The Space Within: Inside / Outside (Florence)

1.5 units

This seminar will engage the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck’s understanding of the concept of “interior space” as including all spaces designed for human inhabitation—whether interior or exterior—and so extending from the interior room, to the “inside-outside” courtyard (Le Corbusier), to the exterior piazza and street. Inside / Outside will take the subject of the piazza as a field of study to speculate through drawing, photography, and Rhino how we experience being inside an outside space. We will adopt the premise that the material of a space and its construction contribute to its experience. The first order of business will be for each student to become a spider and search out and locate a particular and unique piazza (veranda), piatzzetta (little piazza), campo (in Venice). There are more than 30 in the center of Florence, but we will find others. We will visit these in subsequent classes and then draw (photograph, model) them in such a way that the subject of our experience which is generally in the background becomes foregrounded. Of particular attention will be the materials and how the materials are rendered through the labor of construction.