Pre-Architecture
Objectives
- Examine successes and failures of industrial re-use in the architectural, urban, and landscape transformations of post-industrial societies
- Study developments in architectural language of the 20th and 21st century
- Develop sketching and note-taking skills for recording impressions of sites in a journal
Previous Activities Have Included
- Visits to exemplary recent architecture including Kolumba Museum (Peter Zumthor), Langen Foundation (Tadao Ando), Red Dot Museum (Norman Foster), Zollverein School of Design Management (SANAA), and Kunsthal Rotterdam and Educatorium (Rem Koolhaas)
- Examples of adaptive re-use in the Zeche Zollverein, Van Nelle Factory
- Tours of modernist housing including the Rietveld Schröder House, Erasmus 9, and the Sonnewelt House
- Exploration of different urban contexts in HafenCity Hamburg, Rotterdam, and old and new Amsterdam
Description
The long study tour to Germany and the Netherlands forms an integral part of the studio curriculum by exposing students to high-quality historic and modern architecture and urbanism, in the form of both adaptive regeneration projects and in “new” buildings and sites of global renown. The tour travels through the Ruhr area of northwest Germany, seeing the transformation of coal-mining factory buildings and landscapes into cultural destinations, and the Netherlands, looking at urban developments, university campuses, and landmark built projects in the Dutch architectural language since the 1990s.
These sites, as sensory architectural experiences, provide students the opportunity to develop their critical observation skills and diagrammatic and representational proficiency. 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.
