About this course
You develop design skills through analysis of existing buildings and by solving realistic architectural problems in a Danish context. In studio projects, construct spatial models in physical and digital media and advance your communication skills in expressing abstract concepts. Studios are taught vertically, combining students of different levels. Expectations relate to you as an individual student.
Syllabus
Prerequisites
One drawing course at university level.
Short Study Tour
About this tour
Core Course Week, including this short Study Tour to western Denmark, forms an integral part of your studio curriculum by exposing you to high-quality historic and modern architecture, as well as urbanism. Not only will you discover the qualities that make a building or site quintessentially ‘Danish,’ you will also experience Danish culture from traditional cuisine, art, and concerts. You will make studies of significant religious architecture, housing prototypes, innovative museum designs, and the integration of buildings into landscapes or urban fabrics.
These sites, as sensory architectural experiences, provide you the opportunity to develop your critical observation skills and diagrammatic and representational proficiency. Simultaneously, you will be equipped with a vocabulary of design concepts, strategies, and materials, which you can apply in your own creative work in studio and beyond.
Learning outcomes
-
Study contemporary and traditional Danish architecture and landscape architecture
- Gain an understanding of Danish history, geography, and culture outside the Copenhagen region
- Develop sketching and note-taking skills for recording impressions of sites in a journal
Possible activities
-
Compare different spaces for art, including Trapholt, Koldinghus, and ARoS, and visit a traditional Danish church and the iconic Crematorium Chapel by Henning Larsen
- Study adaptive re-use and reconstruction in Koldinghus
- Tour significant urban sites in Århus from different eras, including the Town Hall (mid-20th century modernism), and ARoS Museum of Modern Art (21st century)
About this tour
As a full-year student, the Berlin study tour forms an integral part of your studio curriculum and is an opportunity to continue to develop your skills in visual analysis of design themes, and spatial and sensory impressions. As experienced architectural travelers, you have the challenge of investigating Berlin as a historically-layered urban entity and as a composite network of zones, spaces, and sites. The way the old city fabric has been reworked through constructed interventions and contemporary planning will be evident through your sensitive and critical view, and cultural experiences with the city.
You will advance your critical observation skills and diagrammatic and representational proficiency by studying the sites on the tour. Simultaneously, you will be equipped with a vocabulary of design concepts, strategies, and materials, which can be applied in your own creative work in studio and beyond.
Learning outcomes
-
Study the city as a complex amalgam of historic and modern spaces and functions
- Analyze how urban development and design expression have reacted to political events and social movements
- Develop sketching and note-taking skills for recording impressions of sites in a journal
Possible activities
-
Studying how planning and architecture connect the present to the past in areas such as Potsdamer Platz, the Kulturforum and former East German neighborhoods
- Visits to Neues Museum, Neue Nationalgalerie, and Bauhaus Archive
- Tour of the former Reichstag, now the German Bundestag
Long Study Tour
External university course
This course is taught in conjunction with the University of Copenhagen and will be taught on their campus, alongside local and international students, a short distance away from DIS classes.