Transformation of Architectural Ideas

This course emphasizes a formalist approach to reading architectural works, drawing on the work of historians such as Johann Winckelmann and Heinrich Wölfflin. Architectural history is, in fact, the history of the transformation and redefinition of forms or types; forms that are produced in one culture and undergo transformation during their transfer to another culture and with the increasing complexity of building programs. The course focuses on fundamental concepts (shape and space, solid and void, parti, typology, historical examples, and transformation) in the first three sessions, and on the examination of the transformation of ideas in the civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome in the final three sessions.