Architecture's Appearance and The Practices of

Imagination
K. Michael Hays

1.
The power to create images would be a good partial definition of
architecture's competence, if the performance of that power is understood to
be a disclosure of truths about the world by giving appearance to them. This
disclosure should not be understood in a straightforward representational
sense, even less so in a propositional one. Architecture is not a language.
Rather, architecture summons into appearance ways of thinking about the
world that are otherwise unavailable; it is a particular mode of thought, one
irreducible to other ways of thinking. And its images of thought have no
lesser claim on the real than those of philosophy. This mode is not
representation, then, but emanation -- a showing forth of a world that exists
but is not yet actualized.

So appeared architecture for Adolf Loos: "If we find in the forest a mound,
six feet long and three feet wide, raised by a shovel to form a pyramid, we
turn serious and something in us says: here someone lies buried. That is
architecture."1 Let us unpack this hypothetical event. First, there is an
unanticipated encounter with an empirical object -- If we find in the forest a
mound -- the apprehension of which produces an almost immediate
categorical response: That is architecture. Prior to our encounter, it is
presumed, someone used a shovel to form a pyramid. Thus, technique is
involved, but it is far from the most important aspect of the encounter. The
pyramid as form is not identical to what is apprehended by our senses; what
is sensible remains contingent and variable, notwithstanding its defined
shape. The material of the mound and its indexical relation to the shovel, no
matter how intense the impression they may make on us, are just sensuous
qualities and associated features of the encountered object. They are not the
real thing; they are not the that.

We can say this another way. The real object of architecture is autonomous
from our encounter with it. If we close our eyes, the visible object that is the
mound disappears, but the real object of architecture remains. So That is an
instantiation of architecture that exists before and after our encounter with
the mound, an architecture that is always already there, where "always
already" entails prior conditions that are brought into existence by their own
outcomes. For us to recognize That as architecture, architecture -- not the
mound -- must always already be there.
There is an epistemological claim made in Loos's aphorism: we know
something about the world through the architectural event. Through the
appearance of architecture, we recognize the ritual of burial and the need for
memorialization -- here someone lies buried -- and it affects us. But there is
also an ontological claim: That is architecture. The necessary anteriority of
the architecture instantiated by That explains why we can imagine
architectures that are never built.

Cognition is required to reproduce the form, or type, of the pyramid, indeed

removing much of what is perceived -- the material, the technique, even the
site -- to isolate what is essential to the form of the pyramid. We
schematize, we mentally organize, we design the type form. And then and
there, we enter the architectural imagination. We proceed from the initial
appearance, through the imagination, to the symbolic order -- that is, to the
category and concept of architecture. For this, preparation is required; we
must have some sort of education or prior instruction in order to produce
concepts. The pronouncement That is architecture is not a simple
experience, not only intuition or cognition, but a recognition: an
understanding built from prior encounters, memories, and reflected
conceptualizations. The authority of the symbolic rule imposes itself on the
imagination and determines it, regulates it, legitimizes it. The imagination
operates in accordance with rule unwittingly, without expressly observing it,
but the symbolic must be in play. Through its interaction with the symbolic,
the imagination gains the power to both register and overcome the limits of
experience. Only when the imagination mediates between the sensible and
the understanding, with the symbolic order of the understanding presiding,
is That architecture.

2.
My description of the architectural imagination as essentially interpretive, as
well as cognitively productive, borrows from Immanuel Kant's theory of the
schema and its role in reflective judgment developed in his
third Critique.2 For Kant, a schema of the imagination is not quite a concept
and yet is something more than an ordinary image. A schema is something
like a script for producing images in accordance with the symbolic order -- a
synthetic operator between the sensible and the understanding.

In Kant's architectonic, the imagination must coordinate with the two other
faculties -- the intuition and the understanding -- to construct its practical-
empirical role out of machinic parts. The intuition synthesizes sensory
experience. The understanding spontaneously deploys concepts and
categories. But intuitions are purely sensible, and the understanding cannot
scan sensible objects. So we need a way of relating and connecting these
two separate faculties. "There must be a third thing," Kant writes, "which
must stand in homogeneity with the category on the one hand and the
appearance on the other, and make possible the application of the former to
the latter. This mediating representation must be pure (without anything
empirical) and yet intellectual on the one hand and sensible on the
other."3 This third thing is a product of the imagination; it is the schema. The
function of the schema is to subsume the uncoded array of sensations, the
empirical objects of intuition, and convert them into images that can be
processed by the understanding.

But a schema is not itself an image in an ordinary sense, because it is not a

thing. Rather, a schema is a rule for an image that is produced in the act, or
procedure, of schematization, a dynamic process that takes place in the
imagination. Kant gives the instructive example of a triangle: "In fact it is
not images of objects but schemata that ground our pure sensible concepts.
No image of a triangle would ever be adequate to the concept of it. For it
would not attain the generality of the concept, which makes this valid for all
triangles, right or acute, etc. . . . The schema of a triangle can never exist
anywhere except in thought, and signifies a rule of the synthesis of the
imagination with regard to pure shapes in space."4 Images remain attached
to the senses, incommensurable with the concepts used by the
understanding, while schemata regulate the abstraction of sensation into
something the understanding can process. As one scholar put it, "The
schema is the procedure of the imagination in providing an image for a
concept. . . . Schemata must underlie all of our concepts if they are to be
relevant to the realm of empirical experience."5 A schema is a necessary
component of perception itself, but also a requirement for practical and
theoretical knowledge, as well as reflective interpretation.

If Kant's formulation of the schema should feel familiar to architects, this is

perhaps because it is very similar to Quatremère de Quincy's definition of
the architectural type: "The word 'type' does not represent so much the
image of something that must be copied or imitated perfectly, as the idea of
an element that must itself serve as a rule for the model. . . . The model,
understood from the point of view of the practical execution of art, is an
object that must be repeated such as it is; [the] type, on the contrary, is an
object on the basis of which everyone can conceive of works that may not
resemble each other at all."6 What has not been sufficiently noticed in
discussions of type is the freedom of relationships among sensation,
memory, and imagination that this formulation allows, at the same time that
it insists on harmony and resonance across component parts. While one
model of the schema could construe its effects as rigidly stabilizing, it is also
possible to find liberating hints at different modes of becoming in the
constructive and autonomous act of the imagination.
Indeed, the schematic imagination, as articulated in Kant's philosophy, is
deeply embedded in architectural historiography. Countless historians have
been influenced by Kant -- Paul Frankl, Heinrich Wölfflin, Emil Kaufmann,
Erwin Panofsky, and Wilhelm Worringer among them. But it is Rudolf
Wittkower, in his 1944 drawing "Schematized Plans of Eleven of Palladio's
Villas," who gives us the most vivid graphic expression of a schematizing
machine. As part of his survey of Palladio's Veneto villas republished
in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949) -- in which he
utterly suppresses site, material, technology, decoration, patrons, clients,
and even program (many of the villas were in fact working farmhouses,
complete with barchesse and dovecotes) -- Wittkower "designs" a schema
that totalizes the villa type as the geometric-mathematical systematization
of the ground plan.7 That Wittkower's Architectural Principles was as
compelling as it was tendentious is evidenced not only by its widespread and
decades-long influence but also by its practical instrumentalization by
scholars and designers alike.8 In 1947, Colin Rowe extended Wittkower's
analysis to the villas of Le Corbusier; in 1967, Peter Eisenman used the
same schema as a generative structure to begin his seminal house series;
and in 1998, Greg Lynn defined his own counterposition of animate
geometry and continuous differentiation as a decisive departure from the
schema of Wittkower, Rowe, and Eisenman. The architectural imagination is
action prone and highly connective; it is promiscuous.

[Due to copyright restrictions, an image of "Schematized Plans of Eleven of Palladio's Villas"

from Rudolph Wittkower's Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949) is not
available. See Lecture 1.2 for more information.]

3.
In the half century since Wittkower's powerful demonstration of the
schematic imagination at work in interpretive practice, scholars have grown
skeptical of the transcendental formalism of models like his, turning their
attention instead toward methods able to accommodate newly conceived
issues of multiplicity, potentiality, virtuality, and becoming, as well as
various materialist tendencies. New practices of the imagination began to
develop in the 1970s and 1980s, primarily following the work of Manfredo
Tafuri but also influenced generally by exchanges across various critical
disciplines that accepted Marxism and psychoanalysis as common
metalanguages and tended to use methods derived from ideology critique
and deconstruction. Since the 1990s, the works of Michel Foucault and Gilles
Deleuze have been the dominant influences on architectural interpretation.
In particular, Foucault's diagram of the architecture of the 19th-century
panopticon and Deleuze's reading of that diagram as a cartography of an
entire social and historical field have authorized new modes of architecture's
appearance and new constructions of the architectural imagination.9

Foucault is concerned with how the apparatus of power and knowledge

configures a domain of visible matter (the "seeable") that is shaped by the
articulable functions (organized utterances and discourse, or the "sayable")
into various disciplinary forms like the panopticon. In his study of Foucault,
Deleuze focuses on the relation of the visible (which is not reduced to a
thing seen but comprises "multisensorial complexes," processes, actions,
and reactions) and the articulable (or discursive formation), rendering their
interaction as an agon of Kantian sensibility and conceptuality. "Between the
visible and the articulable we must maintain all the following aspects at the
same time: the heterogeneity of the two forms, their difference in nature or
anisomorphism; a mutual presupposition between the two, a mutual
grappling and capture; the well-determined primacy of the one over the
other."10 The visible, like Kant's intuition, is passive and determined, while
the articulable, like Kant's understanding, is spontaneous and determining.
But just as Kant needs the schema, Foucault needs a third agency, a
mediator of the confrontation, but one in a space removed from the visible
and the articulable, "in a different dimension to that of their respective
forms."11 This nonplaced operator is what Deleuze, reading Foucault, calls
the diagram.

The schematic imagination is an imposition of order on a stratum of sensible

and conceptual knowledge that has no exterior, on an assemblage that is
autonomous and closed. The schematic centers, territorializes, and patterns
sensation in accordance with categories and concepts already present (even
though they can be known only retrospectively), whereas the diagrammatic
draws the center of the assemblage together with peripheral force fields and
operations exterior to the assemblage proper; the diagrammatic is
concerned with deterritorializing and reterritorializing. If the schema is a
template, the diagram is a frame and a connector. The diagrammatic
imagination comprises functions that trace and map a region captured from
a larger field, thereby also creating an outside. Deleuze resorts to prose
poetry to define the outside: "The outside is not a fixed limit but a moving
matter animated by peristaltic movements, folds and foldings that together
make up an inside" -- that is, an inside of thought. "Thinking involves the
transmission of particular features: it is a dice-throw. What the dice-throw
represents is that thinking always comes from the outside (that outside
which was already engulfed in the interstice [between seeing and saying] or
which constituted the common limit)." He asks, "If the outside, farther away
than any external world, is also closer than any internal world, is this not a
sign that thought affects itself, by revealing the outside to be its own
unthought element?"12 The outside is the unthought other; it is difference
itself. The outside is the virtual; and the virtual is history. But it is not the
history of architecture's actual unfolding; it is not the archive. The virtual is,
rather, absolute history -- the constitutive outside that, across an implicating
membrane, disturbs the identity of the inside, the actual, and is nevertheless
both a prerequisite for the actual's constitution and a record of its existence.
Virtuality is the source of resistance.

Near the end of his Foucault study, Deleuze inserts an illustration of the
diagram. It depicts the "line of the outside," an indefinitely unfurling plane
with an atmosphere above -- itself populated with condensed particles and
intersections of forces tossed about -- and a sedimented "strata"below
(more packed and stacked, having been archived). Between the two lies a
"strategic zone," a zone of negotiation between the formed strata and the
unformed outside. The left-side strata are archives of visual knowledge, and
the right is a kind of sound cloud of articulable knowledge: "the two
irreducible forms of knowledge, Light and Language, two vast environments
of exteriority where visibilities and statements are respectively
deposited."13 Together the two archives delineate a band of forms of content
and forms of expression that can be taken to determine the limits of actual,
concrete historical formations of knowledge and power. Deleuze calls this the
concrete assemblage, in contradistinction to the abstract machine of the
diagram itself. In between the two archives is a striking enfolding of the line
of the outside, pulled down into a pouch, a pocket, an implication
"constantly reconstituting itself by changing direction, tracing an inside
space but coextensive with the whole line of the outside" -- a "zone of
subjectivation," as Deleuze labels it -- the place of thought itself.14

[Due to copyright restrictions, an illustration of Gilles Deleuze's diagram from Foucault (1986)
is not available.]

4.
Let us now consider how this diagrammatic version of the architectural
imagination works in interpreting an architectural project. Architecture is
both an artifact of culture and a sociopolitical act; hence, the architectural
project does not simply reproduce the contexts that are its sponsors but
rather connects to their fields and forces in complex and often contradictory
ways, drawing up the threads of the real into a fabric whose weaving
operations may be modeled as much on dreams and prayers as on maps and
machines. Architecture is the constant making and remaking of the world --
the territorialization and reterritorialization of the concrete assemblage
through architecture's particular diagram. So it must be recognized that any
project of architecture is not merely informed by ideology -- by its patrons,
its designers, or its audiences -- it is ideological in its own right. The
diagrammatic imagination accounts for the fact that architecture is
entangled within a complex of social, technological, and historical forces,
which are deep-seated, perhaps repressed, and yet shifting and
contradictory. It is these forces that close formal readings of architectural
projects seek to deconceal. What the diagrammatic model does not allow is
an uncritical collapse of the architectural project into its context, as if it were
completely determined by its context. Architecture necessarily remains in
dialectical tension with its own historical moment. It is not capable of
sublating art and life, but neither can the discursive and institutional
authorities completely control and exhaust architecture. Architecture retains
the power to negate certain dimensions of historical social life and expose
undiscovered spaces, expanding the territory on which we dwell. "It is here
that two forms of realization diverge or become differentiated," Deleuze
instructs, "a form of expression and a form of content, a discursive and a
non-discursive form, the form of the visible and the form of the articulable. .
. . Between the visible and the articulable a gap or disjunction opens up. . . .
The concrete assemblages are therefore opened up by a crack that
determines how the abstract machine [the diagram] performs."15 The
seeable and sayable are not contextually given forms but rather spaces of
emergence inextricably linked to historical discourses, which they also help
to organize. The social and historical context may determine the visible, but
the visible pushes back on the expressible to enable what in turn
underwrites conditions of visibility. The discontinuity between the visible and
the articulable, the irreducibility of the one to the other, is the crux here. For
this is the moment around which the differences between a symptomatic
reading and a merely suspicious reading turn. The recognition That is
architecture still entails an active, engaged, and critical imagination rather
than an inert and compliant object.

The diagrammatic model of the architectural imagination enables us to

retain from Kantian aesthetics and the architectural historiography that it
influenced the notion that architecture is characterized by a certain degree
of formal autonomy. But it mediates this with an emphasis on the social and
intellectual importance of form and the corollary of a deep historicity. Finally,
we achieve a materialist emphasis on architecture's embeddedness in
heterogeneous networks of other forms and forces, interconnected
constellations that will not resolve or reduce into a single structure because
each constellation connects to the others through events rather than
passages determined by one or the other. The architectural imagination has
historically demonstrated the capacity to structure perceptions and
experiences while remaining outside any single structure's absolute control.
This explains why great architecture always exceeds description and theory.
It explains architecture's power for disturbance and transformation rather
than inert passivity. Architecture associates the intensity of sensation with
the rigor of structure and then transfers that intensity into other disciplines
and practices, revealing not only their limits but also their openness to
change.

Notes
1. Adolf Loos, "Architektur" (1910), in Die Schriften von Adolf Loos, vol.
2, Trotzdem, 1900–1930 (Innsbruck: Brenner, 1931), 109–10. My
translation.

2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and
Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W.
Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 272 (B177/A138).

4. Ibid., 273 (B180/A141).

5. Charles E. Winquist, The Transcendental Imagination: An Essay in

Philosophical Theology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972), 18.

6. Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, "Imagination,"

in Dictionnaire historique d’architecture, vol. 2 (Paris: Librairie d’Adrien le
Clere, 1832), 629, quoted in Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City, trans.
Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 40.

7.See Rudolf Wittkower, “Principles of Palladio’s Architecture,”

in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism(London: Warburg
Institute, University of London, 1949), 51–88. Originally published in two
parts in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 7 (1944): 102–22;
8 (1945): 68–106.

8. See Henry A. Millon, "Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age

of Humanism: Its Influence on the Development and Interpretation of
Modern Architecture," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 31,
no. 2 (May 1972): 83–91; and Alina A. Payne, "Rudolf Wittkower and
Architectural Principles in the Age of Modernism," Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians 53, no. 3 (September 1994): 322–42.

9. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans.
Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1977); and Gilles
Deleuze, Foucault, trans. Seán Hand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1988).
10. Deleuze, Foucault, 67–68.

11. Ibid., 69.

12. Ibid., 96–97, 117–18.

13. Ibid., 121.

14. Ibid., 123.

15. Ibid., 38.

Author's note: I extend sincere thanks to Bryan Norwood and Chelsea

Spencer, whose comments and recommendations on multiple drafts have
produced content as well as clarity

K. Michael Hays is the Eliot Noyes Professor of Architecture Theory at the

Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Instructions
Exercise 1.1 is a self-assessment activity that consists of two steps:

1. Compose and submit a response to the following prompt using the

Open Response Assessment tool (ORA).

2. Self-assess your response using the scoring rubric provided.

If you need assistance using the edX Open Response Assessment tool
(ORA), please consult the edX Learner's Guide.

Prompt
Look carefully at the following two images. Using no information other than
your own observations, compare and contrast the two buildings in a short
essay of 300-500 words(three to five paragraphs). Do not worry about
proper architectural terminology; use ordinary descriptive language. The
goal of this assignment is to produce a detailed comparison based on your
own careful observations. Look at the images. Do not go to the library or
research the images online.
In two or three additional sentences, speculate on what the similarities
and differences between the two buildings convey about the relationships of
the buildings to their sites and to their inhabitants.

Pay attention to features such as: how the buildings meet the ground and
sky; the nature of the "wrapper" or enclosing envelope (does it seem thick
or thin, heavy or light, porous or solid?); how light and shade are used; and
how openings, such as windows and doors, are organized. Discuss how
masses and volumes are composed.

Remember, Professor Hays performs a similar analysis in Lecture 1.1, so

rewatch that section if you need help getting started.

NOTE: There are no right or wrong answers.

Image 1

Image 2
Annotate

Compare Two Buildings - Self Assessment

This assignment has several steps. In the first step, you'll provide a response to the
question. The other steps appear below the Your Response field.

1. Your Responsedue Mar 1, 2018 00:00 WAT (in 11 months, 2 weeks)IN PROGRESS
Enter your response to the question. You can save your progress and
return to complete your response at any time before the due date
(Thursday, Mar 1, 2018 00:00 WAT). After you submit your response,
you cannot edit it.

1. The prompt for this section

Prompt

Look carefully at the following two images. Using no information

other than your own observations, compare and contrast the two
buildings in a short essay of 300-500 words (three to five
paragraphs). Do not worry about proper architectural
terminology; use ordinary descriptive language. The goal of this
assignment is to produce a detailed comparison based on your
 own careful observations. Look at the images. Do not go to the
library or research the images online.

In two or three additional sentences, speculate on what the

similarities and differences between the two buildings convey
about the relationships of the buildings to their sites and to their
inhabitants.

Pay attention to features such as: how the buildings meet the
ground and sky; the nature of the "wrapper" or enclosing
envelope (does it seem thick or thin, heavy or light, porous or
solid?); how light and shade are used; and how openings, such
as windows and doors, are organized. Discuss how masses and
volumes are composed.

Remember, Professor Hays performs a similar analysis in Lecture

1.1, so rewatch that section if you need help getting
started.NOTE: There are no right or wrong answers.

Exercise 1.2 Read a Plan (Concept Check)

Bookmark this page

Instructions
Exercise 1.2 is a drag-and-drop activity that consists of the following
steps:

1. Look at the following floor plan of the Villa Gazzotti Grimani by Andrea
Palladio.

2. Match each architectural element to the corresponding position within

the plan by dragging the element term to the appropriate red
box (zone).

NOTE: Some learners have reported that the floor plan image in the drag-and-drop problem is
slow to load. If you're using an older browser version or have a slower connection speed, please
allow extra time for the problem type to load the image.
Prompt
The goal of this exercise is for you to become comfortable in reading
architectural drawings -- in this case, the floor plan. Even if you haven't
spent a lot of time looking at architectural drawings, there is a good chance
that you are already familiar with many of the conventions that architects
use. Think of the last time you went to a museum and located your favorite
exhibition by using the museum's floor plan guide, or found the food court at
the shopping mall by consulting the directory. These representations provide
one method of communicating basic spatial relationships between parts of a
building.

The following additional video (Supplementary Lecture 1.b Orthographic

Drawings) is available as a reference.

Help with Exercise 1.2

Do you have a question about Exercise 1.2?

Submit your inquiry using the following thread: M01: Exercise 1.2; ASK; All
Learners.

Remember all questions need to include "[STAFF]" in the post title.

Drag and Drop

7 points possible (graded)
Keyboard Help

PROBLEM
The following is a floor plan of Palladio's Villa Gazzotti Grimani in the village
of Bertesina. Review the plan for the listed architectural elements. Then,
label each element on the plan by dragging the element name to the
corresponding position. NOTE: Arrows are used to specify a specific element
within the plan, but you should place each term within the labeled red box.

Exterior stair
, draggable
Interior stair
, draggable
Reflected ceiling plan
, draggable
Entrance
 , draggable
Scale
, draggable
Window
, draggable

Instructions
Exercise 1.3 is a self-assessment activity that consists of three steps:

1. Draw a floor plan based on the following prompt. (You will draw the
plan offline on paper.)

2. Compose and submit a short plan analysis using the Open Response
Assessment tool (ORA). (Only your analysis will be entered into the
ORA tool.)

3. Self-assess your floor plan and analysis using the Open Response
Assessment tool (ORA).

Optional Step: Share your plan by uploading it to the course discussion

board.

If you need assistance using the edX Open Response Assessment (ORA)
tool, please.

NOTE: The prompt indicates that the plan should be drawn by hand.
However, you have the option of using a drafting program or digital
alternative, if necessary.

Prompt
One of the best ways to learn how to read a plan is to try your hand at
drawing your own.
Choose a space that you are intimately familiar with. It could be your home,
your workplace, or a favorite public space, but make sure to choose a space
that has at least three discrete and adjacent rooms.

By hand, draw* a floor plan of your space. Carefully chose the height of
your cut line so that the plan includes all the information you find important.
Make sure to indicate locations of doors, windows, and walls.

You may choose to include secondary information you find important, such
as furniture or decorative elements. Do not use a ruler to measure;
however, make sure to pay close attention to relative dimensions. Choose a
method of measurement that is appropriate for the space -- for example,
you could measure a length of a wall by counting your paces alongside it. Be
sure to include an indication of your units of measurement on your drawing.

Then, using the Open Response Assessment tool (ORA), in one to two
paragraphs reflect on the experience. How did the method of measurement
you chose influence the way you drew the space? How did you decide on
where you would cut the plan? In observing your space and drawing it, did
you see anything new or surprising you had not noticed before?

Examples are provided to help you evaluate the plan portion of your
response.

Remember, your plan does NOT need to match these examples. They are
provided only for reference. You can also refer back to video Supplementary
Lecture 1.b Orthographic Drawings.

 Exercise 1.3 Example 1

 Exercise 1.3 Example 2

Annotate

Help with Exercise 1.3

Do you have a question about Exercise 1.3?

Submit your inquiry using the following thread: M01: Exercise 1.3; ASK; All
Learners.
Remember all questions should include "[STAFF]" in the post title.

Annotate

Draw a Plan - Self Assessment

This assignment has several steps. In the first step, you'll provide a response to the
question. The other steps appear below the Your Response field.

1. Your Responsedue Mar 1, 2018 00:00 WAT (in 11 months, 2 weeks)IN PROGRESS
Enter your response to the question. You can save your progress and
return to complete your response at any time before the due date
(Thursday, Mar 1, 2018 00:00 WAT). After you submit your response,
you cannot edit it.

1. The prompt for this section

Prompt

One of the best ways to learn how to read a plan is to try your
hand at drawing your own.

Choose a space that you are intimately familiar with. It could be

your home, your workplace, or a favorite public space, but make
sure to choose a space that has at least three discrete and
adjacent rooms.

By hand, draw* a floor plan of your space. Carefully chose the

height of your cut line so that the plan includes all the
information you find important. Make sure to indicate locations
of doors, windows, and walls.

You may choose to include secondary information you find

important, such as furniture or decorative elements. Do not use
a ruler to measure; however, make sure to pay close attention
to relative dimensions. Choose a method of measurement that is
appropriate for the space -- for example, you could measure a
length of a wall by counting your paces alongside it. Be sure to
 include an indication of your units of measurement on your
drawing.

Then, using the Open Response Assessment tool (ORA), in one

to two paragraphs reflect on the experience. How did the method
of measurement you chose influence the way you drew the
space? How did you decide on where you would cut the plan? In
observing your space and drawing it, did you see anything new
or surprising you had not noticed before?

2 Reading Architecture: Column and Wall

Introduction
In Module 2 "Reading Architecture: Column and Wall" with Professor Erika
Naginski, you will look in more detail at Rudolf Wittkower's practice of a
Kant-inspired interpretation of the project of architecture, and
how Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism revolutionized our
understanding of geometry, modular pattern, and the ways in which
diagrams can be used to explain the work of the architect.

You will observe how Wittkower traces the development of Leon Battista
Alberti's thinking on architecture using four (chronological) commissions: the Tempio
Malatestiano in Rimini, Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and San Sebastiano and Sant'Andrea,
both located in Mantua.

You will complete two exercises. The first is designed to help you explore further the question
of column and wall (central in Wittkower's investigation of Alberti, and a fundamental concept
of Renaissance construction). The second exercise resumes our discussion from Module 1 of
linear perspective as a form of knowledge and what the Italian architecture historian Giulio Carlo
Argan called "the ideal of the Renaissance architectural imagination."

Module Checklist
The following components and tasks are REQUIRED as part of Module 2:
 View the lecture:

 Lecture 2.1 Wittkower's Theory of Architecture

 Lecture 2.2 Wittkower and Alberti

 Lecture 2.3 Tempio Malatestiano

 Lecture 2.4 Santa Maria Novella

 Lecture 2.5 San Sebastiano & Sant'Andrea

 Complete the readings:

 There are NO required readings for Module 2.

 Complete and submit the exercises:

 Exercise 2.1 Columns and Walls (Concept Check)

 Exercise 2.2 Perspective as Layered Planes (Self-Assessment)

The following task is OPTIONAL as part of Module 2:

In Exercise 2.2, you use linear perspective to analyze Brunelleschi's church

of San Lorenzo. You have the option of attempting your own version of the layered
planes diagram.

2.1 Wittkower's Theory of Architecture

Exercise 2.1 Columns and Walls (Concept
Check)
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Instructions
Exercise 2.1 is a classification activity that consists of two steps:

1. Review the following images.

2. Assign each to the appropriate category (Columnar

Architecture or Wall Architecture).

NOTE: Some images might take longer to load depending on your connection
speed.
Prompt
Elaborating the ancient Roman tradition of wall-based architecture, Alberti
saw the architectural order (or the system of columns and associated parts)
as emerging from the wall. He distinguished different wall treatments based
on the varying relationships of columns or pilasters to the wall surface.
Other architects, including Filippo Brunelleschi, developed a spatialized and
plastic system of columns supporting arcuated planes.

In Renaissance practice and after, the relation of the order to the wall often
remains ambiguous, but this very ambiguity also produces a rich variety of
expression throughout the classical tradition.

NOTE: In some cases, it will not be easy to decide. Make a careful mental
analysis before you make your decision.

Question 1
1 point possible (graded)

Exercise 2.2 Perspective as Layered Planes

(Self-Assessment)
Bookmark this page

Instructions
Exercise 2.2 is a self-assessment activity that consists of three steps:

 Review the prompt and the following images of Brunelleschi's church

of San Lorenzo.

 Compose and submit your response using the Open Response

Assessment tool (ORA).

 Self-assess your response using the Open Response Assessment tool

(ORA).

If you need assistance using the edX Open Response Assessment (ORA)
tool, please consult the edX Learner's Guide.

NOTE: It is recommended that you view Lecture 1.4 and Supplementary Lecture
1.b before completing this exercise.

Prompt
"Perspective is the process by which we arrive at proportion, that is to say,
at beauty or the perfection of art." This is how the Italian architecture
historian Giulio Carlo Argan put the ideal of the Renaissance architectural
imagination.

In his essay on the designer and architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 –

1446), Argan analyzes Brunelleschi's church of San Lorenzo as a
construction of a succession of imaginary planes seen in perspective from
the foreground to the horizon. Argan writes, "Therefore the place is a pure
mental abstraction, the precondition for the representation of space... In fact
the plane in Brunelleschi's architecture is an 'intersection' and not a surface;
it is the place on to which the various spatial distances are projected, and on
which the infinite dimensions of space are reduced to the three dimensions
of perspective space." (Argan 8)

Look carefully at the following photographs of San Lorenzo and how they
construct the succession of planes that Argan argues is fundamental to
Brunelleschi's architecture.
In one to two paragraphs, reflect on how the idea of perspective orients
the viewer and helps construct a specific understanding of the
Renaissance architectural imagination. For example, you might consider
the following:

 How does the perspectival system determine the organization of

the space of the church?

 Is the space uniform?

 How does the space situate the viewer?

 How does the construction of layered planes inform your

understanding of Brunelleschi's architecture?

In upcoming lectures, we will explore examples of other architects who use

contrasting (i.e., non-linear) methods of organizing space. To set up these
future examples (in particular, Le Corbusier), our goal is to review the idea
of linear perspective, and how this method of representation was essential to
how Renaissance architects conceived space.

Image 1; San Lorenzo, Interior

Image 2; San Lorenzo, Interior with Vanishing Point
[In Image 2, the vanishing point has been identified by connecting the
points on the column capitals and the points of the column bases.]

Image 3; San Lorenzo; Interior with Layered Planes

[In Image 3, layered planes have been constructed by connecting the capital
and the base of the column with a line, and the capital and base of the
pilaster with another line.]

Annotate

Perspective as Layered Planes - Self Assessment

This assignment has several steps. In the first step, you'll provide a response to the
question. The other steps appear below the Your Response field.

1. Your Responsedue Mar 1, 2018 00:00 WAT (in 11 months, 2 weeks)IN PROGRESS
Enter your response to the question. You can save your progress and
return to complete your response at any time before the due date
 (Thursday, Mar 1, 2018 00:00 WAT). After you submit your response,
you cannot edit it.

1. The prompt for this section

Prompt

"Perspective is the process by which we arrive at proportion, that is to say,

at beauty or the perfection of art." This is how the Italian architecture
historian Giulio Carlo Argan put the ideal of the Renaissance architectural
imagination.

In his essay on the designer and architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 –

1446), Argan analyzes Brunelleschi's church of San Lorenzo as a
construction of a succession of imaginary planes seen in perspective from
the foreground to the horizon. Argan writes, "Therefore the place is a pure
mental abstraction, the precondition for the representation of space... In fact
the plane in Brunelleschi's architecture is an 'intersection' and not a surface;
it is the place on to which the various spatial distances are projected, and on
which the infinite dimensions of space are reduced to the three dimensions
of perspective space." (Argan 8)

Look carefully at the following photographs of San Lorenzo and how they
construct the succession of planes that Argan argues is fundamental to
Brunelleschi's architecture.

In one to two paragraphs, reflect on how the idea of perspective orients the
viewer and helps construct a specific understanding of the Renaissance
architectural imagination. For example, you might consider the following:

- How does the perspectival system determine the organization of the space
of the church?
- Is the space uniform?
- How does the space situate the viewer?
- How does the construction of layered planes inform your understanding of
Brunelleschi's architecture?

In upcoming lectures, we will explore examples of other architects who use

contrasting (i.e., non-linear) methods of organizing space. To set up these
future examples (in particular, Le Corbusier), our goal is to review the idea
of linear perspective, and how this method of representation was essential to
how Renaissance architects conceived space.
 3 Hegel and Architectural History
Introduction
How do cultures represent themselves to themselves through their art? In
Module 3 "Hegel and Architectural History," you will explore a model for a
philosophy of art history as expressed by the German idealist philosopher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The very idea of art as having a history, a
progression, comes from Hegel, and you will learn more about his attempt to
"gather up all the cultures and all the epochs of art into a single, coherent,
unified system... a system wherein art discloses truths about the world by
giving those truths appearance" (Hays, Lecture 3).

You will complete two exercises. The first is designed to help you better
understand Hegel's model. The second exercise asks you to expand the
concept based on a reading from John Sallis's text Stone.

Annotate

Module Checklist
The following components and tasks are REQUIRED as part of Module 3:

 View the lecture:

 Lecture 3.1 Hegel's History

 Lecture 3.2 Hegel's Spirit

 Lecture 3.3 Symbolic Architecture

 Lecture 3.4 Romantic Architecture

 Lecture 3.5 Classical Architecture

 Lecture 3.6: The End of Art

 Complete the reading:

 Reading 2 "From Tower to Cathedral" from Stone by John Sallis

 Complete and submit the exercises:

 Exercise 3.1 Form / Function = Beauty (Concept Check)

 Exercise 3.2 Stones (Concept Check)

Required Reading 2 "From Tower to Cathedral" from Stone by John Sallis can
be downloaded as a PDF using the following link.

 Use this link to download "From Tower to Cathedral" from Stone by John Sallis

Citation
Sallis, John. "From Tower to Cathedral." Stone, Indiana University Press,
1994, pp. 32-79. http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/

Reprinted with permission of Indiana University Press. All rights reserved.

About this Reading

Sallis's reading is dense and should be approached as such. It is not
recommended to read the text fully at once and attempt to understand
immediately. Take your time, break up the reading, and try to go over and
work through some of the ideas bit by bit.

Exercise 3.2 futher explores the Sallis reading. If helpful, use the exercise as a
reading guide to target your efforts around specific close readings. The
"Hint" feature has been enabled and provides page references and
quotations.

Exercise 3.1 Form / Function = Beauty

(Concept Check)
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Instructions
Exercise 3.1 is a true/false activity that consists of two steps:

1. Review each statement.

2. Determine if the statement is true or false.

Annotate

Prompt
Beauty is, for Hegel, the perfect harmony of form and function. His division
of symbolic, classical, and romantic is then partially generated by the fact
that beauty can be either achieved (classical architecture) or not achieved
(symbolic and romantic art), and that this failure to achieve beauty can be
either the result of the inability to conceive of beauty's form/function
harmony (symbolic architecture), or the result of the conscious
acknowledgement that beauty is impossible given architecture's opaque and
insistent materiality (romantic architecture).

With this in mind, identify the following statements as TRUE or FALSE.

Question 1
1 point possible (graded)
The pyramids are a natural form of beauty.

True
False
unanswered
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button.
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Question 2
1 point possible (graded)
Romantic architecture, being the most advanced form, is also the most
beautiful.

True
False
unanswered
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Question 3
1 point possible (graded)
In the classical temple, function and form are in perfect harmony.

True
False
unanswered
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ResetReset Your Answer

Question 4
1 point possible (graded)
Architecture is the paradigm of classical art.

True
False
unanswered
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Question 5
1 point possible (graded)
Sculpture is the paradigm of classical art.

True
False
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Question 6
1 point possible (graded)
The Gothic cathedral is the most dematerialized and intellectualized of
romantic art.

True
False
unanswered
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Question 7
1 point possible (graded)
According to Hegel's logic, Egyptian art imaged nature's superiority to
humans.

True
False
unanswered
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Question 8
1 point possible (graded)
According to Hegel's logic, the symbolic era yields to the classical when the
Greeks conceived of human's superiority over nature.

True
False
unanswered
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Question 9
1 point possible (graded)
Romantic art was able to embody the conceptual guise of spirit.

True
False
unanswered
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Question 10
1 point possible (graded)
Romantic art will come to an end when new forms of reflection arrive (like
philosophy and theology) that can develop the significance implicit in
romantic art's failures.
 True
False
unanswered

Exercise 3.2 Stones (Concept Check)

Instructions
Exercise 3.2 is a checkbox and multiple choice activity that consists of
two steps:

1. Review each question.

2. Select the options that apply to the question.

NOTE: This exercise requires that you complete Reading 2: "From Tower to
Cathedral" from Stone by John Sallis.

Prompt
John Sallis makes the point that Kant's system of the imagination allows him
to distinguish between beauty or art, on the one hand, and knowledge or
truth, on the other. Hegel, by contrast, develops a concept of art in which
art is not only a matter of sense and feeling but also of truth.

Answer the following questions that address Hegel's system of the art of
architecture.

NOTE: The "Hint" feature has been enabled and provides page references
or clarificationrelevant to each question. Try to answer before using the
hint. An explanation is offered after your first attempt, but only use it if you
are stuck. Remember, you can reset the problem and try again.

More About Exercise 3.2

It is important for this breakdown of questioning that Hegel, as a
philosopher, fathered the concept of the dialectic, in where every idea in
itself has an opposite and equal counter concept that is then worked with
and through as a means of solidifying a central idea.

As you work through some of the questions, and inquiries, keep this process
in mind. You will find that certain concepts are positioned in relation to
others and as such are dependent and related through their analysis.
Sallis's reading is dense and should be approached as such. It is not
recommended to read the text fully at once and attempt to understand
immediately.

Take your time, break up the reading, and try to go over and work through
some of the ideas bit by bit.

Question 1
2.0 points possible (graded)
Hegel declares that, for us, art is past. But, as Sallis points out, in Hegel's
system, there are other human endeavors that still "speak to the highest
needs of mankind." Which two of the following fulfill that role?
Craft
Nature
Self-doubling
Imagination
Philosophy
unanswered
Remember to select TWO.

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Question 2
1 point possible (graded)
For Hegel, both art and philosophy can present truths about the human
spirit, though in different ways. Which one of the following characterizes
art's presentation of truths?
Art presents universal truths.
Art presents truth in sensible form.
Art presents truths that are higher and deeper than philosophical truths.
Art presents appearances of nature, which is truth.
Art can present only the truths we need, not those we desire.
unanswered
Remember to select ONE.

Submit
Some problems have options such as save, reset, hints, or show answer. These options follow the Submit
button.

The following four questions ask you to categorize a list of 16 attributes

based on your knowledge of Hegel and your understanding of the excerpt
from John Sallis's Stone.

The number and order of attributes remains consistent across all four
questions.

NOTE: It might be helpful to review all four questions before submitting, as

your selections for one question might inform your selections for another.

Question 3
4.0 points possible (graded)
Which three attributes from the list, according to Sallis's explication of
Hegel, are characteristics of symbolic architecture?
A. It fashions beautiful enclosures (enclosures for spirit) and, therefore,
its meaning is outside itself.
B. It bears its meaning in itself, that is, it has only an independent
meaning of the assembly and shaping of its parts, and therefore relates to
spirit symbolically.
C. It encloses spirituality by mimesis, that is, by imitating spirit’s turn
inward away from everything natural and mundane.
D. In it, there is a separation of purpose and means, function and form,
and the freedom of existing for itself.
E. In its earliest forms it is made of wood, but with the development of
the column, the traces of wood are erased.
F. It is horizontally disposed and associated primarily with the earth.
G. It is associated primarily with heaven.
H. Its columns are inside the walls.
I. Its columns are outside the walls.
J. The exterior is determined from within.
K. It is the dialectical Aufhebung of classical purposiveness and symbolic
independence.
L. The Tower of Babel is the first of its kind.
M. It displays its own pastness.
unanswered
Remember to select THREE.

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Question 4
4.0 points possible (graded)
Which six attributes from the list are characteristics of classical
architecture?
A. It fashions beautiful enclosures (enclosures for spirit) and, therefore,
its meaning is outside itself.
B. It bears its meaning in itself, that is, it has only an independent
meaning of the assembly and shaping of its parts, and therefore relates to
spirit symbolically.
C. It encloses spirituality by mimesis, that is, by imitating spirit’s turn
inward away from everything natural and mundane.
D. In it, there is a separation of purpose and means, function and form,
and the freedom of existing for itself.
E. In its earliest forms it is made of wood, but with the development of
the column, the traces of wood are erased.
F. It is horizontally disposed and associated primarily with the earth.
G. It is associated primarily with heaven.
H. Its columns are inside the walls.
I. Its columns are outside the walls.
J. The exterior is determined from within.
K. It is the dialectical Aufhebung of classical purposiveness and symbolic
independence.
L. The Tower of Babel is the first of its kind.
M. It displays its own pastness.
unanswered
Remember to select SIX.

Submit
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button.
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Question 5
4.0 points possible (graded)
Which six attributes from the list are characteristics of romantic
architecture?
A. It fashions beautiful enclosures (enclosures for spirit) and, therefore,
its meaning is outside itself.
B. It bears its meaning in itself, that is, it has only an independent
meaning of the assembly and shaping of its parts, and therefore relates to
spirit symbolically.
C. It encloses spirituality by mimesis, that is, by imitating spirit’s turn
inward away from everything natural and mundane.
D. In it, there is a separation of purpose and means, function and form,
and the freedom of existing for itself.
E. In its earliest forms it is made of wood, but with the development of
the column, the traces of wood are erased.
F. It is horizontally disposed and associated primarily with the earth.
G. It is associated primarily with heaven.
H. Its columns are inside the walls.
I. Its columns are outside the walls.
J. The exterior is determined from within.
K. It is the dialectical Aufhebung of classical purposiveness and symbolic
independence.
L. The Tower of Babel is the first of its kind.
M. It displays its own pastness.
unanswered
Remember to select SIX.

Submit
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button.
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Question 6
1.0 point possible (graded)
Which attribute (one) from the list is common to all three categories of
architecture?
 A. It fashions beautiful enclosures (enclosures for spirit) and, therefore,
its meaning is outside itself.
B. It bears its meaning in itself, that is, it has only an independent
meaning of the assembly and shaping of its parts, and therefore relates to
spirit symbolically.
C. It encloses spirituality by mimesis, that is, by imitating spirit’s turn
inward away from everything natural and mundane.
D. In it, there is a separation of purpose and means, function and form,
and the freedom of existing for itself.
E. In its earliest forms it is made of wood, but with the development of
the column, the traces of wood are erased.
F. It is horizontally disposed and associated primarily with the earth.
G. It is associated primarily with heaven.
H. Its columns are inside the walls.
I. Its columns are outside the walls.
J. The exterior is determined from within.
K. It is the dialectical Aufhebung of classical purposiveness and symbolic
independence.
L. The Tower of Babel is the first of its kind.
M. It displays its own pastness.
unanswered
Remember to select ONE.

Submit
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button.