2022 Course Offerings
The Paris Program has been designed to offer students increased flexibility in their degree programs with approved substitutions for one upper-level design studio and two seminar electives. The curriculum will be framed around three pedagogic components: traditional design studios, intensive fieldwork in the French landscape, and contextualization through on-site seminars.
D E S I G N S T U D I O : ARCH 5202
Professors: Kris Palagi, Tara Street
[Schedule TBD] This course will engage the history of designing the stage for which art is to be presented within Parisian museums and monuments. Specifically, focusing on the architectural design decisions at the scale of a museum display (this includes but is not limited to: the hardware design to hold Sculptures or Paintings, along with the display cabinets for drawings and artifacts, along with installations for communicating information). Through field sketching Architectural Details in axonometric drawings, students will document and analyze the technical, compositional, and spatial impacts of these design elements. In doing so, catalog the sensitivity of design decisions that balance function and beauty while remaining a supporting element to the “art” presented. The lessons drawn from this study will inform a series of design charettes throughout the semester.
P R O G R A M S E M I N A R : ARCH 4221_ Assembly and Scale
Professor: Tara Street
[Scedule TBD] Within residential construction in the United States, platform framing’s dominance along with firmly established code requirements have led to a uniformity in the Scale of spaces we experience ( 8’ high ceilings, 6’8” doors, and 36” wide hallways as examples). The historic and contemporary architecture of Paris–residential, commercial, and civic—will exhibit a range of the Scale of spaces for the students to experience and document. Through a Daily Journal, students capture three aspects of a given space: measured data (dimensions (height/width/length & window/door), light (FC), color temperature (Kelvins), sound (decibels)), the construction assembly (wood framed, stone, masonry, steel…), and experiential recordings (photography and narratives). Revisiting the journal, the students will compose a catalog of unique experiences with the Scale and Assembly strategies mapped and select 4 assemblies to document in a measured drawing.
P R O G R A M S E M I N A R : ARCH 5002_ Inlets
Professor: Kris Palagi
[Schedule TBD] Mayor Anne Hidalgo has recently established a Limited Traffic Zone in the heart of Paris. By restricting thru-traffic automobiles, previously lost public spaces are opening up to cyclists and pedestrian life. At the same time, Baton Rouge’s recent “Road Diet” led to the reduction of Government St. from four lanes to two and added bicycle lanes. In both, vehicular traffic has been minimized, increasing the opportunity for personal interactions between pedestrians. Unlike Baton Rouge, Parisian public squares incorporate the dramatic act of piercing the city surface to a world-renowned metro system below. At these moments, unique and beautiful architectural thresholds, or Inlets, facilitate interactions of a diverse public with each other and the history of Parisian underground architecture.
This course will explore on-site field drawing of site sections as a means to spatially bind the unique approach of the Parisian Metro entrances (inlets) with the complexity and depth of the below-grade networking. Through these drawings, we can ask how inlets in public spaces facilitate a cycle of awareness, familiarity, and possibly empathy in society.