Architecture & Design
Objectives
- Study the city as a complex amalgam of historic and modern spaces and functions
- Analyze how urban development and design expression have reacted to political events and social movements
- Develop sketching and note-taking skills for recording impressions of sites in a journal
Previous Activities Have Included
- Study of urban formation through lecture by a municipal planner, from the air at the Akademie der Künste, and at ground-level in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews
- Visit to Neues Museum and Neues Nationalgalerie
- Tour of the Reichstag
Description
The Berlin tour forms an integral part of the studio curriculum by giving full-year students the opportunity to continue to develop their skills in visual analysis of design themes and spatial and sensory impressions. As experienced architectural travelers, full-year students have the challenge of investigating Berlin as a historically-layered urban entity and as a composite network of zones, spaces, and sites. A sensitive and critical view is placed upon the way the old city fabric has been reworked through constructed interventions and contemporary planning.
Full-year students advance their critical observation skills and diagrammatic and representational proficiency by studying the sites on the tour. Simultaneously, the students are equipped with a vocabulary of design concepts, strategies, and materials, which can then be applied in their own creative work in studio and beyond.
