1000

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.

The general idea of the course is understanding the notion of proportion not so much as a formal and aesthetical matter, but an issue of meaning and significance which, giving form to the technical enterprise of mankind, brings us closer to comprehending the logical, ethical and aesthetical links that determine it. It is through this approach that we come near an ample and universal idea of architecture unavoidably connected to all knowledge, the experience of which creates a better environment and well-being.

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. 

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.

Specifically, the course covers: terrain modelling and modification, architecture Project modelling, Solar simulation and analysis, material use, principles of rapid prototyping, introduction to parametric design and its benefits, basic lighting concepts (interior & exterior), and methods of 3D-animation for architectural flybys and constructive sequences.

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.