ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 3: 5x5x5: Retrospective sketching as design communication
The architect's napkin sketch is both iconic and romantic. It is not surprising that Rem Koolhaas includes such sketches in his official archives and publications (e.g. SMLXL); and one of the most famous is Alvar Aalto's dinner napkin sketch for the Church of the Holy Spirit in Wolfsburg (Aalto wrote famously, "God made paper to draw architecture on it.") In the context of this course, it is also a mode for rethinking design communication and analysis. Paralleling and emerging from the subject matter of the group presentations, this exercise asks students to delve retrospectively into a recent architectural project - in a sense, to simulate the earliest stages of schematic design and architect-client interaction. The napkin will serve as a fixed, but also serialized, medium to document a process of excavating ideas and concepts associated with a particular project. Ultimately, through a historical lens of precedent, it asks us to review how we draw, why we sketch, where inspiration resides, and what constitutes design communication. This exercise complements the group work of the presentations with an intensive, individual rumination on a contemporary architectural design project. The sketches and writing serve to visualize, make immediate, and even personalize the "historical"understanding of a particular architect's (or architectural firm's) place within contemporary practice and a historical context. Revisiting a project's core ideas interrogates not only an architectural work's foundation but also its possible directions. In a sense, these five diagrams "rewrite" (or more precisely, "redraw") possible historical trajectories, bringing this course's content into contact with a broader field of practice and design process.
| ARCHITECTS | STUDENTS | |
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| Glen Murcutt | Amanda Byars | Andy L'Esperance | Myengsoo Seo | Danielle Surbaugh | Alex Whitney | |
| MVRDV | Marut Angsuratanawech | Calvin DiNicolo | Adrian Orion | Lauren Shepard | ||
| Sancho Madridejos | Rebecca Gawron | Sarah Glass | Corina Ocanto | Elia Margari | Collin Cobia | |
| Diller, Scofidio + Renfro | Cardidad Caceres | Miguel Castaneda | Elena Clarke | Haley Kiernan | Rachael Stitzel | |
| James Turrell | Johnathon Fidalgo | Steven Jones | Alex Schmidt | Bobby Smith | Thomas Dearborn | |
| Toshiko Mori | Jennifer Danison | Alejandro Gonzalez-Machain | Matt Mark | Luis Ramirez | Brad Stark | |
| MAD | Lauren Day | Jonathon Jimenez | Katie Knotts | Bethany Mayhew | Matthew Vetterick | |
| Snohetta | Kevin DiNardo | Mike Jung | Shane Lamay | Stanley Liu | Sam Miller | |
| Pugh + Scarpa | Rachel Cloyd | Rebekkah Houde | Jessica Klink | Brittany Sosa | Evan vander Ploea | |
| LTL | Dylan Belfield | Abigail Figaro | Casey Forman | Asha Llewellyn | Olga Lantah | |
| SANAA | Elizabeth Cronin | Dijana Milenov | Tracey Weismann | Bobbie Behm | ||
| Allied Works | Christian Camacho | Don David | Martin Fernandez | Sasha Leon | Steven Patchell | |
| Morphosis | Tessira Crawford | Dany Izquierdo | Dung Nguyen | Kaisha Rose | Jordan Alejandro | |
| Gigon + Guyer | Olivia Alfonso | Greg Byerley | Samantha Saloman | Afagh Zadeh | Nick Swank | |
| FOA | Kaylee Delhagen | Felipe Hernandez | Gary Joseph | Mahmoud Mihanyar | Amy Stewart | |
| Wiel Arets | Jessica Kurowski | Juan Rojas-Bustos | Joseph Wallace | Devyn Bernal | Dante Bruno | |
| Herzog + de Mueron | Clarissa Antioquia | Melissa Jones | Adam Mahardy | Sean Sutherland | Richard Walker | |
| RCR Arquitectes | Carmen Chan | Mitchell Clarke | Alexander Fasshauer | Irma Hernandez | Mariela Hernandez | |
| Bolles & Wilson | Tiffany Luu | Tim Petersen | Will Pujals | Carlos Saca | Blake Spruill | |
| SCDA | Alex Thomas | Jake Welter | Jennifer Natareno | Gabriella Quadri | Bobby Richardson | |
| Stéphane Beel | Emiko Asifor-Tuoyo | David Astbury | Rafael Valim | Krassen Guerguiev | Thien Huynh | |