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SYLLABUS Professor Howard Davis Architecture 434/534 Course Title:Vernacular Building Week 1 Tuesday. Introduction: basic ideas of vernacular
building and building cultures Thursday. Application of basic concepts to
"primitive" building traditions; approaches to form and function in
vernacular building. Type: configuration, meaning, and function. • Paul Oliver, Dwellings, pp. 128-152, "Living spaces." University of Texas Press, 1987 • Henri Lefebvre, "The everyday and everydayness," in Steven Harris and Deborah Berke, eds. The Architecture of the Everyday. Princeton Architectural Press, 1997, pp. 32-36 • Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form. chapters 4 & 5, pp. 46-70, Harvard University Press, 1967. • Roxana Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in Southeast Asia, chapter 5, "Cosmologies" • Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order, Book1: chapter 3, "The theory of centers," and chapter 11, "The awakening of space" Week 2 Tuesday. Courtyard
buildings of the Mediterranean I (type and structure) Thursday. Courtyard buildings of the Mediterranean II
(urban formation and variation). Collective form and the idea of process. • Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order,Book 2: Chapter 2 "Structure-preserving transformations" and Chapter 3 "Structure-preserving transformations in traditional Society" • Jamel Akbar, Crisis in the Built Environment: The Case of the Muslim City. Chapter 6, "Elements of the traditional built environment." Concept Media, 1988, pp. 107-128. · Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, A Street in Marrakech, pp. 129-152. Anchor Books. Week 3 Section time to be determined.
DISCUSSION 1:
Collective process and the vernacular Thursday. India and Nepal:
traditional villages and cities. • Robert I. Levy, Mesocosm: Hinduism and the Organization of a Traditional Newar City in Nepal, University of California press, 1990, chapter 7, "The symbolic organization of space," pp. 149-199. Week 4 Tuesday. Greece. The variety of Greek traditions; northern
Greece hybrids. Thursday. The urban vernacular of Venice, Florence and
Rome. • Ron Walkey, "Order from experience, order from rule: the building guilds versus neo-classicism in 19th century Greece." unpublished ms. • Richard Goy, Venetian Vernacular Architecture: Traditional Housing in the Venetian Lagoon. Chapter 8, "The city palazzo-fontego: its structure and appearance" Week 5 Tuesday. MIDTERM EXAM Thursday. Wood traditions of eastern Europe and
Scandinavia; the merchant's house of northern and eastern Europe • Jerri Holan, "Log detailing," in Norwegian Wood. N.Y., Rizzoli, 1990, pp. 147-175 · Christian Norberg-Schulz, "The domestic," in Nightlands, MIT Press, 1996, pp. 49-72. • Philippe Contamine, "The peasant house" and "The urban house" in Georges Duby, ed., A History of Private Life: Revelations of the Medieval World. Harvard U.P., 1988 Week 6 Tuesday. Wood traditions of Japan: farmhouses and
shophouses Thursday. England and New England: villages and village
buildings • Susan B. Hanley, Everyday Things in Premodern Japan. University of California Press, 1997. Chapter 2, "Housing and furnishings," pp. 25-50, and chapter 3, "A resource-efficient culture," pp. 51-76. • Kenneth Frampton and Kunio Kudo, Japanese Building Practice from Ancient
Times to the Meiji Period. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1997. Chapter 1,
"Typology, cosmology and construction methods," pp. 1-44. · Thomas Hubka, "The Buildings and the Land," in Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn, University Press of New England. • Carl R. Lounsbury,
"The wild melody of steam: the mechanization of the manufacture of
building materials, 1850-1890." In Catherine W. Bishir, Charlotte V.
Brown, Carl R. Lounsbury and Ernest H. Wood III, Architects and Builders in North Carolina: A History of the Practice
of Building. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1990. Week 7 Tuesday. 18th and 19th century London, and the development
of modern building practice Thursday. DISCUSSION II: The role of construction. • George Sturt, The Wheelwright's Shop, chapter on "General work," Cambridge U.P. 1963. • "Eighteenth century building conditions in and around London," in Linda Clarke, Building Capitalism, London and NY : Routledge, 1992, pp. 87-121 • Howard Davis, The Culture of Building, chapter 8, "Agreements, contracts and control" Week 8 Tuesday. Form and process in the contemporary city. Thursday. New ideas about vernacular process: contemporary projects
in housing and settlements in developing countries. Initiatives in the Middle
East, South and Southeast Asia, South Africa, Latin America. ·
Howard Davis, The
Culture of Building, chapter 10, "Shaping buildings and
cities", pp. 219-240 · Howard Davis, The Culture of Building, chapter 11, "Postindustrial craftsmanship," pp. 245-268 · Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order, volume 3, A Vision of a Living World, to be determined. Week 9 Tuesday. New
ideas about vernacular process: contemporary projects in housing and
settlements in the developed world. Initiatives in Europe and North America. Thursday.
DISCUSSION: the role of the architect in the development of vernacular
building. Readings:· Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity, University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. 125-156, "Emerging complexity" · Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software, Scribner, 2001. Chapter 2, "Street level," pp. 73-100; and Chapter 3, "The pattern match," pp. 101-129. |