“The nature of space reflects what it wants to be” -Louis Kahn

One of the greatest challenges of adulthood is overcoming the expectation that we have all the answers. This notion is a major roadblock to our inborn creative impulse and intellectual growth. We would like to eschew the expectation and challenge you to operate between the margins of your own perception. With existing habitable spaces as our raw material, this class will teach you how to engage with real space both inventively and systematically. We will use rules of improvisation and our innate tendencies of exploratory play to drive a systems-based, analytical design process, divided into three essential stages: visual thinking, visual analysis, and visual representation. Each stage is designed to provoke your spatial intelligence and give you the tools with which to understand, deconstruct, and reinvent habitable spaces of your own according to use patterns and functional capacity. You will learn how to use visual representation as a tool for analysis as well as a narrative device, meanwhile getting a crash course in some of the most polemic movements in art and architecture that have shaped imaginary space as well as the spaces we inhabit today. This course is fast-paced, engaging, and fun. There will be weekly readings and three assignments to augment the skills you will develop. We will meet off campus during class time slots once or twice over the three-week period. Some exposure to drawing or the visual arts is a plus, but not required.

Learn With

Teaching Team

Brendan Boyle, Toy Inventor & Partner at IDEO
Teresa McWalters, Architect and Design Researcher, M.Arch