1.

1 Architecture and Ideas

What is “Architecture”?
List 4-5 defining qualities

2. Guggenheim Bilbao
Would this meet your criteria?
“Major” building by a famous architect
Influential, locally and globally
3. “Universalist” View: Everything
Entire built environment = “Architecture”
4. Favelas
Definitions: reflect frame of reference
Architectural “Universalists”: Archaeologists,
Sociologists, Economists

5. Your Architecture
“My” architecture = important
Frameworks for daily life
Subjective measure = no limits
Challenge: lots to study!
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 6. “Selective” view: Only Certain Buildings
“A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece
of architecture.”
--Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, 1943

7. Needed: Criteria
Special aesthetic or cultural significance?
Memory and Monumentality?
Authenticity?

8. The Taj Mahal

Would Pevnser call this “Architecture”?
Do you agree?

9. Comparisons
Relation to site
Design history
Symbolic status

10. Taj & Lincoln?

Architecture, Geography, and people
Messages: ethnicity, religion, identity
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 11. Non-Architecture?
What disqualifies something as “architecture”?
Is a better “bicycle shed” still non-architecture?

12. Wal-Mart
Selective definition: “class division”
Needs someone to define “real” architecture
“Vernacular architecture” = ambiguous status

13. “Real” Architecture

Is “architecture” limited to actual buildings?

14. Reconstructed Memories

Architecture of lost buildings
Known through varying forms of evidence

15. Born of Abstraction

Mental Idea
Graphic Expression
Evolution
Manifestation by others
Afterlife
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 16. Past Possible Architectures
Almost-ran, might-have-been schemes
17. Hypothetical Architectures
Experimentation? Expense, technology, permission
“Paper architecture”: often radical, influential

18. “Imaginary” Architectures

Virtual cities & environments: how unreal is too unreal?

19. Non-Buildings
Real, but “Architecture?” Shelter or construction?
The built environment serving human needs
Architecture: both technology and culture

20. Thinking and Seeing

Conceptual work to understand a topic: “Theory”
Explanation based on observation, reason
Principles or methods of science or art
“Image” using ideas: particular to general