Previous Profiling our Courses:
Fall 2006
This ‘profile’ page will chose a different area of exceptional academic merit within its overall programme to feature, on a rotating basis. The quality and richness of NYUL’s Academic programme is nowhere more in evidence than in its Architecture and Design Courses. Courses in London extend the teaching opportunities beyond what can be made available in New York. Four distinguished academics contribute to this programme and we have chosen to focus on it for the next few months. Courses and professors are:
- V43.9671.001 Architecture in London: Field Study, 4 credits, Professor G. Stamp
British architecture is studied, from the Roman remains to the Post-Modern ITV Studios in London. Architecture, urban systems, preservation, and planning issues will be studied. While examining the past and present, the future of architecture will also be explored with an emphasis on the importance of renovating and refurbishing old buildings. There will be site visits in and around the City.
- V43.9674.001 Seeing London, 2 credits, E. Diestelkamp, T. Brittain-Catlin
The great City of London presents important aspects for a visual study of a city and its messages. This class will stress the ways to visualize the city through the keeping of a sketchbook. Walking tours to explore topics in the City will help students identify places to draw and photograph. No art background required.
- V28.9501.001 Ideology and Urban Design: Builders of Britain, 4 credits, T. Brittain-Catlin
This course illustrates the creation of the physical landscape of Britain, but particularly of London, through the working lives of the people who influenced it: the engineers, the builders, the visionaries. By taking a number of central figures and presenting them and their biographies, the student can not only build up an historical knowledge of the major monuments of the city, but can also develop a useful contextual knowledge of the personalities and the period concerned. The course thus uses the architectural, urban and engineering history of the capital as a way of introducing the student to the cultural landscape of the country.
- V43.9650.001 Designing Britain (special topics in The History of Art), 4 credits, Dr B. Hanson
British designers are playing an increasingly important part on the world stage. This course examines changing attitudes to design in Britain: from the eighteenth century, when it played a central role in the modernisation of the country, to the Millennium, when it was called upon to rekindle some lost glory. We will ask whether there are features about British design over the last 250 years which are distinctively British; and to what extent British designers have been informed by developments in the rest of the world.
Design now seems all-encompassing, and this very fact also raises broader questions. Have we overvalued this work of the mind over more traditional hand-skills? Are we becoming cynical in the face of endless “rebrandings” (which includes the rebranding of cities and whole countries)? Does design necessarily falsify, or paper over the cracks? And is it good for the planet?
Please note that this is an archived profile for general information only.
Our courses are subject to change: please check our course listings here for current class offerings.