ARCH 4315 / 5315 Nature and American Architecture University of Texas at Arlington, Spring 2013 Tues 2:00-4:50, ARCH 329

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1 ARCH 4315 / 5315 Nature and American Architecture University of Texas at Arlington, Spring 2013 Tues 2:00-4:50, ARCH 329 Dr. Kate Holliday kholliday@uta.edu campus phone: Office and office hours: ARCH 416, Tuesday, Wednesday, 11-12:30 The best way to contact me is through ; do give me 48 hours to answer. If I haven t answered by then, feel free to resend. If you cannot come to office hours and would like to chat outside of class, please do schedule an appointment I am happy to answer questions, provide guidance, etc. Course description: This course examines the many roles that the idea of nature has played in the making of American architecture. From the influence of nature as a transcendent spiritual force in the early days of transcendentalism to contemporary issues of sustainability, American attitudes toward the landscape have shaped the form and theory of architecture and urbanism. Major themes discussed include organic architecture; the science of nature; the commodification of nature. We will consider American patterns of urbanism, suburbanization, and sprawl and discuss regionalism and response to climate across the varied geographies of North America, especially in relation to the South and Southwest. The course format is heavily geared toward discussion and weekly readings from theory and history will ground those discussions. Course goals: Students will add to their knowledge of American cultural and architectural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Written and oral communication skills, visual analysis skills, as well as a focus on research skills, critical thinking and reading are developed. Evaluation: Final grades are based on class participation and attendance (15%), discussion leadership and questions (15%), a site visit report written for our architecture student s guide to DFW (20%), and final research paper and presentation (paper 30%, presentation 20%). Assignments: 1) Reading. Come prepared to class every week by doing your reading. Bring your reading packet. 2) Discussion leadership: Each student will be responsible, with a partner, for leading class discussion once during the semester. For this assignment you will 1) prepare a list of questions to consider as they read that you will hand out to your classmates the week before 2) come to class the next week ready to encourage thoughtful discussion about those questions. Class discussion should encourage active and critical engagement with the ideas in the readings. Your response may center on questions you have about the reading, on why you agree or disagree with an author s position, on buildings or places the readings call to mind, etc., etc. The essential element is to engage the texts rather than passively skimming through them.

2 3) Site visit report: Students will choose a site in Dallas-Fort Worth to visit and to evaluate in terms of the themes we discuss through the semester. The basic requirement will be a 1,000 word essay with bibliography (the standard length of most building reviews). More information on the assignment will be distributed in a hand-out; for now know that these reviews will form the kernel for a pilot project for a web-based architecture student s guide to DFW. 4) Research paper and presentation: Students will choose a topic related to the themes of the course in consultation with the instructor. A class presentation of 20 minutes and a final research paper of 12 pages of text, with illustrations, notes and bibliography additional will be due during finals week. A paragraph describing your topic and a bibliography is due in Week 5; a draft of the paper will be due in Week 9 we will conduct a peer review of the papers in class. More information on the assignment will be distributed in class. Class policies: Attendance is required. This is a once-a-week class; if you miss it, you have missed a tremendous amount. More than one unexcused absence may result in lowering of the final grade. Excused absences are granted with timely official documentation of illness (eg, a doctor s note). I do not accept late assignments. Look at the due dates in the syllabus, record them, and plan ahead! Make up Policy If you miss an assignment or quiz, your grade will be recorded as zero unless you provide official documentation of a medical emergency. You must inform me immediately not the next day, next week, etc. (Consider it this way: if you miss work, do you call in sick the next day?) Look at your syllabus now and mark your calendar all dates of assignments are clearly listed. Note that I will call doctor s offices to verify you were there. Please do not fake notes it will be considered academic dishonesty and be cause for failure of the assignment (see below). Academic Integrity In the past students have found forming study groups useful for reviewing material together. Learning is more productive when it comes in a variety of contexts after hearing a lecture and taking notes it will sink in far more effectively if you then talk about it as well. I encourage you to discuss course material and quiz review questions with each other as long as the work you execute during our quizzes, microthemes, and out of class writing assignments is entirely your own. Plagiarism and other forms of cheating are serious academic offenses. Suspected violations of academic integrity standards will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct. Students found to have cheated or committed plagiarism will receive a failing grade on the assignment. Everything must be put away during quizzes and theme assignments no notes, phones, pagers, ipods, etc. and you may not look at other students papers or talk to one another. If you are uncertain about standards of academic honesty and ethics, please consult UTA s student code of ethics or visit: All students should complete UTA s unit on recognizing and avoiding plagiarism: Electronic Communication I will use your UTA assigned addresses to send class announcements when necessary. Please be sure to either check your UTA address or have it forwarded somewhere that you do check. I do not discuss grades via e mail for privacy reasons. If you have a question about grades, please ask in person. Information about MavMail is available at

3 Drop Policy Students may drop or swap classes self service in MyMav from the beginning of the registration period through the late registration period. Drops can continue through a point two thirds of the way through the term or session. It is the student's responsibility to officially withdraw if they do not plan to attend after registering. Students will not be automatically dropped for non attendance. For information about impacts on financial aid see Academic Accommodations Any student requiring an accommodation for this course should simply provide official documentation in the form of a letter certified by the staff in the Office for Students with Disabilities, University Hall 102. Information regarding diagnostic criteria and policies for obtaining disability based academic accommodations can be found at Student Support Services If you are having difficulty in this course (or any others) please do ask for help. Ask me, our TA, or call the Maverick Resource Hotline at , send a message to resources@uta.edu, or visit There are many counseling services available that can help with a wide variety of issues that all students face, including time management and study skills, language issues, stress, etc. Do not hesitate to take advantage of them. Plagiarism and other forms of cheating are serious academic offenses and will be grounds for failure of the assignment. If you are uncertain about standards of academic honesty and ethics, please consult me and UTA s student code of ethics or visit Schedule of class meetings 15 January Week 1: Introduction Dell Upton, Nature, Chapter 3 in Architecture in the United States (Oxford University Press, 1998). 22 January Week 2: America as Nature Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ( ), in Leland Roth, ed., America Builds (New York, 1983), Thomas Cole, Essay on American Scenery, American Monthly Magazine 1 (1836): Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836), selections. Henry Thoreau, Walden (1854), selections. 29 January Week 3: American City vs. American Country: The Single-Family House A. J. Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses (1859); (New York, Dover reprint), selections. Thomas C. Hubka, "H. H. Richardson's Glessner House: A Garden in the Machine," Winterthur Portfolio 24 (Winter 1989): Daniel Gregory, Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House (Rizzoli, 2008), selection. Meet with instructor about research projects. Sign up for a time during class today.

4 5 February Week 4: Parks: Nature in the City Frederick Law Olmsted, Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns (1870). Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca, NY: 1992), selection. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, chapter 5 The Uses of Neighborhood Parks, Choice of location for site visit due in class. 12 February Week 5: Organic Architecture Louis Sullivan, A System of Architectural Ornament According with a Philosophy of Man's Powers (1924). Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (New York, 1943), selections. Claude Bragdon, Architecture and Democracy (1918), selection; in Mallgrave, ed., Architectural Theory (vol. 2), One paragraph statement of research topic along with bibliography due in class. 19 February Week 6: Regionalism and American Architecture Lewis Mumford, The Skyline: Status Quo [The Bay Region Style], New Yorker (11 Oct. 1947), Stephen Fox, Regionalism and Texas Architecture, in Canizaro, ed., Architectural Regionalism, John Howey, ed., The Sarasota School of Architecture (MIT Press, 1997), selection. 26 February Week 7: FIELD TRIP #1 WATER Meet at 2 pm in Fort Worth at the Water Garden in the plaza; if it is raining meet in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel with your rain gear. Feel free to bring cameras, sketchbooks, etc. Charles Moore, Water and Architecture (Abrams, 1994). 5 March Week 8: Nature as Commodity: American Suburbs Wilson, William H. "Adapting to Growth: Dallas Texas and the Kessler Plan." Arizona and the West 25 (August 1983): Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth (New York, 2003) Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago, 2005) 12 March SPRING BREAK NO CLASS 19 March Week 9: PAPER DRAFT DUE Bring two copies of your paper to class. Peer review and progress reports will be conducted during the class meeting. 26 March Week 10: FIELD TRIP #2 LAND Meet at the entrance to the Nasher at 2 pm. If it is raining, meet inside in the lobby with your rain gear. 2 April Week 11: Spaceship Earth and Do-It-Yourself Architecture

5 Macy, Christine and Sarah Bonnemaison. Architecture and Nature: Creating the American Landscape (London, 2003), selection. Bruce Goff, Bavinger House and Price House, Global Architecture (Tokyo, 1975), selection. Simon Sadler, Drop City Revisited, Journal of Architectural Education 58 (2006): Whole Earth Catalog, 1968, first issue. Browse other issues on-line at wholeearth.com 9 April Week 12: Student presentations 16 April Week 13: Student presentations *Thursday April = David Dillon Symposium plan on attending* 23 April Week 14: Student presentations 30 April Week 15: Conclusions

6 Selected bibliography Overviews and cultural histories Cronon, William. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1996 Macy, Christine and Sarah Bonnemaison. Architecture and Nature: Creating the American Landscape. London: Routledge, Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 (1964). Mumford, Lewis. Roots of Contemporary American Architecture: A Series of Thirty-Seven Essays Dating from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present. New York: Grove Press, O Gorman, James F. Three American Architects: Richardson, Sullivan, Wright, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Roth, Leland. American Architecture: A History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Upton, Dell. Architecture in the United States. Oxford History of Art. New York : Oxford University Press, 1998; particularly Chapter 3, Nature. Nineteenth Century Barth, Gunther. City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, Greenough, Horatio. Function and Form: Remarks on Art, Design, and Architecture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Knopf, Major, Judith K. To Live in the New World: A. J. Downing and American Landscape Gardening. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Maynard, Barksdale. Architecture in the United States, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 200 Miller, Angela. The Empire of the Eye: Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993 Novak, Barbara. Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, New York: Oxford University Press, Peck, Amelia, ed. Alexander Jackson Davis: American Architect, New York: Rizzoli, Truettner, William H. and Alan Wallach. Thomas Cole: Landscape into History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, Organic Architecture Kathryn Holliday, Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age (New York, 2008) Jonathan Massey, Claude Bragdon: Crystal and Arabesque (Pittsburgh, 2009)

7 Parks, Cities, and Public Space Thomas Bender, Toward an Urban Vision. Cranz, Galen. The Politics of Park Design Margaret Crawford, Building the Workingman's Paradise. Karl W. Deutsch, On Social Communication and the Metropolis, Daedalus (Winter 1961): Dolores Hayden, Linden-Ward, Blanche. Silent City on a Hill Stein, Clarence Toward New Towns for America. Schuyler, David The New Urban Landscape Leach, Neil, ed., The Hieroglyphics of Space: Reading and Experiencing the Modern Metropolis (New York, 2002). Rosenzweig, Roy and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People Glazer, Nathan and Mark Lilla, eds., The Public Face of Architecture: Civic Culture and Public Spaces. New York: Free Press, esp. the essay by Hannah Arendt, The Public Realm: The Common and Richard Sennett, The Public Domain. Schneekloth, Lynda H. and Robert G. Shibley, eds., Placemaking: The Art and Practice of Building Communities New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,1995. Seamon, David, ed., Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing: Toward a Phenomenological Ecology Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, Ian Abley & James Heartfield, Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Suburbs, Sprawl and the Commodification of Nature Journal of Urban History, vol. 27, no. 3 (March 2001), special issue on suburbanization. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). Martin, The Organizational Complex Michael Conzen, The Making of the American Landscape Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream Wright, Gwendolyn. Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge, Mass., 1983).

8 Dallas/Fort Worth "Planning, Public Works, and Politics: The Trinity River Reclamation Project in Dallas," in Planning the Twentieth-Century American City, ed. Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996), Michael Q. Hooks, "The Role of Promoters in Urban Rivalry: The Dallas-Fort Worth Experience, ," Red River Historical Review 7 (1982), 4-16 William H. Wilson, "Adapting to Growth: Dallas, Texas, and the Kessler Plan, ,"Arizona and the West 25 (1983), William H. Wilson, "'This Negro Housing Matter': The Search for a Viable African-American Residential Subdivision in Dallas, ," Legacies 6 (Fall 1994), 28-40