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Arch 179 Syllabus, Summer 2007________________________________________________________________________FIELD SEMINAR IN ARCHITECTURAL AND URBANHISTORY______________________________________________________________________________This draft: June 22, 2007Arch 179 / Professor Paul Groth 8-Week Summer Term, 2007 / 3 units* / CCN 13775Fridays 9-4:30; six hours of lecture on site each week, plus an hour for travel and lunch Organizational meeting, 9 AM Friday, June 30, 104 Wurster Hall, followed by our first field trip (10 AM to 4:30 PM) *Note: This course must be taken for 3 units. We use the Arch 179 heading for other courses, with variable units; hence, variable units may appear as you register. However, when students for this version of Arch 179 register and pay their fees, they must register for 3 units. UC undergraduates, $221/unit; UC graduate students, $310/unit; visiting students, $250/unit. Traveling on foot and by BART—and through on-site study of the architecture, urban design, andcultural landscapes of Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and Pleasanton—students in this field course will explore the built-environment history of the American city since 1850. Student expenses will include the course reader, textbook, BART fares, and meals. Note: the first class meets for the entire time period. Enrollment limited to 20 students. No pre-requisites. Both undergraduate and graduate students are welcome. The goal of this course is to introduce ways of seeing various building types, street and block forms, land use patterns, and other cultural features of the Bay Area as records of repeating processes of American urban history: cyclical periods of investment and disinvestment, migrationand immigration, connection and disconnection, reinforcement of individual and social identities, day to day maintenance and care, economic production, and consumption. This will NOT be a course simply about high-style buildings and their designers. We will examine high-style designs within their contexts of ordinary, everyday urban space. This implies a balance of settings from monuments and official civic spaces to vernacular buildings; from work places (such as offices, workshops, factories, and stores) to home, leisure, and other consumption settings—all seen as people have changed them over time. The course has only one trip to the post-1945 suburbs, assuming that most students will be familiar with suburban settings.The course will also explore the sedimentation of social and economic relationships that have brought American cities and buildings into being; the constant negotiation of identities, meanings,and memories within American buildings and cities; the issues of representation of built environments; and the roles of interpretation of built environments for the public. Wherever possible—through excerpts from guidebooks, web sites, historical maps and photographs, archival drawings, and library sources—we will compare selected representations and interpretations of Bay Area design with our on-site observations and discussion, emphasizing the place-making and explanatory roles of designers, clients, developers, owners, renters, writers, teachers, politicians, community activists, and other social groups. Attendance. The main components of field courses are first-hand site experiences and short, on-site lectures and discussions that help students learn how to see and think about urban space. Hence, your attendance must be full-time. The only exceptions are days when you are certifiably 7Arch 179 Syllabus, Summer 2007ill or have a certified family emergency. You will be allowed only one unexcused absence without grade reduction. Field trips, like vacations, are a lot of fun; unlike vacations, they require diligent work and alertness. You will not be having a beer or wine at lunch on any trip! At all sites (as in all good seminars) you will be expected to have done the preliminary reading, and to be curious, pay attention, ask questions, and raise speculations. Short two-page reaction papers. In addition to the readings to be completed before each field trip, and being prepared to discuss those readings on site, students will write 2-page reaction papers about two of the eight field trips (that is, about a third of the students each week will be writing a reaction paper about that week’s field trip). At the second class meeting students will sign up for which weeks they will write about. Sample reaction papers from prior terms are included in the course reader. A process analysis. There will be no final exam, although all students will be asked to write a 4-page to 5-page, double spaced, final paper due on the next-to-last week of the course, exploringthe evidence (or lack of evidence) of one general process of urban change as observed throughoutthe course. At the beginning of the course, students will be assigned or will choose one particularprocess to observe throughout the course. Sample process analysis papers are also included in thecourse reader. At the last course meeting, the afternoon of our last day, students will give a five-minute “executive summary” of their findings, for discussion and comparison.Grading. Participation in class, 60%. Two page reaction papers, 20%. Process analysis and presentation, 20%. Contacting Paul Groth. Summer office hours are by appointment, best arranged by E-mail. Office: 597 McCone Hall, in the Department of Geography. Office phone 510-642-0955. Home phone: 415-695-1544. E-mail (I typically read E-mail only once a day, often in the evenings, at home): [email protected]. Required reading. One text will be required: Peter Booth Wiley, National Trust Guide to San Francisco (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), $19.95. In addition, at least one xeroxed article or book chapter will be required for each week, collected in a xeroxed reader available at Copy Central, 2560 Bancroft Way. These readings will explore various genres of local literature or interpretation of local sites. Useful reference books you may want to consult: Allan B. Jacobs, Looking at Cities (Cambridge: Harvard U Press, 1985) out of print, ca. $40 usedGray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) $16.95Sally Woodbridge, John M. Woodbridge, and Chuck Byrne, San Francisco Architecture (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992)Sally Woodbridge, ed., Bay Area Houses, new


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