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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| Glenn Murcutt | Joel Corazon | Krista Farmer | Alyson Silva | Sam Spaniak | ||
| Pugh, Scarpa | Emma Caldwell | Asher Durham | Michelle Hook | Stephen Pettis | Corine Snyder | |
| Enrique Norten | Edwin Cantor | William Kenney | Luis Rubio | Alvaro Santos | Gustavo Santos | |
| Herzog de Meuron | Vanessa Flebbe | Gabrielle Guillen | Sara Vecchione | Lauren Wells | ||
| Snohetta | Angel Almanzares | Wes Davis | Juan Diaz | Stephen Hernandez | Mike Riebesell | |
| MAD | George Carter | Jared Lambright | Josh Macbeth | Joseph Smarrelli | Logan To | |
| Diller, Scofidio + Renfro | Zachary Talbott | Lincoln Antonio | Emily Pollman | Sam Sidersky | Chris Yanes | |
| Waro Kishi | Andres Camacho | Miguel Cardona | Elizabeth Morales | Bre Rouse | Augie Sklar | |
| Mendes de Rocha | Brendan Fagan | Rachel Flanagan | Esteban Giraldo | Jennifer Johnson | Jeff Olson | |
| James Turrell | Xhulio Binjaku | John Breske | Erin Lee | Zach Wignall | Alison Zuccaro | |
| Sean Godsell | Alexis Hyman | Laura Rodriquez | Katelyn Smith | Marissa Volk | Alyssa White | |
| Bolles + Wilson | Dominic Dijamco | Trevor Halcomb | Lam Nguyen | Liping Rahman | Carlos Rodriguez | |
| Sauerbruch Hutton | Thania Trujillo | Sophia Cain | Bernard Dioguardi | Patricia Lanzas | Jessica Philips | |
| SCDA | Priyanka Argarwal | Adrian Aranda | Quang Nguyen | Sarah Schwartz | Taylor Tofal | |
| Wiel Arets | Cameron Buck | John Fetchel | Stefan Hansen | Nicholas Johnson | Amanda Rutherford | |
| Morphosis | Yenylyn Araque | Ignacio Bruni | Chao Cao | Adriana Lovera | Jenny Molina | |
| MVRDV | Katie Feller | Jiho Choi | Kayla Ford | Zachary Slagle | Matthew Livingston | |
| FOA | Ross Harrington | Jerry Hong | Kalob Morris | Nick Warnet | Lin Wright | Others... | Sherry Wang | Margaret Wise | Lina Ortiz |