Aldo van Eyck and Contemporary Architecture

3 units

A graduate seminar employing comparative critical analyses to explore ten works of the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999) and works by ten contemporary architects that share disciplinary ordering principles with the works of van Eyck, selected from a list including Giancarlo da Carlo, Herman Hertzberger, Fumihiko Maki, Lacaton and Vassal, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara (Grafton Architects), Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu (Amateur Architects), Francis Kéré, Emiliano Lopez and Monica Rivera (Lopez-Rivera), and Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen (Pezo von Ellrichshausen). Van Eyck's works and writings were fundamental to the emergence of Team 10 in the late 1950s as the center of the critical evolution of modern architecture in the second half of the 20th century. Van Eyck's concepts, the vernacular of the heart, the constant and constantly changing, the aesthetics of number, the house is a like a small city, the shape of the in-between, labyrinthian clarity, space in the image of man is place, and time in the image of man is occasion, and architecture as built homecoming will be used to structure the seminar, which will explore these architectural ordering principles characterizing van Eyck's work, and the manner in which these ordering principles have been employed by contemporary architects. Analytical methods employed in the course will address the 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 how these combine to construct the experience of those who inhabit it. Following introductory lectures by the faculty, each of the subsequent ten class meeting will consist of a presentation of a selected pairing of buildings, one by van Eyck and one by a contemporary architect (along with a career overview), to be presented by a team of two students. Students will be evaluated on both the quality of their individual presentations, and on the quality of their participation in the class discussions.