T 6:30-9
WCH 275
This course will explore both the conceptual and material problems of number through reading and making. The seminar's core question, stated directly: how many parts make a thing, when does many read as one, and how does the count change with scale and distance? Architecture is communicated at a scope that fundamentally requires the translation of an idea across scales from the singular to many individual parts. This question of number is both a practical problem of assembly embedded in material methods and a critical question representational problematic. Number is so fundamental to the architect's and designer's toolkit, and its discourse so historically broad, that any investigation is necessarily partial.
In recent years, questions of number have become especially pressing give the way a contemporary range of material, representational, and construction systems has expanded the possibility for both singular form and near limitless seriality. The course intends to develop students ability to operating in this expanding space as a with considered intent and critical reflection.
Sessions alternate between reading/discussion and making/discussion. Each coupling of classes examines a number as a formal and conceptual problem: one (the object), two (duality), three (the triad), four (the elements), nine (series and measure), twenty-one/many (the field), and infinity (continuity). Readings pair texts with various historical and contemporary perspectives so that every other week sets up a discussion rather than a single position: absolute object operates as the foil to parametricism; ideal mathematics anticipates the nine-square; series are set in tension with fields, and so on. Core readings are required; further readings are optional deepenings and prompts for the drawing/making component.