Architectural History courses

AHST 1010 History of Architecture I-Survey
History of Architecture I-Survey
A critical introduction to the history of architecture and urbanism. This course provides a chronological and comparative introduction to the cultural, aesthetic, technological and socio-political dimensions of architecture as investigated through the evolution of buildings and cities, from the ancient settlements of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, to the globalized metropolises of today. Individual works of architecture and their creators are emphasized in order to examine the roles that buildings play in shaping human interactions and the ways in which they record human cultural aspirations and achievements.
credit hours: 3
History of Architecture I-Survey

AHST 1100 History of Architecture I-Survey
History of Architecture I-Survey
A critical introduction to the history of architecture and urbanism. This course provides a chronological and comparative introduction to the cultural, aesthetic, technological and socio-political dimensions of architecture as investigated through the evolution of buildings and cities, from the ancient settlements of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, to the globalized metropolises of today. Individual works of architecture and their creators are emphasized in order to examine the roles that buildings play in shaping human interactions and the ways in which they record human cultural aspirations and achievements.
credit hours: 3
History of Architecture I-Survey

AHST 3010 History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism I
History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism I
Discover the foundation and evolution of architectural tradition in this survey course, starting with prehistoric developments in Europe and continuing through the medieval period. This course is global in focus, including both Western and non-Western developments. The survey highlights a variety of aspects of the built environment such as architecture, urban settlements and landscapes. Coursework investigates monumental civic architecture, religious structures, as well as domestic buildings, the urban form, and architectural theory.
credit hours: 3
History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism I

AHST 3020 History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism II
History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism II
The course covers the period from the Enlightenment through the early-Modern and high-Modern periods. While the course will emphasize the late-eighteenth (Enlightenment) creation of canonical pedagogies and strategies as foundational texts, it will also include nineteenth-century urbanism and landscapes, both of which condition the formation of material culture in the early- and mid-twentieth centuries. The course is written expressly for students of architecture; we will concentrate not only on the identification and formation of urban artifacts, buildings, architects, and movements, but also on the social, political, and historical context surrounding their genesis and development. The course material is presented according to successive themes, thereby facilitating not only an emphasis on the artifacts and their context, but also on the discourse that supports architecture as a discipline. These themes provide insight into the various motivations and ideas, upon which the history of Modern Architecture rests. In presenting the material in this manner, it is hoped that students will understand that history--in particular the history embedded in the material of architecture--indeed resonates through time, becoming relevant and vital to the genesis and formation of current and future architectural discourse.
credit hours: 3
History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism II

AHST 3300 Islamic Architecture
Islamic Architecture
The seminar examines architecture and urbanism in Muslim lands, emphasizing the 7th to the 16th centuries. Selected building types – the mosque, the palace, the tomb, and the garden - will be analyzed in detail in the context of regional traditions in, for example, Iran, Turkey, Spain, and India. The course also will investigate issues in the relationship between architecture and ornament, and between tradition and modernity.
credit hours: 3
Islamic Architecture

AHST 3410 American Urbanism
American Urbanism
An examination of the ideas behind the forms of American cities in the 21st century. Introductory lectures outline aspects of American city planning history. Students present two illustrated lectures to the class on a topic chosen with the instructor.
credit hours: 3
American Urbanism

AHST 4100 Issues in Contemporary Architecture
Issues in Contemporary Architecture
This course will trace and examine some of the most critical bodies of theory that have influenced the development of contemporary architectural thought and practice since the late 1960s. These ideas and theoretical systems emerging from disciplines external to architecture, form a larger interdisciplinary field, within which architecture is situated and against which its practices gain a certain coherence and cultural validity, while also providing external material for the inventive transformation of architectural knowledge and practices.
credit hours: 3
Issues in Contemporary Architecture

AHST 4110 Theorizing the Real in Contemporary Practice
Theorizing the Real in Contemporary Practice
The course focuses upon selected works of three noted and influential contemporary practices - Koolhaas, Machado and Silvetti, Moneo, and in particular on the way that each understands the idea of the real as a guiding and originary idea in architecture. Significantly, each of the three practices operates cross-culturally, drawing attention to the frictions among ideas of regionalism and global culture, universal modernity and local tectonics. Equally significantly, 161 these practices are recognized for their theoretical writing as well as for their projects, enabling comparative analysis within the practice itself.
credit hours: 3
Theorizing the Real in Contemporary Practice

AHST 4120 Theory and Anti-theory in Contemporary Practice
Theory and Anti-theory in Contemporary Practice
The relationship of theory and practice shapes architectural production. The course focuses on interfaces between theories of architecture proposed this century from within the profession by practitioners and those proposed from without by philosophers, artists, poets, filmmakers, and scientists, among others. One of the goals of the course will be to examine the interconnected roles that theory and practice play in establishing architecture as a critical cultural activity.
credit hours: 3
Theory and Anti-theory in Contemporary Practice

AHST 4400 Philosophy of Architecture
Philosophy of Architecture
This seminar begins with a consideration of philosophy as a foundation for the development of an architectural theory. After a discussion of some basic concepts and terms we sketch a broad outline of the categories and organization of the discipline of philosophy. We then study the rationalist and empiricist positions in architectural theory, the emergence of Kantian critical philosophy, the shift in emphasis in 20th century philosophy from epistemology to ontology that is characteristic of Existentialism, and the late 20th century attack on traditional epistemology characteristic of poststructuralism. We then discuss the emergence of literary theory as a paradigmatic discipline in the last 30 years as well as the expansion of western philosophy to include aspects of Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and eastern mystical traditions. With this foundation, the course focuses more specifically on theories of architecture and aesthetics and their relationships to various philosophical positions.
credit hours: 3
Philosophy of Architecture

AHST 4500 Northern Romanticism in Art and Architecture
Northern Romanticism in Art and Architecture
This seminar studies issues associated with the Romantic spirit as they are experienced in contemporary art and architecture. Conditions such as the mystical underpinnings of romanticism, nature and the sublime, the intuitive, religion and the spirit, the definition of artist/architect, the longing for death, the meaning of feelings, utopias, paradise lost (and found) and the object of art are treated as fundamental aspects of modernity and the modern mind.
credit hours: 3
Northern Romanticism in Art and Architecture

AHST 4530 Survey of Russian Art
Survey of Russian Art
An introduction to the art and architecture of Russia from the 12th century to the present. The first part of the course deals with the medieval period (church architecture, icons, frescos); the second part begins with the assimilation of Western European styles during the 17th century and concludes with a survey of developments in the Soviet Union.
credit hours: 3
Survey of Russian Art

AHST 4630 Sexual Subjectivity and Space
Sexual Subjectivity and Space
This seminar focuses on the relationship between sexual subjectivity and the construction of space. The outlining of potential intersections between contemporary feminist thought and architectural practice, this course critically examines the presumed sex/gender neutrality of architectural ideology and representation while simultaneously investigating formation of a critical, transformative and affirmative feminist space. (cross registered with Women Studies)
credit hours: 3
Sexual Subjectivity and Space

AHST 6300 Representing Culture and Ethnicity in the Public Sphere
Representing Culture and Ethnicity in the Public Sphere
What is public space? How is culture and ethnicity represented in the city? This seminar will explore ideas and forms of public space and public life in the city in their manifestations - civic, social, religious, formal and informal, official and unofficial, licit and illicit - primarily, but not exclusively in the United States and Latin America. The seminar also focuses on ephemeral architecture and events (i.e. world's fairs, parades, protests, monuments and public art), which have been essential in constructing ideas about citizenship and community, and which have been employed to communicate the existence of culturally- and ethnically-based publics. The aim is to present a better understanding of the physical landscape of the public city, the particular ways that spaces foster inclusion and exclusion in urban public life, and, conversely, how various ideas of the public shape urban space. The readings for the course include historical and theoretical works on the idea of the public, and works of architecture, art and planning, and they are drawn from a wide range of disciplines, including architecture, urban studies, art, social history, anthropology, material culture studies, geography and cultural criticism.
credit hours: 3
Representing Culture and Ethnicity in the Public Sphere

AHST 6310 Housing in the 20th Century
Housing in the 20th Century
This course is an introduction to the physical and theoretical issues surrounding the creation of multi-family housing during the 20th century. The course is a seminar following the chronological sequence of development in housing ideas throughout the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. Concepts in housing are discussed academically and then experiments in implementation are perused and discussed. These experiments are offered as short exercises throughout the course and form part of the basis of evaluation.
credit hours: 3
Housing in the 20th Century

AHST 6320 Other Modernisms: The Avant-Garde in The Tropics
Other Modernisms: The Avant-Garde in The Tropics
This seminar is an introduction to the field of Latin American modern architecture and will introduce students to projects that range from newly constructed cities like Brasilia to avant-garde experimental projects like Mathias Georitz's El Eco in Mexico City. Focusing on various themes (nationalism, internationalism, tropicalism, utopianism, etc.), the seminar introduces key terms and examples in the built environment. Latin American modern architecture presents alternative examples - other modernisms - to the mainstream modern projects of the United States and Europe. The notion of the avant-garde in the tropics suggests a critique of how the tropics has often been treated as a synechdoche, as a representation of all of Latin America. A critical reconsideration of the tropics will occur as we study modern Latin American architecture's specific thematic currents.
credit hours: 3
Other Modernisms: The Avant-Garde in The Tropics

AHST 6400 Rethinking Anthropomorphism: Body Maps + Architectural Spaces
Rethinking Anthropomorphism: Body Maps + Architectural Spaces
This seminar focuses on the constitutive and mutually defining relations between the human body and architecture and the shifting theoretical frame that has governed the development of their relations. From the Vitruvian body to Le Corbusier's Modular Man and technologically machined ergonomic bodies of modern architecture, there has always existed a coordination between variant cultural and theoretical constructions of the body and changing spatial and architectural models. Although the emphasis of this seminar will be on more recent conceptions of the body-architecture relation - how we understand, represent and inhabit the body and hence, how we conceptualize, construct and inhabit space - it will also provide a historical/theoretical context, against which these newer models might be investigated and developed.
credit hours: 0
Rethinking Anthropomorphism: Body Maps + Architectural Spaces

AHST 6610 History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism I
History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism I
Discover the foundation and evolution of architectural tradition in this survey course, starting with prehistoric developments in Europe and continuing through the medieval period. This course is global in focus, including both Western and non-Western developments. The survey highlights a variety of aspects of the built environment such as architecture, urban settlements and landscapes. Coursework investigates monumental civic architecture, religious structures, as well as domestic buildings, the urban form, and architectural theory.
credit hours: 3
History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism I

AHST 6620 History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism II
History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism II
The course covers the period from the Enlightenment through the early-Modern and high-Modern periods. While the course will emphasize the late-eighteenth (Enlightenment) creation of canonical pedagogies and strategies as foundational texts, it will also include nineteenth-century urbanism and landscapes, both of which condition the formation of material culture in the early- and mid-twentieth centuries. The course is written expressly for students of architecture; we will concentrate not only on the identification and formation of urban artifacts, buildings, architects, and movements, but also on the social, political, and historical context surrounding their genesis and development. The course material is presented according to successive themes, thereby facilitating not only an emphasis on the artifacts and their context, but also on the discourse that supports architecture as a discipline. These themes provide insight into the various motivations and ideas, upon which the history of Modern Architecture rests. In presenting the material in this manner, it is hoped that students will understand that history--in particular the history embedded in the material of architecture--indeed resonates through time, becoming relevant and vital to the genesis and formation of current and future architectural discourse.
credit hours: 3
History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism II

AHST 6910 Latin American Cities
Latin American Cities
A study of the development of the major cities of Latin America and particularly on the role that architecture and urbanism played in creating images of colonial power and, later, urban modernity. Emphasizes selected Latin American cities that have experienced significant immigration after 1880 and in which questions of cultural identity have loomed large: Havana, Mexico City, Montevideo, Santiago de Chile, Lima, San Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires.
credit hours: 3
Latin American Cities