, he has a long list). Each phenomenon (the way doors close, the way fluorescents illuminate, the way smell travels…) will be discussed poetically and scientifically—as art and as engineering, as a factor in (or result of) human evolution, and especially as an opportunity for innovative design.

As the semester progresses, students will be asked to look further into the phenomenon that interests them most, and, using the readings as one resource and individual research as another, to report at the next session. 'Mid-term' papers will consist of those reports brought to some level of completeness.

During the second half of the semester lectures by the instructor and reports from students will continue, but the emphasis will shift from theory to the development and design of individual Projects: i.e., on-site installations that focus on one of the phenomena discussed. Each student will be asked to realize and document his or her Project as a public event. Completed, these actions will constitute the course's "final paper." A modest amount of grant money will be available to subsidize the purchase of materials and equipment.

This course is open to graduate students in architecture or fine art. Upper division undergraduates may be admitted with the instructors' permission.

Readings (sections of): Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, J. J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, M. G. F. Minnaert, The Nature Light and Color in the Open Air