Architecture: The Art of Seeing (18+)

The opening session is dedicated to important movements in the architecture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including Hi-tech, Postmodernism, Deconstructivism, nonlinear architecture, and minimalism. Participants will find out about the origins of these movements and practice identifying similarities and differences between them.

The participants will learn what architects themselves appreciate in architecture, what they consider bon ton and mauvais ton, and how the “good” and “bad” norms have evolved in the past hundred years.

In this lecture, the course instructor Anastasiya Golovina will focus on the history of restoration and preservation of monuments. Participants will learn to distinguish between present-day new-builds and scientifically restored houses.

Why doesn’t the roof fall down? How do you construct a colonnade rather than palisade, and erect safe skyscrapers or large buildings? The lesson will provide an idea of the possible solutions to a variety of constructive complications in building design.

This session is based around unusual shapes in housing design and will feature round and pyramid buildings, as well as houses on pillars. The instructors will explain the meaning of form as such and how it may be affected by certain ideas, moods, and the overall zeitgeist of an historic era.

Architecture does not appear static for a moving person—it unfolds in front of the viewer like a motion picture. The lesson will reveal what tools architects use aiming to turn this picture into a compelling spectacle.

During this lecture, the educators will discuss the segregation of interior design into an independent branch of design. What differentiates interior designers from architects, and interior design proper from renovation—these are the questions posed during the class that will also provide a look at interior design today

Pedestals, architraves, cornices—the participants will learn the history of selected architectural elements: how they are being preserved and transformed, how they continue to exist in modern buildings, or cease to be.

Course instructor Vladimir Yuzbashev will demonstrate the results of the so-called “conveyor architecture”, meaning rapidly built houses made of pre-prepared modules.

During the final class the instructors will talk about the notions of urban studies and environmental design, and will explain why these directions are so popular today, using selected examples from international architecture.