Aim
This course aims to develop each student’s abilities to do architectural gestalt and other qualified, critical professional architectural work closely related to current tendencies in architecture and urban design, and to research in architecture and its theories and history, urban sociology and the theory of design.

Knowledge and understanding
For a passing grade the student must

• understand the fundamental preconditions for urban development both now and in the past.

• understand architecture and urban growth as a continual historical process of significance to social, cultural and economic phenomena.

• understand the cultural and historical interdependence of a knowledge of architecture.

• through work in archives, the literature and relevant locations, gain knowledge of a subject; and understand the relationships between archival material and written work (for students on the Clio course)

Skills and abilities
For a passing grade the student must

• give gestalt form to a complex urban building that expresses an architectural idea of relevance to a given spatial and architectural context.

• independently develop, formulate and use an architectural concept and a functional program and skilfully derive from them a building that meets architectural, technical, aesthetical and ethical demands.

• exhibit a command of architectural and urban-developmental concepts and terms that are relevant to the subject.

• skilfully present orally a complex urban building or district and the architectural idea informing it with the help of drawings and models, to an audience of fellow students, their teachers and guest critics, in a way or ways that exhibit the idea and the urban context clearly and expressively and that well-thought-out graphical means make easily comprehensive, the whole being communicated as a reflection of the student’s personal ambition.

• address questions of architecture and its history in well-chosen written words

• in a factually correct essay on an architectural-historical subject, exhibit a command of the written language, including a style and use of concepts and terms relevant to its subject.

Judgement and approach
For a passing grade the student must

• assess any urban project, his or her own or anyone else’s, in relation to public urban space, with particular reference to its architectural value to different, and differently situated, groups of users.

• exhibit an independent, critical and creative attitude both to architectural and urban-developmental tasks and to texts on related subjects.

• in giving gestalt form to architectural work and urban developments, be effectively empathic to peoples’ different living conditions.

• make critical use of primary and secondary sources in his or her own work (for students on the Clio course).

• present a large corpus of material concisely, to the point and interestingly (for students on the Clio course).

Contents
This course, Architecture and Culture I, concentrates on architectural gestalt work and qualified and critical professional architectural work closely related to current research on architecture and its theory and history, urban sociology and design theory. It offers students individually an opportunity to write an essay. One part, 0106 Architecture—Space—History A, is mandatory, but the student may then choose between two six-point courses, 0206 CLIO to Write about Architecture or 0306 Architecture—Space—History B.

• 0106 Architecture—Space—History A is a six-point course emphasizing gestalt designing of urban buildings in contexts that are both local (including those of the site and the history of its buildings) and global; the course includes a study trip.

• 0206 Clio – to Write about Architecture is a six-point course for students wishing to learn critically to analyse, discuss and write on architecture and urban developments in an architectural-historical perspective.

• 0306 Architecture—Space—History B is a six-point direct continuation of course 0106 (see below)

Literature
See each separate course.

Code: 0106. Name: Architecture - Space - History A.
Higher education credits: 15. Grading scale: UG. Assessment: See above, ABF150. Contents: The course aims to increase each student’s understanding of three themes: architecture’s historical dimension; its local and global contexts, and the architectural significance of other architects' work as a part of a personal repetoire. It aims also to educate students' abilities to give gestalt form to space as a contribution to the historical cultural process and as an element in local and global contexts. Its further aims include developing individual students’ abilities independently, critically and analytically to interpret architectural gestalt work in its spatial, historical and urban contexts. The initial architectural theories of the three themes are tested firstly in seminars, lectures, studies of examples and study trips, then in tasks of giving a building or urban space gestalt form. The student proposes an architectural addition to a building on an urban site to fit his or her own programme. He or she interprets how local conditions shall be treated in a global culture and concludes with an account of the significance of studies of examples and historical examples to the work he or she presents. Seminars and lectures offer preparations for the course's study trip; field studies and discussions during it develop each student’s ability to interpret architectural gestalt work in its spatial and urban senses. Lectures and seminars on architectural, tectonic, spatial and urban phenomena, and seminars devoted to examples are integrated in the course. Further information: Literature that varies from term to term is specified at the beginning of the course.

Code: 0206. Name: CLIO - to Write about Architecture.
Higher education credits: 9. Grading scale: UG. Assessment: All tasks and an essay shall be submitted and approved, and each student shall formally oppose an essay that another student has proposed. A further demand is a minimum of eighty per cent attendance at pre-arranged teaching time. Each student submits an essay and proposes it to a seminar that includes fellow students and guests and at which another student formally opposes it. Contents: This part of the course educates individual students in thinking critically, analysing, discussing and writing about architecture and urban buildings. Its aim is to stimulate each of them into acquiring an independent understanding of architecture based on a sound ability to analyse architecture and a great awareness of history, in addition to a developed individual skill in expressing him- or herself in speech, writing and illustrations. It is very important to strengthen architects’ role in cultural life by enabling them to mediate a knowledge of architecture to those who are ignorant of it. Literature: The theme of this course, and the literature for it, varies from year to year. The part of the course includes one or more writing tasks that all associate to subsidiary parts of a single superordinate theme, so as to stimulate individual students to address related architectural questions and other similar subjects for discussion; at the same time other texts that can be criticism of architecture from professional journals or similar academic articles are closely read and analysed. Each student and his or her advisor chooses a subject that fits the superordinate theme e.g. an architect or buildings or parts of towns, and does not need too much time e.g. to trace source material. The student may certainly choose a subject addressed in either of the preceding courses (Architecture—Space—History, Architecture—Space—Society); it would be advantageous if it had inspired him or her for a long time, which would be exemplary and personally strengthening. It is important that he or she presents the results as a whole, and that they genuinely add to what he or she had previously known of the subject. Part at least of the student’s choice shall comprise a building or buildings that allow him or her to learn and employ concepts that include but are not limited to timing, rhythm, proportions, architectural expression and spatial organisation that, reported in graphic form, should serve to illustrate his or her texts. The student proposes his or her choice to a seminar at which another student formally opposes it. Further information: This course is given each autumn term at the same time as the course Architecture—Space—History B. The maximum number of students is most suitably ten. As this course is taught in Swedish it is not suited to exchange students. The course examiner is Assistant professor Anna-Maria Blennow. The course can include a study trip or field studies or both.

Code: 0306. Name: Architecture - Space - History B.
Higher education credits: 9. Grading scale: UG. Assessment: See ABF150. Contents: This course offers the student who has completed four fifths of his or her ABF150 0106 course an opportunity to go more deeply into his or her gestalt project by working further and in greater detail within the framework that defined his or her work on the earlier course. In addition, this should stimulate him or her to develop further his or her perceptions about architecture and more skillfully to unify various spatial and technical details into an aesthetically satisfying whole.