France: Study Abroad in Paris
This program is CLOSED and no longer accepting applications.
May 29 - July 11, 2009
ARCH 428P & ARCH 448P (6 credits)
"When one travels and works with visual things – architecture, painting or sculpture – one uses one’s eyes and draws so as to fix deep down in one’s experience what is seen. Once the impression has been recorded by the pencil, it stays for good, entered, registered, inscribed… To draw oneself, to trace the lines, handle the volumes, organize the surface… all this means first to look, and then to observe and finally perhaps to discover…and it is then that inspiration may come. Inventing, creating, one’s whole being is drawn into action, and it is the action which counts. Others stood indifferent – but you saw."
---Le Corbusier
"The extent of one’s creativity is related to the depth of one’s experience of the world in which one lives. Imagination is built upon the richness of perceptions gleaned from an active and conscious participation in that world of thoughts and substance."
---Norman Crowe & Paul Leseau
“…we can never think clearly in terms of another’s reactions: we must learn to see things for ourselves in order to develop a language of self-expression. The capacity to see comes from persistently analyzing our reactions to what we look at and their significance as far as we are concerned. The more one looks, the more one will come to see…”
---Louis Kahn
Why go to Paris?
To be introduced first-hand to French architecture, urbanism, and landscape;
To research, visit, discuss, and document French architecture, urbanism, and landscapes;
To share these experiences with your fellow students upon your return to campus;
To make good drawings, be good ambassadors, and to have fun.
About the Course
Formal analysis of historical precedent offers the opportunity to develop analytical skills that complement the skills of synthesis. The intent of this course is to introduce an attitude towards, and methodology for, analysis. In the design process, or synthesis, one starts with a series of diagrams that get ever more explicit. The reverse process, or analysis, is in some sense a reductive act from explicit form back to the diagrams that can describe the built form. Thus, a method of analysis is relevant to the design process. Analysis is represented in two- and three- dimensional diagramming.
Often this type of course is taught using plans, sections, and elevations obtained from books, denying the experience of the architecture itself. This course will provide the advantages of the immediate experience of the architecture and urban spaces through direct observation, documentation, and analysis in the bound sketchbook. This course will address the use of the architectural journal as a tool for recording architectural phenomena.
It is intended that this course complement ARCH 428P, the History/Theory Seminar on French and Parisian culture; Buildings and their site situations / context; Landscapes and site plan ensembles; Urban spaces / streets. Both courses will focus on the architecture, landscape, and urbanism of Paris and France. Drawing, diagramming, compositional, and conceptual issues will be stressed in the work produced in sketchbooks.
Faculty & Staff
Instructors: Karl Du Puy & Nick Mansperger
Assisted by: Steven Hurtt, Amy Gardner, Steve Sachs, & Melissa Weese
Please contact Dr. Du Puy for information about course content and itinerary.
For questions about the application, registration and pre-departure logistics, please contact the Study Abroad Office.