The Architectural Imagination
- Free to audit
- Paid certificate
- Course certificate
- Beginner
- 10 weeks
The Architectural Imagination teaches how to understand architecture as both cultural expression and technical achievement. The first part introduces the idea of the architectural imagination through perspective drawing, architectural typology and the challenges of writing architectural history. The second part treats technology as a component of architecture and shows how innovations have enabled new aesthetic experiences or disrupted long traditions, changing what could be built and even what counts as architecture. The third confronts architecture's relationship to its social and historical contexts and its power of representation to create collective meaning and memory.
Analyses of exemplary buildings are paired with hands-on drawing and modelling exercises, so you learn to read architectural representations and produce basic drawings and models of your own. It is self-paced, ten weeks long at 3 to 5 hours per week, and rated introductory. Harvard lists the course as free to audit on edX, with a verified certificate for $249.
What you’ll learn
- Read and analyse different forms of architectural representation
- Explain the social and historical contexts of major works of architecture
- Produce basic architectural drawings and models
- Assess how technology has changed what architecture can be
Who it’s for
Prospective architecture students and anyone who wants to read buildings more closely; includes drawing and modelling exercises.
Source: Harvard Online (opens in a new tab) · Verified · Report a change
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