Course Syllabus

 

                                 Photos: © C.D. Coyne-Jensen 

Semester & Location:	Spring 2024 - DIS Copenhagen
Type & Credits:	Elective - 3 credits
Major Disciplines:	Architecture, Urban Design, Design, Visual Arts
Prerequisite:	At least one university level drawing course
Faculty:	Sarah Ruck Alfast (current students please reach out to faculty via Canvas Inbox)
Time & Place:	Thu 10:05-13:00 in N7-A23

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.

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 various theories and techniques (approaches and methods) essential to examining, abstracting, re-structuring, recording and visually communicating design potentials, problems, and propositions.
• To advance the notion of re-presentation as forms of ‘visual thinking’ by developing a VJ — as praxis and tool — for expanding one’s abilities in visual acuity, visual communication, and overall design literacy and creativity.
• To develop an individual VJ — as praxis and tool — for more deeply probing, evaluating, and reflecting upon one’s own design processes, practices, philosophies, and projects.

Faculty

Sarah Ruck Alfast Dip.Arch (Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow University, UK, 2008). BA Hons including exchange year to (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, 2007). Assistant Architect at Groves Raines Architects 2006-2007. Assistant Architect at Frank Harmon Architect pa, NC, USA 2009. Collaboration with arki_lab, Copenhagen 2012. Urban Design Journal and Visual Journal Lecturer at DIS, 2010-2014. Architect at Schulze + Grassov, Copenhagen 2014. Founder of sradrawings 2016. With DIS since 2010.

Readings

The specific readings are listed in the weekly individual assignment briefs and must be completed before the given class session. The required readings are available on Canvas under Modules 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 are challenged with a series of required weekly VJ assignments (both in-class and take-home), which are structured to help one in rethinking, reframing, and resituating their practices and notions of re-presentation within wider fields of discourse. Through a thoughtful and rigorous VJ'ing praxis, we endeavor to eradicate previous prejudices about the limits and potentials of re-presentation. Students are hereby also encouraged to evaluate their inquiries, discoveries, and reformulations, and to create new tactics and strategies for approaching (architectural) re-presentation as lines of inquiry.

Each assignment explores a specific subject, theory, method, and/or material to encourage students to be experimental in expanding their re-presentational abilities (most specially free-hand VJ drawings 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) must include:

• Entries from all of the required weekly field study and take-home VJ assignments (clearly identified and labelled, including dates and times)
• Visual notes from the lectures, discussions, and readings, as well as evidence of ‘connecting lines’ to other DIS (design) projects and courses
• Evidence of ‘connecting lines’ to other lines of inquiry that lay outside the bounds of university work; i.e., independent, self-motivated VJ'ing

NB: If students plan to include visual and textual notes from any other courses in their VJ(s) for this course, then these notes need to be thoughtfully integrated. Otherwise these ‘other notes’ should be restricted to a separate notebook/journal altogether; and thus not be submitted as part of the VJ assessment/grading.

All work in the VJ(s) for this course — including every required field study and homework assignment — must be clearly identified (titled, dated, etc.) for assessment purposes at both the Midterm and Final.  Any work not easily identified during the two main assessment periods will earn ‘0’ (zero points). The Midterm Assessment will be indicative of the student's progress over the first portion of the semester, but will not be factored into the final course grade. Midterm Assessment will only be given if the VJ is turned in on-time by the stated deadline. If one's VJ 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

The course is taught via a series of in-class lectures, demos, and exercises, as well as weekly field studies to relevant buildings and public spaces in Copenhagen, in addition to undertaking independent readings and exercises.  In each class sessions, new methods, thematics, and lines of inquiry are presented and tested. Students are given opportunities for receiving both ongoing one-on-one and collective feedback from the professor.

Expectations of the Students

The weekly assignment must be fully completed to share in plenum at the start of the following class session, and it is expected that students provide constructive criticism to classmates in all plenums. Moreover, students should complete the required readings in advance of the given session. Students are also expected  — and encouraged — to be experimental and collaborative in their VJ'ing praxes, whilst at the same time endeavoring to deepen their understanding of emplaced and embodied approaches to studying and drawing built environments. All students are expected to develop a high-level of communicative clarity, critical rigor, creativity,  crafts(wo)manship, and care in all aspects of their work in this course.

Workload

The general rule of thumb is that students are expected to spend approximately 2-3 hours of work/study/prep time outside of class for each hour that they spend in class. VJ assignment will only be started during class time, and it is therefore required that all assignments be completed as homework before the next class session.

Evaluation

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

• Extent of in-depth and inventive inquiries, demonstrating a diversity of appropriate re-presentational approaches and media, which delve into the key questions raised throughout the course and to those questions stemming from students' own lines of inquiry
• Quality and depth of analytical developments (including a questioning of the dominance of ocular-centric re-presentational practices/methods and notions of embodied vision)
• Communicative attributes of drawings (visibility of intentions on various levels)
• Level of craft evident in the re-presentations and in the VJ as a whole
• Evidence of on-going self-reflection and self-evaluation via drawing
• Evidence of experimentation 
• Overall engagement with the VJ(s) on a daily basis — both inside and outside the bounds of this course 

Grading

Assignment	Percent
Completeness, content and quality of in-class and home assignments and overall quality of the journal	60%
15 Independent entries from field studies, study tours and own individual excursions and research	20%
Preparedness and engagement in class, development and performance across the semester, and attendance	20%

Visual Journal Materials and Equipment:

For this course, each student must supply their own sketchbook (visual journal / VJ). It is required that all students have a VJ with them for the start of the first class session. The VJ must be brought to — and utilized in — each and every class session. Key suggestions and examples for VJs will also be presented during the first week of the term.

Recommended Journal size: A4

 A standard, ready-made, bound sketchbook is suitable, and these can be purchased in all the local art supply stores. Hardbound is recommended.  It is highly suggested that students ‘trick out’ their VJ as part of the ongoing processes of developing one's praxis across the semester (i.e., not relying on the ready-made format in terms of paper size,  orientation, and binding).

You can buy these with a student discount at Tutein and Koch, Farvergade 8, CPH and Stelling City Kunst Artikler, Amagertorv 9,  and for no discount but for affordable and good quality Papers and supplies, try Papirlageret, Nørre Voldgade 11.

1 Sketchbook:  A4 Landscape or Portrait hard bound sketchbook with good watercolour tolerant paper.
3 Graphite Pencils: 2B, 4B and 6B lead pencil
1 White Colouring Pencil
Drawing Pen: Artist Drawing Pen Black ( 0.3 or 0.5) Please no ballpoint pen.
1 Glue Stick
1 Watercolour Brush of 'average' quality 
6 pieces of black construction paper or black Canson paper cut to A4 or A3 size  (NB: Cheapest is to either buy a big sheet of black paper at Tutein&Koch and then cut it down to size your self OR team-up with some classmates and buy 1 pack of A4 black construction paper together 'family style')1 large piece of A1-size white paper with good 'tooth' & matte finish - and not cut into smaller pieces. (NB: This will be needed for one of the exercises towards the 2nd half of the semester, and you will be reminded approx. 1 week before of it being needed for class. So, no need to buy it from day-1 unless you prefer to have all 'set' in advance.)
Paper materials (after approval) of varying texture and formats will come in useful for some of the assignments.

A diversity of drawing materials and re-presentational 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 the media they prefer, but at the same time, to come out of their comfort zones and be norm-critical about their 'default' media. Students should always endeavor to choose and use the drawing media and means of projection relative to the specific questions and the sites at-hand. Experimentation is to be balanced with refinement and mastery. Media should be used both tactic and strategy.

Students from last semester have suggested bringing the following from home if you already own them because they can be helpful to use in the course and because they are likely less expensive than in DK: A4 or A3 sketchbook; charcoal; 2B pencil (or softer); kneaded eraser; scissor or xacto knife; one color medium; glue stick; tape; foldable measuring stick/tape.

Academic Regulations

Make sure to read the Academic Regulations on the DIS website, including the regulations concerning: 

• • Course Enrollment and Grading  
  • Academic Expectations and Honor Code 

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