The Space Within: Interior Experience as the Origin of Architecture

1.5 units

An undergraduate seminar structured around the themes put forward in the book, The Space Within: Interior Experience as the Origin of Architecture, by Robert McCarter. Throughout human history, and particularly in the modern period, interior space and its experience has served as both the beginning, the initial inspiration for the design of architecture, as well as the end, the final purpose of architecture as it is evaluated through inhabitation. Since the beginning of the modern period, and continuing today, pivotal discoveries in architectural design may be traced back to a generative ideal of intimate interior experience, and the quality of the interior spatial experience of the inhabitants may be shown to be both the primary determinant of the architectural design process, as well as the means of appropriately evaluating a work of architecture after it is built. This seminar explores how interior space has been integral to the development of modern architecture, and how generations of modern architects have engaged interior space and its experience in their design processes, enabling them to fundamentally transform the traditional methods and goals of architectural composition. For the leading modern architects and for the most recognized and respected architects practicing today, the conception of the interior spatial experience continues to be the necessary starting point for design, and the inhabitation of interior space remains the primary reason to construct works of architecture. Each class will consist of both faculty lectures based on the chapters of the textbook, The Space Within, and, parallel with the textbook themes, student analyses of selected interior spaces in Florence and Venice, to be visited during the first half of the fall semester. Analytical methods employed in the course cover the full range of contextual, cultural, material, constructive, and experiential attributes of buildings, with particular emphasis on the manner in which the spaces of a building are ordered by the patterns of occupation and the poetics of use, as well as the poetics of construction, or the way in which a building is built, and of what materials it is made, and how all these combine to construct the experience of those who inhabit it.