The course seeks to explore architectural books by focusing on examples selected from the past and present and by combining three perspectives. Firstly, it discusses their contents and literary characteristics together with their material forms and reception practices. Secondly, it draws the portraits of architects not only as their writers and producers, but also as readers and bibliophiles in a more general sense. And thirdly, it examines some private and public libraries as spaces of their reception and collection, as buildings designed by their writers, and as contexts that shed light on their time. Accordingly, the course aims to provide students with a comprehensive framework to understand architectural books by encouraging them to be active readers and writers of their own books.
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
1) Understand the roles of reading and writing in architectural production,
2) Be equipped with skills to approach architectural books within the temporality and spatiality of their literary and material forms and reception practices,
3) Develop creative and critical tools for analyzing readings and for producing their own writings,
4) Broaden their background of architectural literature and enrich their architectural vocabulary through extensive reading and writing exercises directed towards compiling a brief “lexicon.”