ARCH 4129, ARCH 6129

Form and Narrative:  Painting Film Architecture

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

 

                 Most people are visually illiterate.

                                                                   Peter Greenaway

 

                 I have never ceased to draw and to paint, searching for the secrets of form where I could find them.

                 One must not search elsewhere for the keys to my labors and my research.                                                                                                                                                                                        Le Corbusier

 

The focus of this study will be the human subject in relation to design, form, space and meaning as depicted in the still images of Johannes Vermeer paintings and the moving images of Alfred Hitchcock films.    

 

Architects, in contrast to most other artists, have a non-direct relation to their medium.  As an architect, one does not typically craft a building directly. One makes propositions, explores alternatives and communicates to various audiences by means of other media, i.e.. three-dimensional model making, drawing, painting, photography, or computer imaging.  The architect remains a generalist and it is prudent that she or he understand other media.  

 

Such a study promises a two-fold return.  First, one encounters the possibility of cross-fertilization whereby issues discovered in one discipline may be appropriated within another.  This opening up of possibilities is matched by a complementary and equally useful limitation of possibilities. The study of any one medium helps define its unique properties and appropriate limitations.