Choose one of the topics covered in the lecture series and demonstrate how those ideas have had an impact on an architectural project of your choosing. This work could be drawn from history or perhaps you might wish to choose a contemporary work that is informing your design work today. An architectural work is here used in its broadest context and might include a new building, refurbishment or addition, an urban proposal or a landscape. The only other requirement is that each essay should be distinct and different from the other in the choice of subject.

For example you might choose to look at the way in which ideas of empiricism have impacted on a new park, or the way in which theories of the rationalism have shaped a new building, or perhaps the way in which the legacy of Adolf Loos has informed the approach to design of a new interior space.

These are only examples and the choice you make is up to you and will be based on the aspect of the series you have found important to your view of architecture. The work of architecture you choose might be one that you have recently visited or perhaps something which has recently been in the architectural press.

Work Required

You are asked to write 1 short illustrated essay the first of 1000. Each essay should outline the key ideas of the general issue you have chosen. Importantly, you will need to describe both the ideas and the work as understood by you, each essay should not be solely descriptive and should seek to make connections and critically appraise how much, or to what extent concepts emerge, or are embodied by the built form.

Each essay should be illustrated with relevant drawings and photographs that are carefully annotated and referenced. You may wish to include your own drawings and diagrams to better explain the ideas in the text. You should include a bibliography of the sources you have used and any quotations or references should be appropriately acknowledged. The document should accord to the Harvard Format (APA style), which is available through the Library web site.

The final documents should take the format of an architectural review as found in magazines and journal such as, Architects Journal, Architecture Today or The RIBA Journal. Read through some recent journals, look at the way in which text, photographs and drawings are used to tell a story.

Consider if the author is able to be more than just descriptive and position the work in a larger social, cultural and political context? Are references made to other buildings or the history of architecture? How concise/precise is the writing? Does it leave you wanting to visit the building to find out more?

The intention is that you prepare the work as if you had been commissioned by an editor and to submit a layout which can be directly pasted into the magazine.

Assessment Criteria

Emphasis is placed on both the need to not only describe the ideas/architects work but more importantly to make analytical comparison and critical evaluation, based on argument, between intellectual concepts and the built form. The quality of your layout and choice of images and drawing is also part of assessing the overall quality of your submission.