Architecture

Rome has played a pivotal role in the construction of a global scale culture. It first contributed to unifying the ancient world system as the capital of an empire. Then, in the early modern period (parallel to the age of explorations and colonialism), it became a laboratory for interactions between the local and the global. This course focuses on these interactions roughly between 1550 and 1750, the so-called Counter Reformation and Baroque Age.  Although this is mainly an on-site art history course, each art work, building, or urban plan is studied as a document to understand broader concepts related to geography, politics, religion, science, and philosophy. To assess the value of early modern art and architecture students develop multidisciplinary skills to investigate the multilayered meanings of objects, buildings, and urbanism. Focusing first on Caravaggio, then on the rivalry between Bernini and Borromini, and finally on the Renovatio Urbis (the new avenues connecting the main churches of the city), this course simultaneously explores the micro and the macro context of every commission. From the private fashioning of papal families (Borghese, Barberini, Pamphili, and Chigi) to the impression of orbialization (the concept that pervades the papal blessing addressed to the city and to the world), the city promised to be a topographical space of universal salvation. From the different approaches to art and architecture by Bernini and Borromini (theatrical and philosophical respectively) to the impact of the interreligious encounters of the new religious orders, Rome appeared as the laboratory of a globalization actualized in tandem with the colonial powers of Portugal, France, and Spain. The Spanish Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus in 1540 in Rome, shifted the religious discourse toward the universal good setting the program for a possible global society. The Jesuit system with their missionary and educational activities throughout the world was the most important institution for “interactions”. No wonder that in the 17th century, the Roman main educational institutions (Studium Urbis, Collegio Romano, Propaganda Fide) focused on the study of languages and the publication of dictionaries and grammar books. The impact of the Jesuit father Athanasius Kircher over 17th century Rome is as polyhedric as his writings. Kircher created one of the biggest cabinets of curiosities (wunderkammer) of Europe. His collection of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiques, embalmed animals, botanical rarities, scientific instruments, and a myriad of objects coming from China, India, Mexico, etc. was referred to as theatrum mundi (the theatre of the world), a metaphoric representation of the culture of the early modern city. By the end of the 17th century, Rome simultaneously assumed the connotations of new Jerusalem, Athens, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Babel mirroring the world as if in a theatre of memory and geography while other cities in different continents took the name of Rome of the East or Rome of the West through a religious and architectural response. The visual arts reveal the global resonance of Rome but also the presence of different ethnic groups in the city. The Eternal City was, undoubtedly, one of the loci where the subjective dimension of globalization originated.  

This course provides an understanding of what the space is. We experience spaces either created or developed by various relationships between people and their surroundings. This course covers the various relationships formed by environmental elements, such as building structure formed space as well as human beings. Beside this main concept, students have to find the method to express its inter-relationships for using graphic and rendering techniques clearly. This course focuses on practical sketch, drawing and color rendering techniques to express ideas.

Faraway and everyday landscape typologies shape human inhabitations, as well as cosmogonies, cosmologies, myths, and folklore of different cultures. These spaces are sometimes the place of conquests, other times the place of retreat; sometimes regarded with fear, other times with fascination. The same landscape typologies can be the archetypical images of inhabitation, and the archetypical images of abandonment. This course unfolds some of the meanings of landscape through the lenses of abandonment and inhabitation, shedding light over the pertinence of some concepts in particular historical periods and the cause of their oblivion in others, for example, concepts of nature and environment; wilderness and sublime; or landscape urbanism, social urbanism, or informal urbanism.

 

This course examines the centrality of transport infrastructure considerations within strategic and statutory texts. The ongoing pipeline of major transport infrastructure projects in Australian cities offer an excellent lens through which to consider the increasingly integrative role planners play in key city shaping activities which have social, economic and environmental as much as mobility outcomes.

This course gives an overview of the development of public and private architecture in Berlin during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Following an introduction to the urban development and architectural history of the Modern era, the Neo-Classical period is surveyed with special reference to the works of Schinkel. This is followed by classes on architecture of the German Reich after 1871, which was characterized by both modern and conservative tendencies and the manifold activities during the time of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s such as the Housing Revolution. The architecture of the Nazi period is examined, followed by the developments in East and West Berlin after the Second World War. The course concludes with a detailed review of the city's more recent and current architectural profiles, including an analysis of the conflicts concerning the re-design of Berlin after the Cold War and the German reunification. Seven walking tours to historically significant buildings and sites are included (Unter den Linden, Gendarmenmarkt, Potsdam, Chancellory, Potsdamer Platz, Holocaust Memorial, etc.). The course offers a deeper understanding of the interdependence of Berlin's architecture and the city's social and political structures. It considers Berlin as a model for the highways and by-ways of a European capital in modern times.

This course examines the architecture of East Asia from prehistory to the early modern period. In addition to monumental buildings such as temples and palaces, the examples range from urban planning and garden design to peasant dwellings and nomadic structures. A number of architectural traditions are covered, including Bhutanese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur. Among the socio-cultural factors that have shaped East Asia’s built environments, it looks at Buddhism and the literati as influences traversing geopolitical borders, as well as vernacular development of structural systems, spatial geometries, and material utilization based on the land, climate, and other natural conditions.

This course introduces Greek art and architecture in the period 2500-50 BC. In the context of abroad chronological survey, the focus is on three main themes: the relationship between Greek art and society; addressing current problems in Greek art history, reception of Greek art and contemporary society; and extensive training in visual analysis and the different lenses to look at Greek art. Through images, videos, and 3D models, but also through museum visits to the British Museum, students engage in detailed and in-depth object analyses and discussions.

Architectural art is the epitome and crystallization of society, history, science and technology, ideology, and culture. Through in-depth reading of brilliant classic architectural works, we travel the history, stroll through time and space, wander through thoughts, and explore the aesthetic height of vision and spirit. At the same time, students are guided to grasp the aesthetic methods of architectural space art, learn to appreciate the unique artistic style and cultural connotation of architecture in different periods, and further explore the internal mechanism and regularity of architectural beauty. Cultivate a comprehensive vision, as well as learn from one another, independent aesthetic analysis ability.

Architectural art is different from painting, sculpture and other art categories. It not only involves external modeling issues, but more importantly lies in the artistic quality and cultural value of the internal space defined by the shape. Space is the protagonist of architecture, and understanding inner and outside space is a key issue in understanding architecture. This course is mainly based on the perspective of the space of architectures to think about and evaluate architecture, and to select classic cases, history and history in connection with the era background, political economy, ideology, science and technology, space concepts, artistic trends, aesthetic styles, etc. of the different stages of Western social development; then to form a general understanding, with both the span of historical time and space and the breadth of architectural types.