Engineering > Architecture > Drawings & Numbers: Five Centuries of Digital Desi

Drawings & Numbers: Five Centuries of Digital Desi posted by duggu on 12/1/2007

Add To Favorites

Courseware/Lectures

Test/Tutorials

Course Highlights

This course features student transcriptions of all the lectures from the class in the lecture notes section, and a diverse bibliography of materials on the subject in the readings section.

Course Description

The aim of this course is to highlight some technical aspects of the classical tradition in architecture that have so far received only sporadic attention. It is well known that quantification has always been an essential component of classical design: proportional systems in particular have been keenly investigated. But the actual technical tools whereby quantitative precision was conceived, represented, transmitted, and implemented in pre-modern architecture remain mostly unexplored. By showing that a dialectical relationship between architectural theory and data-processing technologies was as crucial in the past as it is today, this course hopes to promote a more historically aware understanding of the current computer-induced transformations in architectural design.

Syllabus

Course Overview

Although most of the course will focus on things past, or actually early-modern (meaning: the 15th and the 16th centuries), the discussion will emphasize some striking analogies between past and present, and the historical continuities to be found in the development of today's tools of quantification in architectural design. The main protagonists in these stories are the alphabet, drawings, numbers, image-making technologies, printed images, the rise of numeracy as an instrument for building, the parallel decline of geometry, and the conflict (in some cases, still open) between design through continuous quantities (geometry) and design through discrete entities (numbers). The assignment for the course, aside from regular attendance and participation in discussion, is a presentation and paper on the historical or practical relation between design and quantification.

Central to the course are the instructor's presentations, which in some cases will refer to existing literature, in some cases not. Consequently, it was decided that a group of students, on a voluntary and iterative basis, would take notes during each class, and that these notes, revised by the instructor, would be circulated. These abstracts serve as the lecture notes for the course, appended with a final commentary by the instructor.

Calendar

SES #	TOPICS
1-2	Introduction: Drawings, Numbers, and the Power of (Printed) Images
3-4	The Primacy of the Word: Vitruvius and the Mystery of his Missing Images
5-6	Alberti and the (Untrustworthy) Power of Man-made Images
7-8	Alberti's Improbable Image-making Technologies
9-10	Discussion of Final Presentation Topics
11-12	Image-making Technologies, Architecture, and Identical Replication
13-14	On Some Semi-automatic Machines for the Drawing of the Architectural Orders Oddly Invented in the Seventeenth Century
15-16	Final Lecture Final Presentations

Readings

Bibliography

Alberti, Leon Battista. "Cahiers d'Humanisme et Renaissance." In Descriptio Urbis Romae. Vol. 56. Edition critique, traduction et commentaire par Martine Furno et Mario Carpo. Geneva: Droz, 2000.

Benjamin, Walter. L'oeuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction mécanisée, 1936. Reprinted in Écrits français. Edited by J - M Monnoyer. Paris: Gallimard, 1991, pp. 117-192. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechnical Reproduction." In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Translated by Harry Zohn. Edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. ISBN: 0805202412.

Carpo, Mario. Architecture in the Age of Printing: Orality, Writing, Typography, and Printed Images in the History of Architectural Theory. Cambridge, MA, and London, England: The MIT Press, 2001. ISBN: 0262032880.

———. "How do You Imitate a Building That You Have Never Seen? Printed Images, Ancient Models, and Handmade Drawings in Renaissance Architectural Theory." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 64, no. 2 (2001): 223-234.

———. "Drawing with Numbers: Geometry and Numeracy in Early-Modern Architectural Design." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 62, no. 4 (2003): 448-469.

Crosby, Alfred W. The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Ivins, William, Jr. Prints and Visual Communication. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. Reprint, The MIT Press, 1992.

Koyré, Alexandre. "Du monde de l''à peu près' à l'univers de la précision." Critique 28 (1948). Reprinted in Cahiers des Annales. Etudes d'histoire de la pensée philosophique. Vol. 19. Paris: A. Colin, 1961, pp. 311-329. ISBN: 2070712788.

Krautheimer, Richard. "Introduction to an 'Iconography of Medieval Architecture." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes V (1942): 1-33. Reprinted in Studies in Early Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance Art. New York: New York University Press, 1969, pp. 115-150. ISBN: 1221775309.

Lotz, Wolfgang. "Sull'unità di misura nei disegni di architettura del Cinquecento." Bollettino del Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio 21 (1979): 223-33.

Smith, David Eugene. History of Mathematics. Vol. 2. Boston and New York: Ginn and Co., 1925. Reprinted in: Special Topics of Elementary Mathematics. New York: Dover, 1958.

Stafford, Barbara Maria, and Frances Terpak. Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2001.

Thoenes, Christof. "Il modello ligneo per San Pietro ed il metodo progettuale di Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane." Annali di Architettura, Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio 9 (1997): 186-199.

———. "Zur Frage des Massstabs in Architekturzeichnungen der Renaissance." In Studien zur Künstlerzeichnung. Edited by Stefan Kummer and Georg Satzinger. Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje Verlag, 1990, pp. 38-55. ISBN: 3775703063.