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Course Description

Summary

This introductory course examines major monuments and urban developments from the early modern period (roughly 1400 C.E.) to the present. Moving away from a Eurocentric focus, it examines architecture globally across time and space. For example, we will analyze the plan of Tenochtitlán (Mexico) and the Forbidden City (Beijing, China). We will explore, when discernible, regional and global connections among cultures. What did these cultures know about one another and by what means was this knowledge attained? Is there any connection between, for example, the Cathedral of the Assumption (Russia), the Katsura Imperial Villa (Japan), the Villa Rotonda (Italy), and the Suleymaniye Complex (Turkey)? The premise of this course is that architectural monuments are cultural artifacts both reflecting significant aspects of their respective cultures and also actively shaping these cultures. While the course presents a vast range of architectural examples and inevitably remains selective in approach, it will solicit an engagement with the social history of monuments, and equip students with the main theories and methods that have been animating the study and analysis of architecture.