Talking Architecture

This seminar is intended to contribute to the Public Events Program at Harvard GSD.

During this third version of the course, students will team up to produce questions for one video interview with a visible figure in the field. This interview will be a spin-off of one Architecture Department-sponsored public lecture held during the semester. It intends to extend the conversations between this guest and the GSD community. In this term, we will focus on one building, which we will visit, film, and include in the edited conversation.

Students will work in groups to craft questions for the live conversation. Then, students will ask questions directly during the interview. Teams of students will also set the stage for video recording the in-person event, testing new ways to represent this conversation.

Another group of students will be responsible for shooting the selected building in relationship with the interview's content, with the possibility of mixing actual footage with 3D and physical models of the project. Students will also experiment with editing the interview before it is published on the GSD YouTube channel —with various experts in the field of videography visiting the course to review the students' video-edition progress.

Asynchronous time will focus on question formulation, interviewee background, and building research through formal (Frances Loeb Library) and informal sources (the Internet). Students in charge of stage production, site visit, or edition will also prepare their proposals during the asynchronous time. This hybrid course will have consecutive modules of two online sessions followed by two in-person sessions until the end of the term —with roughly half of the study focused on pre-production and the other half on editing the final video as one group of students with different tasks.