Course Syllabus

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Visual Journal A

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VJ_CanvasImage1_800x320px.jpg

Semester & Location:

Fall 2022 - DIS Copenhagen
Type & Credits:

Elective - 3 credits
Major Disciplines:

Architecture, Design, Visual Arts
Prerequisite:

One studio art course at university level
Faculty:

Courtney Coyne-Jensen, cdcj@dis.dk
Program Director:

Natalie Jeffers-Hansen, njh@dis.dk
Time & Place:

Thu 10:05-13:00 in Skindergade 12-02 (aka The Fire Station)

Course Description

In this course, ‘visual journal’ (VJ) is approached and understood as both a theoretically-situated and experimentally-driven endeavor. It is both noun and verb — a tool and a daily praxis. As a tool, the VJ is engaged with as a constantly evolving construct – a collection of material and immaterial processes, traces, and visualized results. As a praxis, VJ'ing includes drawing and image-making approached and practiced as ways of observing, investigating, analyzing, situating, as well as creating and speculating upon propositional conjectures.

The VJ assignments and field studies focus chiefly on analyzing different aspects, qualities, and scales of built environments (architecture, urban design, furniture design, graphic design - design "from the spoon to the city"). The assignments and field studies are grounded in phenomenological practices; a (re)turn to situated and relational ways of knowing, whilst also resisting anthropocentric primacy. In this course, emplacement, embodiment, and enaction call for engaging with lived experiences and the everyday as the primary bases for inquiring, meaning-making, and understanding.

VJ'ing is primarily an individual endeavor in this course, however about 1/4 of the assignments provide opportunities for collaborative drawing. Collaborative works occur mostly after midterm. In VJ, students learn through a combination of  in-class exercises and demos, on-site drawing assignments, required readings, and homework exercises. Regardless of one’s academic major, VJ'ing supports students' learning in conjunction with other DIS courses, study tours, and independent lines of inquiry. All materials created throughout the semester become vehicles for students’ individual analytical and artistic developments as well as for critical, collective dialogues.

Co-requisite                   

A university level drawing course.

Learning Objectives

  •  To acquire the training/practice 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 in which we participate in.
  • To obtain deeper knowledge of the various approaches/theories methods/techniques essential to examining, abstracting, re-structuring, recording and visually communicating design potentials, problems, and solutions.
  • To advance the notion of re-presentation 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, practices, projects, and philosophies.

 

Faculty

Courtney D. Coyne-Jensen (CDC), Architect MAA / PhD / MPhil / BArch 

CDC is an architect and urbanist working with projects situated in the nexus of teaching-practice-research as a unity. In addition to teaching in DIS, she also teaches architecture and design in the University of Copenhagen and the Royal Danish Academy, and is a Ministry-appointed Examiner for all artistic higher education programmes in Denmark. CDC has prior lived in ZA, NZ, DE, UK, US, IN, BS, and SE, as well as being an invited speaker in JP, PT, CA, AU, IT, and FR. She has published and exhibited globally and won several international grants. CDC warmly welcomes collaborations with others dedicated to architecture and design as critical inquiry, social impact, and serious play.  (Pronouns: she/her & they/them)

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.
  • Edwards, Betty. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: a Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence. J.P. Tarcher, 1979.
  • Frascari, Marco. Eleven Exercises in the Art of Architectural Drawing Slow Food for the Architect's Imagination. Routledge Press, 2011.
  • Gehl, Jan. Life Between Buildings; Using Public Spaces. The Danish Architectural Press, 2001.
  • 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.
  • Pallasmaa, Juhani, The Eyes of the Skin; Architecture and the Senses. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 1996.
  • Plummer, Henry. 'Realm of the Landing' in Companion to Contemporary Architectural Thought. Edited by Ben Farmer and Hentie Louw. Routledge, 1993, pp. 368-377.
  • Sim, David. Soft City; Building Density for Every Day Life. Island Press, 2019.
  • Unwin, Simon. The Entrance Notebook. www.simonunwon.com (Accessed 01 January 2017)
  • von Miess, Pierre. Elements of Architecture; From Place to Space. Van Nostrand Rienhold, 1986.

 

Assignments

Students will be challenged with a series of required visual journal assignments (both 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 re-presentation. Students are hereby also encouraged to evaluate their inquiries, discoveries, and reformulations, and to create new strategies and tactics for approaching architectural re-presentation as lines of inquiry.

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

NB: If students plan to include visual and textual notes from any other courses in their visual journal(s) 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 both the Midterm and Final. Numbering and entitling the assignments with post-it tab is suitable during the 2 main assessment periods. Any work not easily identified during assessment will earn ‘0’ (zero points). 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. Midterm assessment will only be given if the journal is turned in on-time by the stated deadline. In one's visual journal is handed-in late for Final assessment, it will be automatically down-graded by one letter for each day it is late.

Approach to Teaching

Visual Journal is taught in via a series of in-class lectures, demos, and exercises, as well as weekly field studies to relevant buildings and public spaces in Copenhagen, and by undertaking independent readings and homework exercises.  In each of the class sessions, new methods, thematics, and lines of inquiry are presented and tested. Students have the opportunity to receive both ongoing one-on-one and collective feedback from the professor.

Expectations of the Students

Every weekly assignment must be fully completed to share in plenum at the start of the following class session. It is moreover expected that students complete the required readings in advance of the given session, as well as provide constructive criticism to classmates in group reviews. Students are also expected and encouraged to be experimental and collaborative in their visual journaling, whilst at the same time endeavoring to deepen their understanding of embodied and emplaced approaches to studying and drawing built environments. All students are expected to develop a high-level of communicative clarity, critical rigor, crafts(wo)manship, and care in all aspects of their work in this course.

Evaluation and Grading

The following will be used in the evaluation of students' visual journals:

  • Extent of in-depth and inventive inquiries demonstrating a diversity of appropriate representational approaches and media, which 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
  • Evidence of experimentation 
  • Overall engagement with the visual journal(s) on a daily basis — both inside and outside the bounds of this course (i.e. linkages to other courses, study tours, as well as everyday life)

Grading

Assignment

Percentage
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 across the semester

 20%

Required Materials and Equipment

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. Key suggestions and examples for VJs will be presented during the first week of the term

For this course, you must supply your own visual journal. Recommended size: A4 or A3 (or a square of A4 or A3). Minimum size: A5. A standard, ready-made, bound sketchbook is suitable and these can be purchased in all the local art supply stores. The visual journal may be either hardbound, spiralbound, or accordionbound — hardbound is recommended.  It is highly suggested that students  ‘trick out’ their visual journal (i.e., not rely in the journal's ready-made format in terms of paper size,  orientation, and binding) as part of the ongoing processes of developing one's journal(ing) across the semester.

A diversity of drawing materials and representational media will be explored in this course. However, we will principally use graphite, charcoal, ink, sepia, gesso, and collage. Students are encouraged to engage with media the media they prefer, but also to come out of their comfort zones and to be norm-critical about their chosen media. Students should always endeavor to choose and use the drawing media and means of projection relative to the questions and sites at-hand. Experimentation is to be balanced with refinement and mastery. Media should be used both strategy and tactic.

Academic Regulations

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

 

Course Summary:

Date Details Due