Architecture

This class, geared towards first year students, deals with general and holistic fundamentals about the variety of interior architecture and built environments for understanding and creating spaces. This course aims to encourage freshmen students growing multidisciplinary perspectives, theories, and practical knowledge necessary to design spaces, and to promote creative and analytic approaches for further works. Course topics include organizing thoughts for space, making a close observation of the spatial environment we live in, understanding what space is and how it is organized, widening our view of the spatial environment we are experiencing, empowering the ability of analyzing the spaces, understanding the creative design process, experiencing the actual construction process, and forming philosophical grounds to create a good space. The is an introductory lecture for learning residential environment and interior architecture and provides the foundation for further university study.

Taught by numerous site visits to historic buildings alongside lectures and seminars, this course introduces students to the study of architecture by exploring buildings in the London area from the start of the 17th century to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. During the course, students witness London burn to the ground, be comprehensively rebuilt, and then expand from a small European capital into the largest city in the world. Along the way, students encounter a wide variety of buildings including cathedrals, palaces, churches, synagogues, breweries, shops, and hospitals. Students  acquire skills in looking at, reading, and understanding buildings and become adept at using them as historical evidence. Students also learn how to relate architecture to its social, political, and intellectual context, and develop insights into the ways that buildings may carry and convey meaning, whether to an expert or to a more general audience. No prior knowledge of architecture or architectural history is required to undertake the course.

This course introduces the rationale for, and process of, the emergence and growth of Singapore's built environment from a third world country to a world class city. It enables students to have an understanding and appreciation of the economic and social aspects and implications of how properties and infrastructure are developed and managed, given the constraints that Singapore faces. It also encourages them to develop alternative views on how the built environment can help Singapore continue to prosper and remain relevant in the region.