ARCHITECTURAL ANALYSIS

Curriculum: MArch Digital Media Seminar
Date: Fall 2021 and 2022
Professors: Janette Kim and Julia Grinkrug

How can we, as architects, understand the sites and publics around us? What skills must we learn to effectively observe and interpret the context of buildings we add to the world? How can we translate what we learn into the language of architectural design?

This course lays the foundations for an architectural practice that is both contextually responsive and playfully inventive. Students in this class employ speculative techniques of spatial analysis to reveal significant relationships between cities, buildings, and people.

This seminar works in West Oakland, with a focus on the San Pablo Corridor. We conduct three different kinds of analysis一systems analysis, ethnographic analysis, and typological analysis一to reveal three comparable conclusions on one central theme: maintenance. This question also relates to MArch Studio 3, which focuses on the design of a library on San Pablo Avenue. We invite students to use these different lenses of analysis to unpack an ever-more nuanced understanding of the role of maintenance in shaping social and racial (in)equity in West Oakland. (Note: the 2021 version of this studio had a slightly different focus and method, but will be folded into images here as they all relate to larger themes of Architectural Analysis and public space in West Oakland).