ARQU - Architecture

CBU Type-A courses offer students of all disciplines a comprehensive and historical Outlook of the main topics, problems and processes that have occupied the interest of diverse disciplines, revealing their specific approaches. 3 courses (9 credits), one in each area of knowledge (Arts & Humanities, Science and Technology, Social Sciences), chosen from a wide variety in a list that is published each semester.

CBU Type-A courses offer students of all disciplines a comprehensive and historical Outlook of the main topics, problems and processes that have occupied the interest of diverse disciplines, revealing their specific approaches. 3 courses (9 credits), one in each area of knowledge (Arts & Humanities, Science and Technology, Social Sciences), chosen from a wide variety in a list that is published each semester.

CBU Type-A courses offer students of all disciplines a comprehensive and historical Outlook of the main topics, problems and processes that have occupied the interest of diverse disciplines, revealing their specific approaches. 3 courses (9 credits), one in each area of knowledge (Arts & Humanities, Science and Technology, Social Sciences), chosen from a wide variety in a list that is published each semester.

CBU Type-B courses include problems, authors, periods and specific topics of the different disciplines. They present more particular perspectives than Type-A CBUs, but also engage central and defining themes in each field of knowledge. They allow students of all faculties to delve in academic areas of their interest. 3 courses (9 credits), one in each area of knowledge (Arts & Humanities, Science and Technology, Social Sciences), chosen from a wide variety in a list that is published each semester.

CBU Type-B courses include problems, authors, periods and specific topics of the different disciplines. They present more particular perspectives than Type-A CBUs, but also engage central and defining themes in each field of knowledge. They allow students of all faculties to delve in academic areas of their interest. 3 courses (9 credits), one in each area of knowledge (Arts & Humanities, Science and Technology, Social Sciences), chosen from a wide variety in a list that is published each semester.

CBU Type-B courses include problems, authors, periods and specific topics of the different disciplines. They present more particular perspectives than Type-A CBUs, but also engage central and defining themes in each field of knowledge. They allow students of all faculties to delve in academic areas of their interest. 3 courses (9 credits), one in each area of knowledge (Arts & Humanities, Science and Technology, Social Sciences), chosen from a wide variety in a list that is published each semester.

All university programmes must include in their curriculum at least two courses (6 credits) termed CLE (Cursos de Libre Eleccion) which students must enrol in according to their interests. These courses can be freely chosen from the general offer of courses presented by every department in the university as long as the student meets the requisites of the course.

All university programmes must include in their curriculum at least two courses (6 credits) termed CLE (Cursos de Libre Eleccion) which students must enrol in according to their interests. These courses can be freely chosen from the general offer of courses presented by every department in the university as long as the student meets the requisites of the course.

Students in semester 3, 4 and 5 must take two electives courses in sciences with the totality of co-requistes required (i.e. Lab sessions, complementary sessions). The following courses are offered:

Every student must create during his career a Portfolio of his Works that shows evidence of his learning in the four areas of the programme: Studio, History and Theory, Technics and City. It is recommended that the student selects and keeps records of every Project, drawing, exercises made during each subject.

Students intending on graduating must present their portfolios within the established dates by the Academic Counsellorship of the department. The Portfolios must also be uploaded to the Behance © platform at: http://portfolios.uniandes.edu.co/

The object of this final work for minor degrees offered by the Architecture Department, is showcasing the student’s ability to confront a preliminary investigation on a specific topic, through the investigation and gathering of a minimal bibliography. In the first stage of this project, the student must propose in an adequate manner a clearly defined subject under the direction of one of the University’s professors and consult various sources of information in order to develop a document that gives account of a systematic approach to the chosen subject and his skills in bibliographical assembly and clarity of written expression. 

The object of this final work for minor degrees offered by the Architecture Department, is showcasing the student’s ability to confront a preliminary investigation on a specific topic, through the investigation and gathering of a minimal bibliography. In the first stage of this project, the student must propose in an adequate manner a clearly defined subject under the direction of one of the University’s professors and consult various sources of information in order to develop a document that gives account of a systematic approach to the chosen subject and his skills in bibliographical assembly and clarity of written expression. 

The course presents an introduction to architectural project-thinking by means of exercises that include theoretical aspects as well as practical ones. We consider that project-thinking comprises the built world, i.e. habitable space and the ideas that make it possible. In this sense, and heeding the complexities this involves, our proposition is to take on this issue from three reciprocal sides:  1. The recognition, based on the observation of cases. 2. The questioning base on critical inquiry over the observations made. 3. Transformation, based on the development of proposals framed within specific contexts.

The course attempts to refer these three instances and thus, the habitable space, understood as the object of study and from which it is possible to think on the possible ways of inhabiting present in architecture. We could thus suppose, that habitable space results from the human necessity of sheltering and giving form to the rites of individual and collective life, but at the same time, it refers to the series of elements and material components created to build such spaces. This means that an unbreakable link exists between the will to shelter and give place and the materials means to realize it.

The course extends the knowledge and skills acquired in Composition Workshop 1 with compositional exercises that handle an unlimited number of variables and imply the development of complex relations between public and private spaces. Three exercises are played throughout the course which are centred in the relation between form and structure, form and place, and form and use. At the end of the course the student must have the capacity to make complex compositional operations based on solid and coherent arguments and present them in a clear and concise manner using the adequate 3d and 2d representational tools. 
The second course also enquires into the aspects of a more qualitative order referred to two contrasting constants: the material and the immaterial, as problems that act in the definition of habitable space. 

This course intends on developing student skills by means of talks and seminars that cover the history of architecture from antiquity up to the baroque period (500 BC – 1750AC), aided by the Reading of texts, debates, visits to exhibitions and practical exercises in order to give the student of architecture the methods and tools needed to engage history as part of the practice of architecture.

This course intends on developing student skills by means of talks and seminars that cover the history of architecture from The Enligtment, up to the end of the Twentieth Century. It is aided by the Reading of texts, debates, visits to exhibitions and practical exercises in order to give the student of architecture the methods and tools needed to engage history as part of the practice of architecture.

The course is organized in 5 modules: Enlightment and Industrialization, Second Half of the Nineteenth Century, Avant-garde, Modern Movement, Postmodern and contemporary architecture, each taking 3weeks of the course. In each module, concrete activities are realized that give feedback and evaluation to the student. 

TYPE-A CBU COURSE – ARTS AND HUMANITIES

The idea of dwelling is as old as man itself, and since time immemorial man has always had a home, which, throughout history, and according to social and cultural change has acquired its particular characteristics. These characteristics make reference to the realm of the domestic life.

Today, nearly all of us have a home or house in which we act out a large part of our life, wherein our dreams are present as well as our realities; the space of the home is fundamental for the human being.  In it he has placed a large sum of his desires, becoming a part of his being; an extension and mirror of his way of understanding and inhabiting the world.

The house has two dimensions: spiritual and physical. The first dimension makes reference to the way in which we qualify space, giving it meaning. It is the existential space where memory finds shelter or as pronounced by Martin Heidegger “Language is the house of being, in its home man dwells”. The second dimension refers to the physical existence of the house: its tangible form and materialness which has been moulded throughput western history simultaneous to man’s dwelling on Earth. “Building is dwelling”.

This course presents the study of the theoretical and material dimensions of the house in western history; a study which can enable us to possibly build and explanation of how time and space has modified the architecture and ideas regarding this powerful microcosm we call house.

TYPE-A CBU COURSE – ARTS AND HUMANITIES

The course is presented as a “Humanities Course” in which the technical work, ethics, aesthetics and logic are connected through the subject of proportion.

Initially, the idea of proportion is studied in regard to different orders or systems of relations present in nature. These orders are not only formal but meaningful and have been used throughout history not only in art and architecture, but in science and philosophy. In fact, the notion of proportion that gives in the classical world to geometry, music and architecture is valid in the modern world albeit having a contemporary interpretation is very different.

TYPE-A CBU COURSE – ARTS AND HUMANITIES

Throughout history, mankind has had a constant and ancestral relationship between architecture and his body. Humans have built their edifices putting in practice daring social experiments that connect the human body with architecture, relating scale and proportion to anatomy. Such associations were established in an analogical way through metaphors, understanding architecture itself as a “body”.

Architecture has built the world we inhabit by means of the connections between the magical, religious and philosophical perceptions on our bodies and the spaces we inhabit. The link between architecture and the complexity of corporeality has always had a privileged position in the history of western culture. This is especially clear in all the tradition built from Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture, in which the human body is directly compared to the ‘body of the edifice’. With this analogy, a need to explain architecture through the importance of proportion, symmetry and harmony is borne. Nevertheless, it introduces us into a phenomenological problem.  The spatial relations have determined, up to good measure, the manner in which people react to others, in their way of speaking and listening, but above all in the perception of the world and the space that surrounds their senses.

Being the first technical area course students take, it is important to show how architecture is an activity that in which many other professions partake, being the guiding thread capable of conceiving and materializing a project. With this idea in mind, the course aims to inspire the student’s inquisitiveness about the need of a structural system, the way in which it originates different architectural forms and how such structure and other components of a building can be brought about from a logical construction procedure. The objective is to act as an incentive to students’ curiosity and develop the interest towards the observation of phenomena and relate them to the basic principles of structural mechanics shown. The starting point is discovering the necessity of a structure: the fact of our presence on this planet implies a direct interaction on nature and our surroundings, whose first physical consequence is that of experimenting weight or a force of gravity.

The Technical Workshop 2 course has the principal objective of showing that architecture is an activity that in which many other professions partake, being the guiding thread capable of conceiving and materializing a project. Out of this idea, the course cares to generate in students three basic queries: The need of a structural system, the inevitable interaction with the environment, and the necessary processes that bring about the materialization of an architectural project.

Methodologically, an attempt is made at nurturing the curiosity to observe the physical phenomena surrounding an architectural project, analyse it and applying such analysis on a basic level of project exercises. The course retakes the contents seen in Technical Workshop 1 and develops them at a richer level.

TYPE-A CBU COURSE – SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY.

The city is one of the most important innovations in history. In its creation and development, the development and trial of instruments of environmental control has been critical, making the city a constant experiment valuable to many different disciplines. This course, taught since 2004, is the result of works and courses in the fields of history and theory, urban infrastructure, settlement processes and urban evolution as well as construction and the history of it.

Discussing the city and its evolution aids in the creation of an interdisciplinary context in which the relation between thinking and technics though time is posed as a central question.  

TYPE-B CBU COURSE – SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY.

More than 3,500 million people live in cities, averaging about 50% of the world’s population. In today’s world, when the development of cities – Bogota among one of them – begins to affect productive and environmentally protected lands necessary for its sustainable growth and assurance of the food chain; problem caused by the lack of developable land. It seems necessary then, to speak of vertical densification in order to avoid an “oil spill” growth and the detriment caused to rural lands. In the case of Bogota, this would be an alternative in those zones deemed urban renewal (e.g. The Centre of Bogota), that rest within the urban perimeter.

This course equally aims to destroy the myth of high-rise building in areas of high seismic risk, which deem it impossible to build big projects given the risk of their construction. Various real examples are shown of high-rise buildings built in cities that have suffered important seismic events and how they have coped and responded to this factor.

It will be interesting to show the student how the designers of this type of building take into account other factors such as wind speed; a factor also relevant for this type of construction. Lastly, it is also worth highlighting how when land values gain an exorbitant value in cities due to their scarcity, a better use of land becomes essential to the economic and social development of cities. In this way, various examples will be explored of new buildings seen as “organic cities” where the transportation impact on the city is lessened, having a complete interior life and self-sufficiency for the population within. 

This first course in the area of ‘City’ aims to impart in first semester students, basic notions about the urban setting that produces architecture. I.e. It attempts at pointing out the relationship between architecture and the city. The course seeks to show students the characteristics and conditions of the elements that make up the city.

Additionally, the Course intends on teaching the basic methods of analysis and the use of representational tools that enable the understating of the characteristics of urban elements in specific areas of Bogota that are linked to their urban history. This aims at having students bear the skills to illustrate basic analyses that evidence a knowledge of the city and be able to propose basic interventions in public space.

This course is the second part of an introduction to city topics started in City Workshop 1. In the second workshop, the acquired knowledge will be further developed by exploring the characteristics and conditions of urban elements and the way they are grouped together to make up the city fabric. The course emphasizes the important difference between public and private space.

By the end of the course, the expectation is for the student to not only recognize the general urban features and characteristics, but be able to apply his knowledge in the study of a city, in particular Bogota, employing different methods of representation and analysis in order to understand the existing conditions allowing for an integrated synthesis and well-argued proposal. 

The offer of course has the objective of developing the skills in student in subjects related to oral, written and graphical communication, given the various tools for representation, analysis and drawing, all from a very interdisciplinary perspective of free-choosing.

MEDIA ELECTIVE COURSE. 

The bombardment of different media that aid processes of representation, generate the enquiry over their range and use in architecture and furthermore to the architecture student.

The course aims to enquire into options of uses and applications that goes beyond the drawing of two-dimensional plans and the idea of the draughtsman associated to the use of these software tools. Ideas of preview and simulation are introduced, that applied to design methods focused on 3D decision-making, aid the design process. The course’s main objective is to develop methods of us for modelling software (e.g. Rhinoceros) that allow the previewing of architectural projects in their design phase.

COMPULSORY FIRST SEMESTER COURSE.

This course has been designed specifically for first-semester students and aspires to instil in architecture students tthe basis of spatial reasoning and its representation through exercises practiced with hand drawing tools.
Being a course for starting students, it privileges drafting by hand, and pencil-on-paper skills to understand the direct relationship between concepts and drawing offered by analog techniques.

At the end of this course, students will be in a capacity to understand the relations of elements in space and their conditions in terms of scale, measurement and proportion, learned through the analysis of simple architectural elements drawn technically in different 2D and 3D views with the use of conventions of graphical architectural language.

MEDIA ELECTIVE COURSE. 

This course aims to teach the basics of architectural representation on digital platforms. At the end of the course, students will have the ability to execute and analyse drawings of basic architectural elements in different modes 2D and 3D views, with the drawing criteria belonging to the profession. 

MEDIA ELECTIVE COURSE. 

When thinking of ideas and proposals, communicating is necessary. This verb demands the appearance of a common language that enables putting forth, on the same conceptual level, that which needs to be made visible and was previously inexistent. This happens, for example, in the fields of Architecture and Design, where making a project becomes a conceptual, creative and theoretical exercise with an intention of become material. In this moment, the graphical representation becomes the common language: the fundamental tool to understand and explain the given idea and how this could materialize in the real world. The evolution of representation techniques and technological evolution of its mediums have allowed that through history, humankind has been able to represent what is seen and thought.

Recently, the appearance of languages of digital representation have allowed ideas to become lines, points, planes and volumes. This historic moment is the referential frame for the Digital Tools course. Thus, this course will focus on the creation of eloquent graphics that communicate project ideas using digital programs. 

With the aim of guaranteeing the understanding of architecture as an integrative discipline, the formative cycle creates a space of inclusion in the project workshops for the academic contents of the other areas. 

In the formative cycle (third, fourth and fifth semesters) students can choose the order in which they see the subjects by area, until the completion of the totality of courses:

• ARQU-2101 Project: Dwelling + ARQU-2104 Practical Session
• ARQU-2102 Project: Tectonics + ARQU-2105 Practical Session
• ARQU-2103 Project: Place + ARQU-2106 Practical Session 

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.
The course, Project 1: Dwelling, puts forward the study and practice of the necessary techniques for project design, in order for the architect to be in capacity of solving the problem of space and form of a building, both in its private and public dimensions and according to its use and dweller’s activities. The course gives the student the opportunity to reflect upon the meaning of dwelling, invites him to learn the principles of building organization according to its activity programs, making him conscious of the dimensions and proportions of architectural space in relation to it inhabitants, furniture and habits. This is necessarily the object of analysis, ordering, distributing, measuring, interpreting and composing, embracing the full complexity of the private building. 

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.
This course, as a course belonging to the Studio area of the formative cycle, aims to instil in students the sense of importance of technique in the formal definition of architectural projects. This is achieved through the logical use of constructive systems, structure and diverse systems of a building, enabling the appearance of a new set of compositional tools that generate more design principles. This course has the objective of understanding project-design techniques that allow for the construction of architectural form by means of the existing relation between materiality, the natural elements that govern an environment and the technical wisdom that enable the building of a project. 

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.

This course studies the link between place and the architectural project. The natural or urban place make up the places for architectural intervention where students in the formative cycle of the architecture programme must put forwards architectural solutions to different project exercises. The Studio also aims to weave learning networks between students of differing semesters with the aim of complementing the skills, wisdom and knowledge that can be obtained through the course.

Additionally, the course evidences the importance of place in the development of architecture projects through the understanding of the variables that shape, give form and determine the links between the project and the place. A triad of inseparable elements - place, tectonics and dwelling  is put forward in this course. The exercises developed during the course are based on the thorough understanding of the variables of such triad, which are wholly integrated in the final exercise.

During the formative cycle (semesters 3, 4 and 5) students may choose the order in which they enrol subjects until completing the total number of courses.

• ARQU-2201 Archetypes in Architecture + ARQU-2201C Complementary Session
• ARQU-2202 Classical Architecture 
• ARQU-2203 Modern Architecture

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.  HISTORY, THEORY AREA.

The course questions the different discourses on the idea of the origin of architecture that have structured as collective beliefs in different cultures, as well as the basis from which such discourses are born. In a first chapter, the course is centred around the western idea of architecture’s origin, founded upon two of modernity’s myths: The primitive hut and the noble savage. These ideas – still operative – are nevertheless insufficient to understand the origin and complexity of architecture and more so, become a burden for thinking.

It is necessary to travel backward ask a question prior to the apparition of architecture: Do we know what man is? What is specific about man and humanity? These questions (2^nd module) leads us to broaden the proposal stated at the time by Charles Darwin, as it is useless to ask about the origin of architecture if we ignore the biological and cultural singularities of man. The lectures will be based on recent discoveries in the fields of palaeoanthropology, archaeology and semiotics. We will discover that the fundamental difference between homo sapiens and Neanderthal man are to be found in cave and Palaeolithic art.

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.  HISTORY, THEORY AREA.

The course intends on studying the main ideas that weave the history of western architecture from Antiquity up to the eighteenth century. The course aspires to bring to the ideological and practical present the treatises, lines of thought and debates that are most representative of the different historical moments, paying special attention to the associations, sequences and ruptures between the various discourses and our present.

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.  HISTORY, THEORY AREA.

The idea of Modernity in this course is studied around the concept of the private dwelling; an area which was most certainly the great field for experimentation and area of greatest need and reflection for architects of the Twentieth Century. The label “Modern Movement in architecture” gathers the series of experiments which in Europe and North America happen in the first three decades of the twentieth century and that are made around the rationalization, standardization and serialization of architecture and which from 30s onward become generalized in the whole world. First called the ‘International Style’ – name given by Hitchcock’s MOMA exhibition of 1931 -, the movement groups a number of tendencies and responses to the world of industrialization and capital. Leonardo Benevolo, the historian which greatly promoted the use of the term, dates its start in 1919 with the creation of the Bauhaus school in Weimar.  Everything before this date must be considered a precedent to the movement: Industrial Revolution, Arts and Crafts Movement and the Avant-Garde.

In the course, the content will not be split into periods, tendencies or characteristics of the movements or people considered part of the Modern Movement. The idea is to develop along with students, the impacts of each architect on this period through chose examples. Lectures will focus specifically on the work of Le Corbusier. The students will on their part study different architects of the twentieth century. The sum of lessons and works of students will allow the discovery of what has erroneously been named “Modern Movement”.

During the formative cycle (semesters 3, 4 and 5) students may choose the order in which they enroll subjects until completing the total number of courses.

• ARQU-2310 Systems of Support + ARQU-2310C Complementary
• ARQU-2320 Systems of Habitation + ARQU-2320C Complementary 
• ARQU-2330 Systems of Construction and Budgeting + ARQU-2330C Complementary

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.  TECHNICAL AREA.

The course undertakes the study of technique in architecture regarding the structural systems and the unavoidable link to the architecture Project. The outset and definition of space cannot be separated from its technical responsibility, and from this perspective, structure is presented as the organizing principle that enables the materialization of the project and integrates the elements that conform a building.

The emphasis of this course is centred around the conceptual understanding of architecture as a skill of an analytical and purposeful nature, which this course builds upon. The main aim is to understand the structural system as a fundamental piece of the building and as the organizer of space and giver of architectural form, having the purpose of positing a scheme which guarantees, among others, the security and stability of an edifice. The problem of structure is not exclusive to the engineer, but is also the architect’s responsibility since project decision imply in many ways the choosing of a structural system, a material and a constructive process.

By the end of the course, the student must have the aptitude of suggesting a structural solution, choosing rationally between the elements and basic systems of configuration that allows him to integrate in his architectural proposition, the adequate supports, floor and roofing which guarantee the transmission of loads, rigidity of the structure and resistance in any building. To achieve this, the student is shown basic concepts and is then confronted, during practical sessions, with the resolution of problems.

As basic concepts of idea, dimension and layout of the structural system are grasped, technical thinking becomes a new source of idea and argument and not a straitjacket for architectural thinking and Project developing.

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.  TECHNICAL AREA.

The course on Systems of Habitation engages the study of the three systems involved in architecture: interior, exterior and mechanical, exposing the general theory of systems that enables de deconstruction of each system into its components and rules of integration. The student acquires the analytical tools necessary to define a project’s materialization in a conscientious and clear way. Capable of understanding and modelling the physical and mechanical behaviour of architectural elements as well as their construction process, understanding that the constructive demands of the project and its materials generate different conditions and qualities of the built space.

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.  TECHNICAL AREA.

This course is advanced on the recognition of technics as constructive processes as well as the topological procedures integrated into the architectural project. The student will acquire the theoretical, analytical and instrumental skills that enable him to confront the conceptual, material and technical definition of a project, in a conscientious, well-founded and rigorous manner.
Conscientious because the student will be capable of understating and designing architecture out of technical principles tied to constructive reality. Well-founded because the course enables reasoned ideas based on physical and technical principles for the construction of an architectural body. Rigorous because the student is sable to recognize the project as a system of integrative components and processes to be solved technically and topologically.

With the contents of the course based on the principles of conscientiousness, argumentation and rigour, and aided by the learning of technical software and simulators, the Constructive Systems course intends on becoming a group of skills and knowledge that allow the student to recognize, understand and apply the wisdom to the estimation and budgeting of an architectural Project.

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.  TECHNICAL AREA.

Starting from the definition of technical systems and their components (facades, finishes, structure, etc.) students will evidence the importance of technical definition in architecture and its implications in the creation of form. Additionally, processes for the materializing of de building are studied.

FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE.  CITY AREA.

The courses of the City Area have the intention of teaching students the knowledge and attitude of understanding the city in a wholesome manner, in its own scale and in its relation with the territory in which it is set. Thus, they engage in the historical and theoretical approach to the urban affair, with its representation, analysis and interpretation as well as the responsibility carried by the intervention of it and the reality of facts.