ARCHHTC 102G Modern Architecture and Urbanism

Schedule
Schedule A: Music, Art and Contemporary Society

Semester
Semester Two

Campus
City Campus

Note: Does not satisfy the General Education requirement for Bachelor of Architectural Studies (BAS).

This course examines the cultural contexts that shaped the development of architecture, urban design, landscape and the environment during the twentieth century.

Emphasis is placed on the historical developments that influenced changes in style and the theoretical contexts that shaped attitudes towards inhabitation, social organisation, national identity, and cultural self-expression, amongst other things.

The purpose of this course is to help you understand:

• Key theories and design principles that have informed architecture and urbanism in the Modern Period from the mid-19th century to the present time.
• How to use this knowledge as a basis for contemporary criticism.
• The role and place of architecture and urbanism as a part of the broader cultural manifestations of the Modern Period.

The course is offered to students from a variety of backgrounds and interests. No previous knowledge or skill is required other that an interest and enthusiasm for architecture and urbanism.

After successfully completing this course, you should be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of key theories and design principles that underpin the architecture and urbanism of the modern period, including New Zealand examples.
2. Offer an informed description and critique of architecture and urbanism of the period studied.
3. Study architecture and urbanism at higher levels.
4. Structure written arguments and critiques about architecture and urbanism that draws on the theories and design principles studied.

• Antecedents to Modernism
• Architecture and the Industrial Revolution
• A ‘Battle of Styles’
• News from Nowhere
• The City and the Industrial Revolution
• The Problem of Ornament
• News from the Prairie
• Design for the Machine
• Mechanisation and the City
• The Abstraction of Design
• Towards a New Architecture: Le Corbusier
• Clearly Constructed: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
• The Diffusion of Modernism
• The Modern City
• Return to the Vernacular
• New Historicism: Louis Kahn
• New Brutalism: Questions about Modernism
• Modern Japanese Architecture
• The Place of the Organic
• Critical Regionalism
• Looking for the Local
• Post-Industrial Visions
• Rejecting Modernism
• Postmodernism
• Deconstruction
• Postcolonism: New Directions
• Contemporary Practice

Lectures
3 hours per week.

Tutorials / site visits
1 hour per week.

To be advised.

• 40% assignment
• 60% examination

Text book (recommended)
William J. R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900. 1st ed. 1982. London: Phaidon, 1996 (3rd edition).
And/or
Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: a critical history. 1st ed. 1980. London: Thames & Hudson, 1992 or 2007 (3rd or 4th editions).