contents

: theory definitions: slides 02-02

: schedule: slides 03-05
: theories explain things + re-examining common sense: slides 06-07
: experience-near + experience-distant: slides 08-08
: the Confucian cultural circle: slides 09-10
: team assignments: slides 11-11
: researched writing: slides 12-14
: teams lists: slides 15-15

a way into theories of design

Britannica Dictionary definition of THEORY

1 : an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain facts or events

• a widely accepted scientific theory
• Einstein's theory of relativity
• theories on/about evolution
• according to atomic/economic theory

2 : an idea that is suggested or presented as possibly true but that is not known or proven to be
true: Her method is based on the theory that all children want to learn.
• There are a number of different theories about the cause of the disease.
• She proposed a theory of her own.

3 : the general principles or ideas that relate to a particular subject: He is a specialist in

film theory and criticism.
• music theory

•https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/theory
Mondays: (teacher presents a new topic and students present / discuss previous topic)
Thursdays: (students present / discuss previous and new topic)

: Monday class 1: introduction + class

: Thursday class 2: student presentations / discussion WEEK 1

: Monday class 3: instructor presentation + student presentations

: Thursday class 4: student presentations / discussion WEEK 2

: Monday class 5: instructor presentation + student presentations

: Thursday class 6: student presentations / discussion WEEK 3

: Monday class 7: instructor presentation + student presentations

: Thursday class 8: student presentations / discussion WEEK 4

: Monday class 9: instructor presentation + student presentations

: Thursday class 10: student presentations / discussion WEEK 5

: Monday class 11: instructor presentation + student presentations

: Thursday class 12: student presentations / discussion WEEK 6

: Monday class 13: instructor presentation + student presentations

: Thursday class 14: student presentations / discussion WEEK 7

: Monday class 15: instructor presentation + student presentations

: Thursday class 16: student presentations / discussion: FINAL CLASS WEEK 8

: two groups of five students are assigned to each topic below, a thru g
: introduce research chart format
WEEK ONE: class 1+2:
Introduction: perspectives from antique East Asia What does native culture have to do with it?: using the group
breakdown for course work, and research chart format for writing a one-page essay; Clifford Geertz on native
culture;

WEEK TWO: class 3+4:

Pythagoras to Palladio : perspectives from antique Western Europe; geometry, the model of the human body,
firmness, commodity and delight

WEEK THREE: classes 5+6:

History and theory in Vietnam: “How Vietnam Created Its Own Brand of Modernist Architecture” – discussion
of Modernist Architecture in Vietnam, how it relates to today’s modern architecture in Vietnam and how it
relates to Vietnamese culture.
[include my article on farming culture and Vietnamese architecture from Korean publication]
[include video of Wang Shu on Chinese culture and modern architecture]

WEEK FOUR: classes 7+8

Critical Regionalism as articulated by Kenneth Frampton; refer to Skyline publication of his Japan Diaries and the
ability he claimed Japan had (at that time, in the 1970’s) to build authentically in both traditional and modern
ways
WEEK FIVE: classes 9+10
Social theories of space: Sert and CIAM, socialist housing, William Hall and proxemics, Jane Jacobs and
neighborhoods, village life / street life,
FINAL ESSAY OUTLINE DUE

WEEK SIX: classes 11+12

Green design theories of architecture: William McDonough, landscape urbanism, Glenn Murcutt, Vo Trong
Nghia, Ken Yeang
FINAL ESSAY 1ST DRAFT DUE

WEEK SEVEN: classes 13+14

poetic + polemic theories - Invisible Cities, Delirious New York; Wang Shu, Young Ho Chang

WEEK EIGHT: classes 15+16

Review; final essays drafts recap, correlate
FINAL ESSAY DUE
Theory explains things
Common sense theories are ones that seem obvious. Critical theory questions, including common sense.

“If we try to explain something, we might start with something that seems “obvious.” We might say, “it’s just common sense.”
Anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s discussion below stands back from that, and asks us to be willing to look at the “obvious”
again. What we call “common sense,” what is it really?

“Knowing that rain wets and that one ought to come in out of it, or that fire burns and one ought not to play with it (to stick to
our own culture for the moment) are conflated into comprising one large realm of the given and undeniable, a catalog of in-
the-grain-of-nature realities so peremptory as to force themselves upon any mind sufficiently unclouded to receive them.

Yet this is clearly not so.

No one, or no one functioning very well, doubts that rain wets; but there may be some people around who question the
proposition that one ought to come in out of it, holding that it is good for one’s character to brave the elements—hatlessness
is next to godliness. And the attractions of playing with fire often, with some people usually, override the full recognition of the
pain that will result.

Religion rests its case on revelation, science on method, ideology on moral passion; but common sense rests its on the
assertion that it is not a case at all, just life in a nutshell. The world is its authority. The analysis of common sense, as opposed
to the exercise of it, must then begin by redrawing this erased distinction between the mere matter-of-fact apprehension of
reality—or whatever it is you want to call what we apprehend merely and matter-of-factly—and down-to-earth, colloquial
wisdom, judgments or assessments of it.”

Geertz, Clifford. Local Knowledge: Further Essays In Interpretive Anthropology (Basic Books Classics) (p. 76). Perseus Book Group-A. Kindle Edition.
“If common sense is as much an interpretation of the immediacies of experience, a gloss on them, as are myth, painting,
epistemology, or whatever, then it is, like them, historically constructed and, like them, subjected to historically defined
standards of judgment.

It can be questioned, disputed, affirmed, developed, formalized, contemplated, even taught, and it can vary dramatically from
one people to the next.

It is, in short, a cultural system, though not usually a very tightly integrated one, and it rests on the same basis that any
other such system rests; the conviction by those whose possession it is of its value and validity. Here, as elsewhere, things
are what you make of them.”

Geertz, Clifford. Local Knowledge: Further Essays In Interpretive Anthropology (Basic Books Classics) (p. 76). Perseus Book Group-A. Kindle Edition.
“perhaps the simplest and most directly appreciable way to put the matter is in terms of a distinction formulated,
for his own purposes, by the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut, between what he calls “experience-near” and
“experience-distant” concepts.

An experience-near concept is, roughly, one that someone—a patient, a subject, in our case an informant—might
himself naturally and effortlessly use to define what he or his fellows see, feel, think, imagine, and so on, and
which he would readily understand when similarly applied by others.

An experience-distant concept is one that specialists of one sort or another—an analyst, an experimenter, an
ethnographer, even a priest or an ideologist—employ to forward their scientific, philosophical, or practical aims.”

Geertz, Clifford. Local Knowledge: Further Essays In Interpretive Anthropology (Basic Books Classics) (p. 57). Perseus Book Group-A. Kindle
Edition.
“The study has found that these architectural compounds (the cultural city of Qufu and
the Three Kongs: Kong Temple/Temple of Confucius, Kong Family Mansion, and Kong
Forest/Cemetery of Confucius):

were planned and designed according to traditional Chinese architectural principles of

circular heaven and square earth, yin yang balance and harmony, wuxing, Feng Shui,
north-south central axis, east-west bilateral symmetry, and nine-rise courtyards,
exhibiting a well-defined Confucian culture of social hierarchy and central harmony, in
line with the cosmic order. Thus, the aesthetic principle of harmony has extended from
philosophy to architecture, which confirms the existing research findings

•The research has also found that Confucianism and Confucian temples have spread to
east and southeast Asia, Europe, America, and elsewhere. In particular, the four countries
of China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are collectively called “Confucian Cultural Circle.” “

Qufu City and Confucian Architecture, Donia Zhang, Neoland School of Chinese Culture, Canada
Presentation at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle (CCPC, remote), Tallinn
University, Tallinn, Estonia, May 14, 2022,
https://www.academia.edu/79092301/Qufu_City_and_Confucian_Architecture_Presentation
‘In Southeast Asia the impact of Buddhism was felt in very different ways in three separate
regions. In two of these (the region of Malaysia/Indonesia and the region on the mainland
extending from Myanmar to southern Vietnam), the main connections have been with India
and Sri Lanka via trade routes. In Vietnam, the third region, the main connections have been
with China.’

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism/Southeast-Asia

https://vovworld.vn/en-US/sunday-show/feng-shui-and-the-traditional-architecture-of-nothe
rn-vietnam-500534.vov
Teams 1+2
a: is common sense a theory? what is culturally local? are there gradations of locality?

Teams 3+4
b: theories of architecture handed down from antique Vietnamese village(s)

Teams 5+6
c: South Asian Buddhist theories of architecture that moved from India, across south Asia, to southern Vietnam

Teams 7+8
d: Confucian theories of architecture / related to architecture

Teams 9+10
e: Daoist theories of architecture / related to architecture

Teams 11+12
f: Feng Shui / Phong Thuỷ theories on architecture / related to architecture

Team 13+14
g: East Asian Buddhist theories of architecture, including Zen Buddhism in Vietnam

: use the research chart format for each work’s work; this will form a research base for each student to write a brief essay on
theory that is grounded in your research work for the course.
: every student must research and write:
1) one-page chart each week (see next slide): double-spaced, 11 point for text and titles, 2cm margins all around)
2) one-page outline of your essay, one week before the end of the course
3) one-page essay discussing your quotes, at the end of the course (in your own words – cutting and pasting from
the Internet will result in a failing grade). Good essays should incorporate findings from the graphic analysis
of the buildings you studied together with your team. Combine these observations, and the background
knowledge they give you, with the discussion of the quotes you find individually.

4) ONLY USE QUOTES directly related to the course

NEVER USE:
QUOTE SERVICE WEBSITES LIKE BRAINYQUOTE, AZQUOTES, BESTSAYINGSQUOTES,
GOODREADS, INPIRATIONALARCHITECTUREQUOTES

– they are ALMOST ALWAYS USELESS for our class, because the quotes are too general – in nine out of ten
cases they are not relevant to your research; with bad quotes, your essay will be BUILT ON BAD
FOUNDATIONS and you can fail the course.
: make a chart like this for your research every week:
: make a chart like this for your research every week:
teams lists