The Observer & the Observed

1 unit

This seminar is intended to put students in contact with the urban and architectural culture or cultures in South America. The discovery and observation of the many local ways of doing and thinking will take place through observation of the urban landscape and the appreciation of concrete works by local architects. Activities will be focused on critical observation of the urban context and architecture, including the development of graphic exploration instruments and techniques. The relation between the observer and the observed will be intensified through graphic exploration. In this way, the seminar will purposefully avoid published written criticism as a way to approach the cases and bodies of work to be studied. This will be in order to construct a vision more closely attached to the practice of design and the confrontation with concrete design issues and less 'contaminated' by pre-established historical or theoretical interpretation. The choice of case studies coincides with the array of buildings to be visited in field trips in Buenos Aires, Brazil, and Uruguay. Buildings and practices to be 'observed' will represent different scales, different degrees of intervention and the construction of different landscapes. The seminar is based in three class settings: site visits, professor and guest lectures, and in class presentations and discussion. Rather than a cold, systematized, technical instruction on graphics, the development of personal observation/drawing tools and techniques is stressed. This includes sketching on the site and redrawing assignments based on personal sketches.