Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Course Outline
Principles
- Cultural Context: Technology exists within a cultural context. Therefore, contemporary building technology derives from a rich historical and cultural evolution of technique and form that augments the ability to design intelligently.
- Holistic Building: Understanding individual building components and the details necessitates understanding the guiding architectural intentions, performance requirements, process of manufacture and assembly, and systematic organization of various building assemblies.
- Invention: Architectural invention is the medium for the determination of form at all scales and permeates the physical architectural result. The making of details is not a deterministic process that seeks to optimize a singular solution. Be careful of optimization. "Il n'y a pas de detail dans la construction"
Scope of Course
- History and Theory of Building Systems and Architectural Components
- Statics of Architectural Structures
- Structural Morphology
- Basic structural elements and force systems
- Equilibrium equations
- Material behavior
- Building Systems
- Performance requirements
- Identification and specification of elements
- Sustainable Strategies
- Best practice
- Resource efficiency
- Materials: New and Old
- Systems Integration
Values to Instill
- Possibility of Invention: both for engineers and architects
- Craft of New and Old Technologies: good practice and new processes
- Critical View of Product-Driven Design
Intended Results
- Familiarity with requirements of architectural assemblies
- Understanding of broad range of "good" solutions
- Understanding of contemporary issues in the design of architectural assemblies
- Understanding of design process
- Understanding of construction process
- Identification of opportunities for "invention"
- The initiation of a career-long study of the expressive potential inherent in the solution of technical assembly and construction situations
- Development of strategies for collaboration between disciplines