Course Code: INTD 2005
Academic Year: 2024-2025
This course explores the cultural significance and purposes of the material culture of western civilizations up to the Enlightenment. Students explore these periods through various critical strategies with the expectation of developing a critical facility in addition to an understanding of the evolution of design through history. Emphasis is placed on understanding the many connections between the cultures themselves and the cultural production of architecture, interior design, painting, sculpture and furniture design. The course is organized as a matrix of the specific histories of ideas, spatial design, art and furnishings across historical development in four chronological units: Ancient and Classical, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque. A major research paper requires students to analyze local buildings as evidence of both historical and contemporary material culture as well as generators of ideas in built form.