Views, With Rooms

Evolving theories on optics, over time and place, have created a set of objects that physically model vision. Each renders vision visible and suspends diverse subjectivity in the act of seeing.  These objects offer new ways of both conceiving and constructing architecture through their imaged views, which operate outside of the conventional limits of linear perspective.  This course will examine these optical objects in order to reveal how traits of each were taken up by an architectural work that built from their views at the scale of inhabitable form and space, not only mining materiality and depth from images but also making vision an immersive bodily experience open to an expanded field of subjects.  

The pre-digital works under focus are presented as visual-spatial stories – pairs of optical objects and architectures with specific significance for vision and associated production of form and space within contemporary postdigital image culture.  Each will be considered in relation to screen-modes of seeing, today, as prompts for designing new architectures ‘of-the-image.’  We will do contemporary readings, watch films, and produce original analytical representations of the spatial conditions within a set of optical objects.  These views will be used to generate the design of a new architectural room.  These rooms will be used as a space of exhibition and display of the original drawings produced.  A room-and-view tour will serve as the virtual space for the final review for the course.   

Through visual representation and digital presentation, the work in this course will explore the possibilities of images given unusual agency in the generation of the architecture that surrounds them – inverting the trope ‘room with a view,’ through a close look at views, with rooms.  The work produced in this course will be collectively considered for inclusion, with author attributions, in a forthcoming publication and exhibition on the topic.  

Course Structure:  This course will meet synchronously once per week for a two-hour block, with breaks.  There will be an additional asynchronous hour or two of reading, watching, and consideration of course content each week as well.   

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website. If you need assistance, please contact Estefanía Ibáñez