Syllabus academic year 2007/2008
ARCHITECTURE, BASIC COURSE CAAH141

Higher education credits: 21. Grading scale: UG. Level: G1 (First level). Language of instruction: The course will be given in Swedish. AAH141 overlap following cours/es: AAHA20, AAHA25, AAHA55, AAHA60 och AAHB01. Compulsory for: A1. Course coordinator: See under Further information, Inst för arkitektur och byggd miljö. Assessment: To obtain a passing mark each student shall have made all submissions required; and handed in, and got approved, all projects and exercises and collected in a portfolio for the term in question. In addition he or she shall have achieved at least an approved result on each examination; attended at least eighty per cent of all lectures, workshops and pre-arranged exercises with assistants in drafting and in learning to use computers. Examinations shall be made of individual and group-based work. To achieve a passing mark a student must have submitted and got approved his or her material, including all projects and exercises. In addition he or she must have attended at least eighty per cent of lectures, workshops and pre-arranged exercises with assistants in the drafting studio and in training on computers. The examination is of both individual and group work. Having been submitted before the date of the examination, project material is examined when the student presents it orally to his or her fellow students and their teachers who form for the occasion an assessment group. Within three working days, the student is informed whether his or her project has Passed or Failed. Should it Fail, the examiner shall inform the student what is needed to achieve a Pass, and the student may be re-examined once he or she has done what is necessary. Other exercises can be examined in for example a seminar, a conversation with an examiner, or in writing. Parts: 3. Further information: One of four basic courses given the first and second year, this course is given in alternating years first- and second year. This course is given next in autumn 2008. Students at both levels are assigned to one of three studios. Course coordinator is University lecturer Mats Hultman, Assistant Professor Lars-Henrik Ståhl and Assistant Professor Tomas Tägil.

Aim
One of four basic courses during the student’s first two years, this course aims to give him or her step-by-step a basic knowledge and ability to use an architect’s equipment and understand the arts of giving architectural form and perceiving spatial conditions, and how individual buildings and towns are technically built and used.

In these basic courses the student learns to use this equipment to give form to buildings in a spatial context by working creatively and in an investigative way, b balancing different aspects into an expressed architectural idea and to communicate through drawings, sketches, models, texts and illustrations.

This course (C) emphasizes an urban building's relationships to the architectural conditions of the town.

Knowledge and understanding
For a passing grade the student must

Skills and abilities
For a passing grade the student must

Judgement and approach
For a passing grade the student must

Contents
Teaching proceeds in lectures, projects, exercises, seminars, study trips, workshops and written work. The main emphasis is on teaching students to consider and present what they have learned in the form of drawings, models, sketches, images, texts and other relevant media. At the end of each term each student’s work is assembled in a portfolio that is used in a pedagogic discussion with him or her.

Before the first part of the examination, first-year students take a course that introduces architectural concepts and equipment and emphasizes drawing techniques. Simultaneously, second-year students work on a project that focuses on a creative, aesthetically-motivated project to form the prototype of a full-scale piece of furniture. In the second part of the examination students are trained in analyzing and expressing the architecture of the urban environment. See also the contents of the examinations.

First part

First-year course: During the first part of the course it aims to introduce students to the means architects use to give form to architectural ideas. It focuses closely on drawing techniques, to teach each student to draw so correctly and clearly that his or her drawings represent physical realities. They also learn fundamental uses of e.g. methods of sketching, building models, drawing and collating illustrations. Each student trains in the various uses of other architectural means and works through different exercises in making drawings that can creatively and forcefully depict an architectural idea, and mediate it accurately and clearly. From other exercises students learn to build models in paper and wood, and to perceive how models can realize and communicate an idea in three dimensions. Having successfully done some such exercises, a student then analyzes a known building before doing what is needed to complete an incomplete set of drawings of its plan, sections and façades, besides showing it as a whole in a scale model to others, to whom he or she explains its architectural ideas in a generally acceptable architectural language. Having done this, he or she first designs a small uncomplicated building that harmonizes with its surroundings spatially, in form and in its inherent ideas and then presents it in drawings and models to demonstrate his or her command of the studied techniques of drawing and modelling.

Second-year students work on the Fantasiprojektet that takes a holistic approach to form in relation to human beings, their dwellings and furniture. Applying a creative experimental model, each student works out a proposal for a piece of furniture in which his or her ambition to realize its form is perceptible at each stage, especially ultimately, when he or she makes it in full scale in the school workshop and writes an account of its design and the material it is made of. It shall be an enlivening original development of the art of furniture in conjunction with architecture and be well enough made to deserve exhibition at, for example, an international furniture fair. To assist students individually in doing this they see and summarize in writing a series of films that consider significant contemporary architects.

Second part

The project work and exercises of this course include theory, analysis and applied gestalt of a dwelling in a known context, in which its spatial qualities—movement within it, the proportions of its rooms, its light, functions, dimensions and social aspects—are investigated. In addition, students are taught how to use computers and other technical means, including artistic techniques

Workshop

A special workshop is conducted in each studio and concentrates on two themes during each study period.

Literature
For each exercise, the university provides students with compendia that contain practical instructions about and the theoretical background to the subjects to be studied.

Parts

Code: 0104. Name: Part 1.
Higher education credits: 10,5. Grading scale: UG. Assessment: To obtain a passing mark each student shall have made all submissions required; and handed in, and got approved, all projects and exercises and collected in a portfolio for the term in question. In addition he or she shall have achieved at least an approved result on each examination; attended at least eighty per cent of all lectures, workshops and pre-arranged exercises with assistants in drafting and in learning to use computers. Examinations shall be made of individual and group-based work. To achieve a passing mark a student must have submitted and got approved his or her material, including all projects and exercises. In addition he or she must have attended at least eighty per cent of lectures, workshops and pre-arranged exercises with assistants in the drafting studio and in training on computers. The examination is of both individual and group work. Having been submitted before the date of the examination, project material is examined when the student presents it orally to his or her fellow students and their teachers who form for the occasion an assessment group. Within three working days, the student is informed whether his or her project has Passed or Failed. Should it Fail, the examiner shall inform the student what is needed to achieve a Pass, and the student may be re-examined once he or she has done what is necessary. Other exercises can be examined in for example a seminar, a conversation with an examiner, or in writing.

Code: 0204. Name: Part 2.
Higher education credits: 9. Grading scale: UG. Assessment: To obtain a passing mark each student shall have made all submissions required; and handed in, and got approved, all projects and exercises and collected in a portfolio for the term in question. In addition he or she shall have achieved at least an approved result on each examination; attended at least eighty per cent of all lectures, workshops and pre-arranged exercises with assistants in drafting and in learning to use computers. Examinations shall be made of individual and group-based work. To achieve a passing mark a student must have submitted and got approved his or her material, including all projects and exercises. In addition he or she must have attended at least eighty per cent of lectures, workshops and pre-arranged exercises with assistants in the drafting studio and in training on computers. The examination is of both individual and group work. Having been submitted before the date of the examination, project material is examined when the student presents it orally to his or her fellow students and their teachers who form for the occasion an assessment group. Within three working days, the student is informed whether his or her project has Passed or Failed. Should it Fail, the examiner shall inform the student what is needed to achieve a Pass, and the student may be re-examined once he or she has done what is necessary. Other exercises can be examined in for example a seminar, a conversation with an examiner, or in writing.

Code: 0304. Name: Workshop.
Higher education credits: 1,5. Grading scale: UG. Assessment: To obtain a passing mark each student shall have made all submissions required and got the project approved. In addition he or she shall have attended at least eighty per cent of all lectures and pre-arranged exercises. Examinations shall be made of individual and group-based work. To achieve a passing mark a student must have submitted and got approved his or her material. Having been submitted before the date of the examination, project material is examined when the student presents it orally to his or her fellow students and their teachers who form for the occasion an assessment group. Within three working days, the student is informed whether his or her project has Passed or Failed. Should it Fail, the examiner shall inform the student what is needed to achieve a Pass, and the student may be re-examined once he or she has done what is necessary.