Course Syllabus

Jump to Today

Visual Journal 

 DIS Logo

VJ_CanvasImage1_800x320px.jpg

Semester & Location:

Fall - DIS Copenhagen
Type & Credits:

Elective 3 credits
Major Disciplines:

Architecture, Design, Visual Arts
Prerequisite:

One studio art course at university level.
Faculty:

Sine Lindholm, sinelindholm@gmail.com
Program Director:

Henning Martin-Thomsen, ht@dis.dk
Time & Place:

Thu 10:05-13:00 in Skindergade 12-02

Description of Course:

The Visual Journal is understood as a constantly evolving construct—a collection of material and immaterial traces, processes, and results. With an understanding of drawing as a tool for investigating the artistic practice, all materials produced throughout the semester become a vehicle for the student’s individual development, as well as for critical collective dialogues.

Using a visual journal on a daily basis will develop the individual’s ability to draw, think critically, and analyze in three dimensions and across different scales. The student will learn through on-site analysis, drawing exercises, home assignments, and daily drawing practice how to understand the physical environment that surrounds us and see beyond the immediate image.

The course is a process-focused, experimentally-driven design tool which supplements and aids student learning in conjunction with other courses, study tours, and all other lines of inquiry both inside and outside the school.

Co-requisite                   

A university level drawing course.

Learning Objectives of the Course: 

  • To acquire the training needed for the further development of one’s analytical and experimental drawing inquiries, as well as one’s expertise in recording the diverse conditions and possibilities of the physical environments that surrounds us and which we participate in.
  • To obtain deeper knowledge of the various approaches/theories and methods/techniques essential to examining, recording, and visually communicating design potentials, problems, and solutions.
  • To advance the notion of representation as a form of ‘visual thinking’ by developing a visual journal—as praxis and tool—for expanding one’s abilities in visual acuity, visual communication, and overall design literacy and creativity.
  • To develop an individual visual journal—as praxis and tool—for more deeply probing, evaluating, and reflecting upon one’s own design processes, projects, and philosophies.

All VJ assignments and field studies are grounded in phenomenological practices—a return to bodily knowledge and perceptions. Both phenomenology and this course call for engaging lived experiences as bases for understanding.  In VJ, the various weekly studies embody a shift from asking “What is the world?” and “What is drawing?” to “How do I experience the world?” and “How do I choose to represent it?”        

Faculty:

Sine Lindholm: Architect MAA (Aarhus School of Architecture, 2014). Own practice since 2014 working with a phenomenological focus and experimental approach in architectural assignments, competitions, and artistic work from stay at artist residencies. Former employed at SLETH, AVPD, BriqGroup. With DIS since 2016.

Readings

All readings must be completed before the class meeting for which they are mentioned. All readings are found on the Visual Journal Canvas page or in the DIS Library.

  • Crowe, Norman, and Paul Laseau. Visual Notes for Architects and Designers. Wiley, 2012.
  • Cullen, Gordon. Concise Townscape. Routledge, 2015.
  • Voss, Henry. Perspective Drawing.
  • Cooper, Douglas. Drawing and Perceiving: Life Drawing for Students of Architecture and Design. Wiley, 2001.
  • Edwards, Betty. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: a Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence. J.P. Tarcher, 1979.
  • Gussow, Sue Ferguson. Architects Draw: Freehand Fundamentals. Princeton Architectural Press, 2008.
  • Treib, Marc. Spatial Recall: Memory in Architecture and Landscape. Routledge, 2009.
  • Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place. University of Minnesota Press, 1979.
  • Laseau, Paul. Graphic Thinking for Architects and Designers. J. Wiley, 2001.'
  • Lange, Bente. The Colours of Copenhagen. Arkitektens Forlag, 2005.
  • Lefebvre, Henri, et al. Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life. Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
  • Manolopoulou, Yeoryia. Architectures of Chance. Routledge, 2017. 
  • Perec, Georges, and Marc Lowenthal. An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. Wakefield Press, 2010.
  • Perec, Georges, et al. Species of Spaces and Other Pieces = Pigeon Reader. Information As Material, 2012.

Assignments:

Students will be challenged with a series of required visual journal assignments (in-class and take-home), which are structured to help one in rethinking, reframing, and resituating their practices and notions of representation within wider fields of discourse. Through a thoughtful and rigorous visual journaling praxis, we endeavor to eradicate previous prejudices about the limitations and potentials of representation. Students are thereby also encouraged to evaluate their inquiries, discoveries, and reformulations, and to create new strategies for their approaches to architectural representation—as lines of inquiry.

Each assignment explores a specific subject, theory, technique, or materials, which encourages students to be experimental and to extend their representational abilities (most specially free-hand journal drawing in the field). At the same time, the diversity of assignments aims to deepen understandings of the manifold design issues and problems at hand.

At a minimum, the visual journal(s) should include:

  • Entries from all of the weekly required field study and take-home VJ assignments (clearly identified and labelled, including dates and times)
  • (Visual) notes taken during VJ lectures, readings, and discussions with evidence of ‘connecting lines’ to other design projects and courses
  • Evidence of ‘connecting lines’ to other lines of inquiry which lay outside the bounds of assigned/required university projects (i.e. independent, self-motivated visual journaling)

Please Note: If students plan to include visual and written notes from any other courses in their visual journal(s) that they will be keeping for this course, then these notes need to be very thoughtfully integrated. Otherwise these ‘other notes’ should be restricted to separate notebooks/journals altogether; and thus not be submitted for VJ assessment/grading.

All work in the visual journal(s) for this course—including every required field study and homework VJ assignment—must be clearly identified (titled, dated, etc.) for assessment purposes at the Midterm and Final. A temporary post-it tab is suitable. Any work not easily identified during assessment will be marked ‘0’. The midterm assessment will be indicative of your progress over the first portion of the semester, but will not be factored into your final course grade. This assessment will only be given if the journal is turned on or before the midterm deadline. For final assessment, note that the journal will be marked down one letter grade for each day past the final submission deadline.

Approach to Teaching:

Visual journal is taught in a series of short, in-class lectures which accompany in-class exercises and/or field studies to various buildings and public spaces in Copenhagen. In the each of the eleven class sessions, a new subject and theme are introduced (based on the related text) along with new corresponding representational methods and materials. In-class assignments, field studies, and home assignments must be ready for possible presentation, critique, and journal sharing in the following session. Students will receive one-on-one support and coaching to improve their visual analytical skills.

Expectations of the Students:

Students are encouraged to be experimental and extend their representational abilities in freehand drawing, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the phenomenological approach to architecture and design. All assigned readings must be completed prior class, as students will be asked to discuss their individual responses to the readings during class. All students are expected to develop a high-level of communicative clarity, professional judgement, and craft in all aspects of their VJ work.

Evaluation and Grading:

The following will be used in the evaluation of student journals:

  • Extent of in-depth and inventive inquiries demonstrating a diversity of appropriate representational approaches and media that delve into the key questions raised throughout the course, in addition to those questions stemming from the student’s own lines of inquiry
  • Communicative attributes of drawings (visibility of intentions on various levels)
  • Quality of critical, analytical development (including a questioning of the dominance of ocular-centric representational practices/methods and notions of embodied vision)
  • Level of craft evident in the representations and in the journal as a whole
  • Evidence of on-going self-reflection and self-evaluation via drawing
  • Overall engagement with the visual journal(s) on a daily basis, inside and outside the bounds of this course (i.e. linkages to other courses and to everyday life)

Grading:

Assignment

Percent
Completeness, content and quality of in-class and home assignments and overall quality of the journal

60%

Independent entries from field studies, study tours and own individual excursions and research

20%

Preparedness and engagement in class, and development and performance during the semester

 20%

Required Materials and Equipment:

For this course, you must supply your own visual journal. A standard, ready-made, bound sketchbook available in an art supply store may be used (either hardbound or spiral). However, please note that a size/format no smaller than A5 is permitted for use as the primary visual journal. A spine-bound, hardcover A4-size journal is recommended. It is highly suggested that students create/construct and ‘trick out’ their own journal as part of the process of ongoing investigations and experimentations in relation to their individual lines of inquiry.

Key suggestions and examples for VJs will be presented during the first week of the term. It is expected and required that all students have a visual journal by the first class session. Your VJ must be brought to—and utilized in—each and every class session.

A diversity of drawing materials and representational media will be explored in connection with this course, also we will principally use graphite, charcoal, ink, sepia, gesso, and collage. Students are encouraged to engage with media and materials of their own preference, but always relative to their deeper analytical questions. Experimentation should be balanced with refinement and mastery. Media should be used as strategy!

Academic Regulations

DIS - Study Abroad in Scandinavia - www.DISabroad.org

 

Course Summary:

Date Details Due