Course Syllabus

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING AND PRESERVATION

Design Seminar A4427-1/ Fall 2022 / Wednesdays 9-11am in 408 Avery

Steven Holl & Dimitra Tsachrelia

ARCHITECTURE APROPOS ART

 

An application submission is necessary in order to be considered for this seminar. The application deadline is Monday September 5, 2022 by 10 am. 

In 100 -150 words please reflect on one of the quotes below and choose one image to illustrate your text.

"We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us". Winston Churchill

“To create, one must first question everything”. Eileen Gray

Please email your application to dt2236@columbia.edu as a single page pdf attachment with your name and uni at the top of the page. The number of students attending will be limited to 12. Selected applicants will be informed prior to first class on Wednesday, September 7, at 9:00am.

Students not registered or accepted to the class are still welcome to listen-in, with non-graded attendance.

The late Arthur Danto’s book What Art Is summarizes a lifetime of this great philosopher’s reflections on visual art.  He wrote “Ontology is the study of what it means to be something. But knowing whether something is art belongs to epistemology — the theory of knowledge.”

‘The End of Painting’ predicted by many at the center of the movement of conceptual art in the 1960’s and 1970’s was perhaps the last gasp of a ‘grand narrative’ for art of our time. The development of painting continues today in strong works by Brice Marden, Gary Stephan, and Susan Francon, to name a few. Likewise, sculpture has developed new territory in the works of Carol Bove, Olafur Eliasson, and Oscar Tauzon; while video art and performance art grow from their own dimensions.  In terms of growth, the blurry territory between art and architecture is particularly exciting today.

At the seminar historic examples and recent built museums and art schools will be presented by Steven Holl in very deep detail.

Our cultural epoch has proven the art museum as a new center of metropolitan life. Museums have become social condensers as well as institutions of real educational force. Educational programs are central to our new extension of the Mumbai City Museum, situated in the center of the largest city in India. In a country where 300 million people live on less than one dollar per day, education is an urgent transforming force.

Today there are basically three types of new art museums. (1) Expressionistic, where the architecture overpowers the art, (2) White box, where the endless so-called neutral galleries draw the life out of the art  (such as the new MoMA), (3) A third type where there is spatial energy via the architecture which excites and draws one through gallery spaces of fine proportions and light foregrounding the art.

 We have tried for particular and unique developments in this third type. First in the Kiasma Museum at the center of Helsinki (opened 1998) and the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City (opened 2001), the Sifang museum in Nanjing (opened 2012) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2020).

Art Schools today are increasingly considering that the architecture of the school itself, its inspiring proportions and space, can be a catalyst for programs of educational excellence.  In our School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa (1999), and our second Iowa Visual Arts Building (2016) or the Franklin and Marshal Art Building (2020), the movement through spaces of interaction, the materials, light, and proportions of the architecture all have the capacity to contribute to the inspiration of the artworks.

It is with inspired dedication that we are fortunate to develop architecture from ideas as art. As Kant said “Partly because they at least strive for something, which lies beyond the bounds of experience…”

 

This Seminar is in two sections:

Part I Examines Architecture for Art schools and museums designed by Steven Holl, critical discussion and other activities, such viewing the Documentary 'Body in Space' by M. Blackwood. 

Part II focuses on Art’s relation to Architecture in the works of Architects of the 21^st century. Each student chooses and architect to make a study.

Each student is required to discuss their progress, make a 20 minute illustrated analytical presentation to the entire class as well as present at the final review to invited jury. 

Architect list; choose one:

Eileen Gray (1878-1976) E-1027 Roquebrune-Cap-Martin l furniture

Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) Arkitektons l suprematism

Le Corbusier (1887-1965) works l sculpture

Lyubov Popova (1889-1924) Paintings and Textile designs

Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978) Cemetery for Brionvega l glass art

Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) Ibirapuera Park, Sao Paolo, Brasillia l furniture

Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) paintings and landscape

Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) SESC Pompeia, Casa de Vidro l furniture l jewelry 

Aldo Rossi (1931-1997) Modena Cemetery l paintings

Thom Mayne (b 1944) sculpture l architecture

Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) early projects to 1999 l paintings

David Adjaye (b 1966) sculpture l furniture l architecture

 

Suggested Reading list

(Main research of each student is on the architect/artist work assigned)

1)         Merleau-Ponty. The Visible and the Invisible, 1969

2)         Govan, Michael. Inner Light: The radical reality of James Turrell, art. 2013

3)         Taylor, Mark. Seeing Silence. University of Chicago Press, 2020

4)         Danto C. Arthur. What Art Is. Yale University Press; 1 edition, 2014

5)         Lucy R Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object, 1972

6)         Barbaralee Diamonstein. Collaboration: Artists and Architects. The Architectural League 1983

7)         Hal Foster. Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes), 2011

8)         Philip, Jodidio. Architecture:Art, Munich Presel Verlag, 2005.

9)         Holl, Steven. Parallax, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.

10)       Holl, Steven. Scale, Lars Miller, 2011.

11)       Safont‐tria, Jordi; Kwinter, Sanford; Holl, Steven. Color, Light, Time. Lars Müller, 2012.

12)       Aalto, Alvar: Synopsis: painting Architecture Sculpture, Birkhauser, 1980

 

Final Review

Wednesday November 30th, 2022 with invited guest critics