Buildings and Cities: A Global History

Course Overview

The course aims to introduce important monuments in the history of architecture, as well as tools for analysing the built environment. While the focus will be on the buildings themselves, they will also be considered in relation to the political, social, economic and cultural circumstances surrounding them. The course will survey architectural culture in various parts of the world over a broad span of history from the prehistoric through the modern era. Emphasis will be given to architecture as the product of cultural conventions, individual practitioners, and modes of knowledge within which they operate, such as ritual, technological, scientific, historical and philosophical discourses. Students should use this course as an opportunity to develop their eye for composition in two and three dimensions, aesthetic discrimination of detail, ability to see buildings as part of a larger social and cultural fabric, and their ability to convey perceptions and critical judgments.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Professional/Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning 

Teaching and learning strategies for this course will include: 

A minimum of 36 contact hours, typically to include interactive group teaching, co-curriculars, individual meetings, and in-class presentations and exams.

Course information and supplementary materials are available on the University’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Students will receive individualised developmental feedback on their work for this course.

Students are required to attend and participate in all the formal and timetabled sessions for this course. Students are also expected to manage their directed learning and independent study in support of the course.

Assessment

Formative

Students will be formatively assessed in class through class activities, and during office hours. Formative assessments are ones that do not count towards the final grade but will provide students with developmental feedback.

Summative

Further information on the structure of summative assessment elements can be found in the Summative Assessment Briefs.

Feedback

Students will receive feedback in a variety of ways: written (including via email correspondence); oral (within office hours or on an ad hoc basis) and indirectly through class discussion.

Feedback on examinations is provided through generic internal examiners’ reports and are made available to the student on the VLE. For all other summative assessment methods, feedback is made available to the student either via email, the VLE or another appropriate method.

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is used as part of the approval/modification process only.

Books

• Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, and Mabel O. Wilson, eds., Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).
• Francis D.K. Ching, Mark M. Jarzombek, and Vikramaditya Prakash, A Global History of Architecture, 3rd edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2017.
• Francis D.K. Ching, A Visual Dictionary of Architecture, 2nd edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012.
• Margaret Fletcher and Robbie Polley, Architectural Styles: A Visual Guide. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.
• Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design Since 1880, 4th edition. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
• Hugh Honour, John Fleming and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, 5th edition. New York: Penguin, 2004.
• Mohsen Mostafavi, ed., Ethics of the Urban: The City and the Spaces of the Political. Zürich: Lars Müller/Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2017.
• Antoine Picon, Ornament: The Politics of Architecture and Subjectivity, 2nd edition. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
• Xuefei Ren and Roger Keil, eds., The Globalizing Cities Reader, 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 2017.

Indicative Topics

Students will typically study the following topics:

• The language of architecture
• Architectural drawings
• The classical orders
• The problem of ornament
• Construction techniques, materials, site and the role of the patron

Version History