Aim
The Course is a base for the 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 tools with correct drawing and model building techniques, terms and ability to use these knowledge to design a small a simple building. The course also is preparing the students to follow the next step in the following Basic Course.

Knowledge and understanding
For a passing grade the student must

• how to basically interpret and understand drawings of a building that already exists and perceive how the drawings relate to it

• to use simpler terms and concepts of building technology and explain their significance

• to understand and use basic drawing symbols and lines

• understand and describe the meaning of a plan, a section, an elevation and a site plan drawing

Skills and abilities
For a passing grade the student must

• to design with the help of an architectural method of sketching a small uncomplicated building that with given preconditions including a spatial and architectural context expresses the chosen architectural idea

• to present for his or her fellow students and their teachers his or her project in a clear and orderly manner both orally and in drawings and correctly-made models and make such a presentation to mediate the architectural ideas embodied in the project in a way that demonstrates a well-developed precision and a deliberate use of graphical methodology

• to use the architect’s tools to make drawings by hand, carefully made, with correct architectural symbols and lines

• to compile several drawings into a general presentation drawing

• to make a scale model by cardboard

• to use the workshop’s machines in a secure way and to make a simple scale model by wood

• to make a simple presentation of a building including drawings, pictures and text, digitally and by hand

• to present an existing building using for the purpose the relevant architectural terms and concepts

Judgement and approach
For a passing grade the student must

• to see quality of drawing skills in an own drawing

• to see sharpness, quality and performance of lines in an own drawing

• to understand the importance of how a drawing, a scale model, picture, text and a presentation communicates

• to basically value the importance of architectural lines in a drawing

• to sort information in order to make a relevant number of lines in a drawing

Contents
The course 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. Drawing skills are included in all possible exercises. The students 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.

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.

The course is given annually for first-year students, is an introduction to the following four basic architectural courses in the first two years. First-year students study so that they can acquire the basic knowledge they will need to follow the second-year courses. Students work in one of three studios (X, Y & Z) but follow a common schedule.

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