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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2021/2022

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Edinburgh College of Art : Architecture - History

Undergraduate Course: Early Modern Architecture Across Media (ARHI10055)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh College of Art CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course explores the multiplying links between architecture and other media from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and the ramifications of those relationships for architectural intermediality in the present day. Through first-hand encounters with buildings, painting, sculpture, historic books, and graphic art, it reveals how architecture's interactions with other media shaped the rise of the modern architectural profession.
Course description Architecture's current status as an art that combines expertise in multiple media--technologies such as drawing, digital modelling, and even print or web publishing--began in the early modern period. While medieval builders conceived architectural design through the lens of building, Renaissance and Baroque architects from Michelangelo to Dürer, Bernini, and Rubens also employed design practices from drawing, engineering, sculpture, and painting. Metalsmiths devised architecture manuals, theatre designers shaped urban planning, and printmakers canonized the Classical Orders. But how did such experts use knowledge from other media in architecture, and what did building teach architects about the other arts?

This undergraduate seminar investigates the links between architecture and other media from the rise of architectural prints in the Renaissance to the proliferation of architecture academies during the Enlightenment. Through first-hand investigations of buildings, prints, drawings, treatises, and sculptures, as well as primary and secondary texts, we will chart how architecture's changing relationships with other media gave rise to the modern architectural profession. The goal of this course is to empower students to explore how architectural culture thrives across multiple media platforms.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Explain why architectural intermediality matters historically and in the present day, and how it created conditions for the emergence of the modern architectural profession, as well as architecture's present entanglements with other media.
  2. Understand the process of producing scholarship in architectural history by developing an original research project through engagement with diverse primary sources and close reading of key scholarly literature.
  3. Show familiarity with the histories and theories of early modern media, explaining how writing on this subject has shifted over time.
  4. Present compelling arguments and insights into how architecture interacts with other media.
Reading List
Carpo, Mario. Architecture in the Age of Printing (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001).
Cole, Michael. "Sculpture as Architecture." In Ambitious Form: Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2011), 158-193.
Panofsky, Erwin. Perspective as Symbolic Form. Translated by Christopher S. Wood (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996).
Payne, Alina. The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Yerkes, Carolyn. Drawing After Architecture: Renaissance Architectural Drawings and their Reception (Milan: Marsilio, 2018).
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills 1. A critical understanding and reflective skill related to early modern architectural discourse.
2. A creative engagement with a wide range of research methods.
3. Ability to contribute effectively in peer discussion.
4. Ability to communicate skillfully with informed audiences.
KeywordsMedia,Architecture,Early Modern,Intermediality,Print,Drawing,Sculpture,Renaissance,Enlightenment
Contacts
Course organiserDr Elizabeth Petcu
Tel: (0131 6)50 2619
Email: Elizabeth.Petcu@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Amanda Fleet
Tel: (0131 6)50 2328
Email: afleet@exseed.ed.ac.uk
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