Course Syllabus
Graphic Architecture Project III
Graphic Narratives
Columbia GSAPP Fall 2022
Design Seminar: A4726
Instructor: Christopher Kupski
Course Overview
Think back to your last studio design review. How much were you able to truly capture the jury’s imagination in the same way your initial ideas captured yours? The design review is theater. A campfire story.
At the core of architectural pedagogy, students are asked to skillfully synthesize their ideas into coherent concepts that explore both the ongoing discourse within the discipline, as well as broader concerns within our culture at large. This work must then be communicated in some way through oratory and graphic representation. A compelling architectural project can live or die through the way it is shaped and its medium of communication.
In its most recent rhetorical incarnations, “storytelling” has been overplayed and commodified into pure marketing speak, but not without reason: we all have an innate understanding of the power of a good story. This course aims to present and arm you with the tools of narrative. While you will be learning the basic tenets of narrative theory, this is not a history class. You will be learning by observing, discussing and critiquing work in and around the disciplines of the visual arts, most prominently through film, to understand that the process of framing your work is an act of design itself.
You will also be learning by making. Each student will be tasked with creating a series of short films throughout the semester and testing a diverse set of narrative structures to organize your ideas. Though each student will be developing and presenting their own individual work, this will be a highly collaborative course where you and your peers will also be charged with developing prompts for one another – rules, obstacles, content – intended to take you out of your typical mode of production and push into new territories of storytelling. By the end of the course the direct connection as to how we talk about our architectural and design projects will become evident and, in turn, new means by which to think and communicate effectively and coherently about your work.
We will also be exploring recent sensibilities of plot and narrative. What threads are finding their way across design disciplines and how do these narratives speak to our particular time? This tendency, sensibility, to oscillate between different modes of thinking that doesn’t presuppose that there is an ultimate grand narrative or dogma that will solve all design, political and ethical concerns in contemporary society.
Course Structure
- Lectures
Each week your instructor will be giving a lecture that defines and expands on the theme of that week. Presentation slides will be posted on the Coursework page.
- Reading + Film Assignment + Class Presentation
Each week there will be a reading and film assignment. All students should be prepared to engage in a class discussion having read and viewed the assignments. In class, two students will lead a discussion informed by that week’s assignment. These discussions should be framed by a lecture presentation that itself has a narrative structure [sign-ups for 1 film and 1 reading at some point in the semester through Coursework]. Presentations should be supported by at least 10 slides, clips, or excerpts and explore some, or all, of the following questions/statements:
- Who is the author (or creator) and what is their significance?
- What are the themes and ideas explored?
- How does the form support the conceptual ideas explored?
- What is the argument?
- How does the work relate to the broader body of work of the creator?
- Is the work successful? Why or why not?
- How does the work connect to the broader ideas under consideration?
- You may not read your presentation, though note cards are acceptable. After your presentation be prepared to take questions from the class and consider critique of your presentation.
- FOCUS ON DEEP THEMATIC ISSUES AND DO NOT SUMMARIZE OR REITERATE MATERIAL WE HAVE JUST READ OR WATCHED.
- Studies
Each week, students will come to class prepared with a completed short film study assigned during the previous class. All studies will be reviewed and discussed in class. Following discussion of the studies, each student will assign a prompt to an assigned partner to guide their study for the following week. All studies will be in video format [1920p x 1080p].
Requirements
Video camera and/or smart phone with photo and video capabilities.
Access to and some knowledge of video editing software.
Willingness to have your ideas and work manipulated and reimagined by your peers.
Attendance
3 tardy arrivals equals 1 unexcused absence
3 unexcused absences equals a failing grading
Assessment
20% Attendance and class participation
20% 2 Student lectures
40% Weekly studies
20% Final study
10 Studies
- AUTOBIOGRAPHY [60 seconds]
Write a script and film yourself describing a particular day in your life, as a microcosm of a broader life story. Think about the most compelling way to tell this story: the order, the tone of voice, the implied narrative, the tense, etc. You are free to edit and narrate your film however you see fit to tell the story.
Prompt: draft an impactful rule that your partner must adhere to in remaking their study for next week’s class. Are there changes in perspective, tone or the order in which the narrative is told?
- PROGRAM [90 seconds]
Remake your first film, but you must adhere to the given prompt from your partner. How did this change the understanding of your film? Did it become an obstacle to the narrative you were trying to tell or did it open up new possibilities?
Prompt: with your partner, amass content – drawings, photos, videos, sound, music, text – that will be used to tell the story of one of these 6 projects (one group per project).
- Castelvecchio, Carlo Scarpa
- Danish Maritime Museum, BIG
- Kolumba Museum, Peter Zumthor
- Mole House, David Adjaye
- Ningbo Museum, Wang Shu
- SESC Pompeia, Lina Bo Bardi
- CONTEXT [90 seconds]
Using only content you and your partner have gathered, create a narrative around your chosen project. How should the story and experience of moving through its spaces be told? Are there elements to the story that reveal themselves through the storytelling? Elements of conflict and resolution? Fictionalized elements that mythologize the work or tell an entirely different story through the setting of this particular place and time?
Prompt: bring 5 objects to this week’s class to loan to your partner. Write a brief narrative for only yourself that describes the relationship, and a potential narrative, between the objects.
- SEAM [60 seconds]
Assemble and create a film narrative around the 5 objects given to you by your partner. When taken together these objects should tell a story that may be implied by your partner’s careful selection. Consider how each object modifies the other, how sequence is important, the relative size, color, and materiality, etc. For discussion in class, how does your narrative end up relating to the one your partner wrote out for themselves?
Prompt: choose a sequence of easily accessible real world spaces for your partner to interpret and express through narrative for next week’s study.
- PROCESSION [90 seconds]
Film on location within or along the spaces defined by your partner to create a narrative where the sequence, tone and overall experience of the spaces play a critical role in the narrative development of your film.
Prompt: no prompt this week, but take note of the next study as it relates to your upcoming studio midterm review.
- MIDTERM DOCUMENTARY [90 seconds]
Create an entirely first-person account of your studio midterm review. How is the event documented? Is the actual event recorded, is it a reenactment, is it told through a parallel experience? If you never appear in front of the camera, how can you imply your presence?
Prompt: give your partner a series of questions to begin a conversation that also has a hypothetical resolution.
- DIALOGUE [90 seconds]
Document a 90-second conversation between two people. Initiate the conversation through your partner’s questions. This conversation can be between two other people, you and another person, or you in dialogue with yourself. Do not feel constricted by the initial question so as to see where it leads, but you must conclude with your partner’s hypothetical resolution to the conversation. How can you tell a dialogic story and how does the way you shoot and edit the dialogue alter our understanding of the dynamic between the parties?
Prompt: no prompt this week, but begin researching and collecting found footage for next week’s study.
- OSCILLATION [90 seconds]
Using only found footage, video clips, and still images, assemble a video expanding on the initial film study from this semester. You can decide if this is personal, political, etc., but this time you cannot use any additional voice-over, text, or original footage. Everything must be re-purposed from elsewhere. How does collage change the meaning of individual elements and force them into narratives?
Prompt: interview/film your partner describing their ideas and process for their upcoming studio final. You may ask for any content – videos, photos, drawings, models – that will help to illuminate these points.
- BIOGRAPHY [90 seconds]
Using the drawings, models, sketches, etc., provided to you by your partner, create a bio describing the studio project they are developing and their personal relationship with the project. How can you use process materials to describe an architectural project? How can you subvert the typical architectural narrative and tools of communication to arrive at a provocative story that would be difficult through another method?
Prompt: no prompt this week.
- FINAL DOCUMENTARY [5 min]
Using all the material we have generated over the course of the semester, compose a 5 minute documentary of the semester. You can use any means you desire.
Class Schedule
1 Sep 7 INTRO TO NARRATIVE
2 Sep 14 A. AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Reading: Benjamin, Walter. The Storyteller
Film: Maddin, Guy. My Winnipeg (2007) + Vertov, Dziga. Man w the Movie Camera (1929)
3 Sep 21 B. PROGRAM
Reading: Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design & Intention in Narrative (Ch1 secI+II)
Film: Trier, Lars von / Leth, Jørgen. The Five Obstructions (2003)
4 Sep 28 C. CONTEXT
Reading: Rock, Michael. Fuck Content + Koolhaas, Rem (OMA). Junkspace (2001)
Film: Kaufman, Charlie. Synecdoche, New York (2008)
5 Oct 5 D. SEAM
Reading: Murch, Walter. In the Blink of an Eye (pp. 1-72) + Vassallo, Jesus. Seamless
Film: Reggio, Godfrey. Koyaanisqatsi (1982) + Herndon, Holly / Taniguchi, Akihiko. Chorus + Kentridge, William, Automatic Writing (2008)
6 Oct 12 E. PROCESSION
Reading: Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture Concepts: Red Is Not a Color (pp. 39-79) + Goodman, Nelson. Twisted Tales
Film: Tati, Jacques. Mon Oncle (1958) + Gondry, Michel. Cibo Matto, Sugar Water (1996)
7 Oct 19 NO CLASS: Midterm studio review
8 Oct 26 F. MIDTERM DOCUMENTARY
Reading: Botton, Alain de. How Proust Can Change Your Life (Ch 3)
Film: Morris, Errol. The Thin Blue Line
9 Nov 2 G. DIALOGUE
Reading: WAI Think Tank. Narrative Architecture Manifesto + Un-Making Architecture
Film: Trier, Joachim, The Worst Person in the World (2021)
10 Nov 9 H. OSCILLATION
Reading: Vermeulen & Akker. Notes on Metamodernism (2010)
Film: How to with John Wilson (S1 E6) (2020) + Fielder, Nathan. The Rehearsal (S1E1)
11 Nov 16 I. BIOGRAPHY
Reading: Ingles, Bjarke. Yes Is More + Understanding Comics; The Invisible Art (Ch 1-4)
Film: Lord & Miller, Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse (2018)
12 Nov 23 NO CLASS: Thanksgiving
13 Nov 30 WORK IN PROGRESS REVIEW
14 Dec 7 NO CLASS: Final studio review / Desk crit sign-up
15 Dec 14 J. FINAL DOCUMENTARY
Course Summary:
| Date | Details | Due |
|---|---|---|