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ARCH 111 – ARCHITECTONICS
Professors Tamar Zinguer, Anthony Titus, and Georg Windeck

TOPO                 Topos = Site
GRAPHY            Graphium = Drawing, Writing

In a world where the virtual and artificial gradually dominate, architectural constructs defining a concrete physical relationship between the manmade inhabitation and its surroundings are still paramount.  In recent years especially, a renewed interest in the corporeality of landscapes has been manifest in architectural projects and has been the driving force of their design. This has comprised ecological concerns, as well as conceptualizing the landscape and its history. Architectures interplay with forces and systems of the site (topos). Likewise, their tectonic ideas redraw and rewrite the characteristics of the site.
During the first six weeks of the Fall semester, the studio will probe topo-graphy: the study of selected buildings of the 20th century and their specific ties to the environment.

Powers of Two - Central Park

While there was no specific designated space for a public park in the master plan of New York in 1811, by mid nineteenth century it was a general consensus that large parks for New York City would be necessary to counterbalance urban life during the new industrial era. In 1853 the land for the park was slated by the state, and a competition was held for its design. Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted won with the Greenswald Plan that took over twenty years to implement. Every inch of Central Park – spanning from 59th to 110th streets and 5th to 8th avenues – has been thoughtfully designed. This large work of design has always been vital to the city’s life and in the last 150 years has provided a lively, though changing playground for the city’s cultural life.

You are to get to know Central Park – its paths, trails, different lawns, bodies of water, rocks, structures, trees and more. You are to become acquainted with the history of the park, the forces that led to its design and the park’s subsequent development. You are to be familiar with all aspects of Vaux and Olmsted’s design – sketches, drawings and implementation. Furthermore, you are to reflect and observe on the different uses of the park and the variety of cultural functions it serves. You are to reflect on the relationship between the park and the different neighborhoods it traverses, as well as its place and role within Manhattan’s grid. Finally you are to enjoy Central Park; walk, photograph and draw, read and sketch.

Central Park addresses both the architecture of Manhattan’s grid and the structure of a leaf. You are to make two models, one with a group, the other individually.