Professor Jill Stoner

Thesis Seminar 209D fall 2007

COURSE SYLLABUSDRAFT

The Master of Architecture Thesis at Berkeley is an eight-month academic project that applies a research agenda and a design experiment to a conceptual idea. This synthesis of concept, research and form is an essential part of the practice of architecture, if that practice hopes to be instrumental in the world of ideas. Though the first four months are in classroom, and the second four in studio, the project is best thought of as a seamless study which moves back and forth between words and images, wherein each of these mediums continues to inform and provoke the other. This continuity is a result of your internal commitment to your subject; it is under your control, not the control of your instructor.

Research, writing, design and drawing are all labor-intensive pursuits that know no short-cuts. It is important to find methods in each of these areas that produce a stream of increasingly complex work-products, rather than simply the continued reiteration of an idea. The idea, in fact, is probably already with you; the success of the thesis is in its articulation and rigorous development. The key agenda for the fall semester is first to develop research and design methods that ensure the recording of verbal notes and graphic concepts, such that the work can be cumulative over the course of the year; then, to write a substantial portion of the thesis essay.

The more narrowly framed the idea, the more successful the thesis is destined to be. This narrowness of subject is well understood in the realm of graduate dissertations, and a design thesis can learn much from the thesis formulation and development at the PhD. level. Depth, not breadth, is what is called for. In addition to being narrow and deep, the thesis question is more generative if it engages resistance. The more difficult the question, the more likely it is to provoke discoveries that are unique and of substance. This concept of resistance is easily clarified if the beginning premise for the thesis embodies a paradox.

The Language of Architecture

The design thesis in satisfaction for Master of Architecture may or may not comprise the design of a building, but will absolutely engage the language of architecture. This language is versatile—it can express urban concepts and scale, it can formulate through orthographic projections the dimensions of a spatial condition, it can attain the focus of detailed materiality and connections, it can even be applied to the abstract dimensions of words.

The classical language of orthographic projections has been enhanced in recent years through various software developments, one or more of which may suit your architectural exploration.[1] For these as well as the classical projections, it is important to master the language, so that it may serve you during the design process. The specific language of working drawings, extracted from the context of full building explication and applied to smaller architectural acts, or even to abstract ideas, can form a bridge between theory and practice. This bridge is one of the goals of the M/Arch thesis.

Three Positions

In formulating your thesis, it is essential to position yourself in the world of contemporary debate, as well as in the world of contemporary spatial, social and ecological issues. Three of these positions may be loosely framed as follows:

  • Concepts of Space and Event (abstract dimensions)
  • Concepts of Privacy and Publicity (social dimensions)
  • Concepts of Permanence and Decay (ecological dimensions)

The readings are structured to assist you in clarifying and articulating your position on each of these grounds of contemporary theory. You may choose to reframe one or more of these positions so that it more specifically addresses your subject.

For each of these concepts, you will write a short position paper of 600 - 800 words, including reference to at least two and no more than four of the assigned readings.

Two Graphic Series

Interspersed with these sections of reading and writing, we will engage in two distinct series of graphic exercises, in the interest of developing a design language for the spring semester. The first will be devoted to an analysis of site, the second to a method of design development.

These five sections of the syllabus will be marked with five milestone work-products, as follows:

THESIS STATEMENT (due September 18)500 words

SITE STUDIES (review October 9)10 studies

DISCUSSION OF RELEVANT LITERATURE (due October 30)1000 words

DESIGN STUDIES (review November 20)10 studies

SAMPLE CHAPTER (due December 11)2000 words

The first, third and fifth are primarily written assignments. These writings will be shared and will form the substance of several workshops during seminar time, and at specially arranged group meetings.

The second and fourth involve graphic assignments, and will be presented at reviews with external critics. The three short “position papers” will be due during interim weeks—on September 11th, October 23rd, and December 4.

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CAPTIONS: Stills from Cinema and Quotations from Literature

You will illustrate your writing with stills from film, and caption your graphic exercises with quotations from literature. These films and fictions will become ongoing points of reference as you develop your thesis in the spring. This list of films and works of fiction will be generated through seminar discussions and individual email “conferences.”

CLASS STRUCTURE

Class will meet once weekly, for three hours.

The first half of the class will be devoted to a discussion of the readings; the second half to a review of graphic assignments, or an in-class workshop in verbal or graphic techniques.

Exception: in the sixth week and the twelfth week, the entire class period will be devoted to a review of the site and design studies, respectively.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES & THESIS COMMITTEES

Following the sixth week, we will meet individually in office hours to discuss the formulation of your bibliography and your thesis committee. Your eview of the relevant literature (Milestone #3) will be sent to prospective committee members along with the thesis statement (Milestone #1).

ADDITIONS TO THE SYLLABUS

Weekly hand-outs will supplement this syllabus, and will address both the responses to the preceding assignment and the requirements for the one that follows.

SOURCES

CRITICAL ANTHOLOGIES

Joan Ockman ed,. Architecture Culture 1943 – 1968

K. Michael Hayes ed., Architectural Theory Since 1968

Bernard Tschumi ed., The State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century

GRAPHIC REFERENCES

Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information et al

James Corner, Taking Measure Across the American Landscape

Bernard Tschumi, Manhattan Transcripts

Denise Scott-Brown, Learning from Las Vegas

Alison Smithson ed., Team 10 Primer

Pamphlet Architecture Series

PRIMARY TEXTS

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space

Course Reader

SCHEDULE

Weeks 1 - 3

FIRST POSITION: RELATIONSHIP OF TIME AND SPACE TO THE THESIS IDEA

Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation” in Against Interpretation

Henry Lefebvre, The Production of Space

San ford Kwinter, “The Complex and the Singular” in Architectures of Time

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, “Smooth and Striated Space” in Thousand Plateaus

Paul Virilio, A Landscape of Events (selction)

Elizabeth Grosz, “Embodied Utopias: The Time of Architecture”

Steven Holl, “Idea, Phenomenon and Material” in The State of Architecture

Manual Castells, “The Space of Flows” in The Rise of the Network Society

SHORT ASSIGNMENT: POSITION PAPER #1

MILESTONE ASSIGNMENT: THESIS STATEMENT

Weeks 4 – 6

SITE DRAWINGS

CIAM Athens Charter

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (selection)

Diana Agrest, “Design vs. Non-Design”

Lars Lerup, “Stim and Dross” in After the City

Michel de Certeau, “Spatial Stories” in The Practice of Everyday Life

Doreen Massey, “A Global Sense of Place” in Space, Place and Gender

Paul Virilio, “The Overexposed City”

Anthony Vidler, “Dark Space”, “Post-Urbanism” and “Transparency” in The Architectural Uncanny

MILESTONE ASSIGNMENT: TEN SITE STUDIES

Weeks 7 – 9

SECOND POSITION: RELATIONSIHIP OF PRIVACY AND PUBLICITY TO THE THESIS IDEA

Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia

Margaret Crawford, “Blurring the Boundaries: Public Space and Private Life” in Everyday Urbanism

Beatriz Colomina, “Skinless Architecture” in The State of Architecture

Rem Koolhaus, “Skyscraper: A Typpology of Public and Private” in The State of Architecture

Robin Evans, “The Rights of Retreat and the Rites of Exclusion” in Drawing Toward Building

Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the Outside (selection)

Roland Barthes, “The EiffelTower” in The EiffelTower

Mike Davis, “Fortress L. A.” in City of Quartz

SHORT ASSIGNMENT: POSITION PAPER #2

MILESTONE ASSIGNMENT: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Weeks 10 – 12

DESIGN DRAWINGS

Robin Evans, “Drawing Toward Building”

Robin Evans, “Mies Van der Rohe’s Paradoxical Symmetries” in Drawing Toward Building

Marco Frascari, “The Tell the Tale Detail”

Alvaro Siza, Writings on Architecture (selections)

MILESTONE ASSIGNMENT: 10 DESIGN STUDIES

Weeks 13 – 15

THIRD POSITION: relationship of wilderness and civilization to the thesis idea

Walter Benjamin, “Naples” in Reflections

Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: Architecture of Four Ecologies (selection)

Lisa Couturier, ‘Reversing the Tides” in City Wilds

Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, (selection)

Jill Stoner, “Rain in the City” in Visualizing the City

Alan Weisman, The World Without Us (selection)

SHORT ASSIGNMENT: POSITION PAPER #3

MILESTONE ASSIGNMENT: FINAL THESIS ESSAY OR SAMPLE CHAPTER

At the end of the semester, you will assemble your six written assignments and two sets of drawings into a bound document. This document, as an open-ended draft of the thesis, you will carry forward into the spring semester.

[1](Other software, such as “Photoshop”, serve the discipline of graphic design, a medium of two rather than three or four dimensions. Though they may assist you with your final presentation, they will likely be less helpful in the formulation of architectural ideas.)