Basic Architectural Literacy Register Now!
2 evening sessions: September 5 & 6, 2012; 6—7pm & 7:30—8:30pm
This course is designed to help people discover the visual fascination of architecture, the most accessible of the arts. Although architecture is all around us, most people miss enjoying one of life’s pleasures because they do not know how to “read” buildings. Using many examples of traditional architecture, famous as well as ordinary, the course explores why buildings look the way they do. The course covers the classical language of architecture, construction and design details of traditional American buildings, and the origins of various architectural motifs. Aesthetic principles of traditional architecture are explained by contrasting ‘literate’ with ‘illiterate’ buildings.
The course provides an in-depth but digestible understanding of architectural works both great and small, and will appeal to architects, interior designers, contractors, old-house buffs, remodelers, realtors, and just about anybody who likes to look at buildings.
Prior to the course, please be sure to follow noted historian Calder Loth’s Classical Comments on our blog.
Instructor: Calder Loth, Historian, ICAA Instructor
Location: ICAA, 20 West 44th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY
Cost/Continuing Education Hours: $160 ($110 Members); 4 AIA/CES CEHs
This course provides an introduction to drawing the Doric Order. The class begins with an overview of the Doric Type and to the terminology of its constituent parts. Participants will learn how to draw the Doric Order and review related syntax such as intercolumniation. One-on-one guidance will be provided by the instructor while participants practice drawing the order/component at their desks. Comparison will be made amongst normative versions of the Doric Type as described and delineated in key treatises such as James Gibbs, Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture. The class will conclude with a brief look at the use of the Doric type in both historic and contemporary architecture.
The classical tradition in architecture has been perpetuated and propagated in large part through apprenticeships in professional offices and the trades. This course will instruct the students in the fundamental principals of architectural detailing for domestic projects in town and the country. The course will meet four (4) times for two-hour sessions. The Instructor will visually present illustrations of architectural details and their application to apartments and country houses. The theoretical and practical aspects of classical architectural details will be explored relative to a historical context.
This class provides an overview of the concept of proportion as a design tool in traditional architecture. It is presented in the form of lectures and demonstrations. The content includes an explanation of the concept of symbolic or qualitative number; an introduction to Pythagorean and Platonic numerical philosophy; the relation of number to beauty; the derivation of the ancient musical octave; a discussion of the Golden Section, its mathematics, geometry, relation to philosophy, and particularly its role as geometrical “logos”; and the connection of these ideas to the numerical-geometrical canons of classical architecture. These ideas are applied to historical archetypes, such as the four-column portico and the small house, through demonstrations using arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic ratio methods. The course may be taken as an introduction to these ideas or as a review for those who have some background with the subject. 
This course engages the student in the practice of traditional architectural drafting. Many students have little or no knowledge of traditional drafting via manual and pencil technique due to the preponderance of drafting now done via machines (
As an American architect, one must understand American architectural precedent and its particular sources and origins. The premise of this course is that in order to design well in the Classical/Traditional manner, one must be knowledgeable of historical precedent and its use, and understand how it can guide one’s work. This is not a history course. The goal of the course is to discuss an architectural design methodology by looking at particular American architects and how their study of history impacted their work. This seminar course will explore aspects that distinguish American Classical Architecture through its origins with presentations and class discussions. 
Although the Five Classical Orders of Architecture are commonly understood to be intrinsically related to Tectonic realities, a more considered study of how even the most basic of the Orders, the Tuscan, is presented in the Canonical Treatises—points to a much more nuanced and surprising reality. Through drawing the Canonical Tuscan as enshrined in the Three Standard Architectural Treatises, and then, encountering, in-the-flesh, and more closely studying a range of Built Tuscans in this city (here, examining this Order in relation to its contingent realization in complex monuments), we can begin to uncover those deep undercurrents which reveal the nature of Architecture as an Art. This all too brief course cannot provide a comprehensive introduction to the Art of Architecture, but it can lay the groundwork for such a study. In the first three sessions we shall set out to encounter the Textbook Tuscan by drawing it in several of its pedagogic incarnations. In the fourth session we shall venture out into the City to learn from the Tuscan in the context of built monuments. The closing session shall be in the form of a seminar. Reflecting on our journey together with the humble Tuscan, we might then start to discover as well—that we have also been learning all along about how the Ancient Greek Orders are nonetheless still present, and alive, in this, the most taken for granted of the Renaissance Orders. Required texts for drawing and reflection are provided in-class. 
An introduction to, the study of Architectural Rendering in Wash. Students are introduced to and guided along the path of H. Van Buren Magonigle’s detailed lessons in India Ink Wash in an atelier environment. Among the topics covered are wash rendering materials, India Ink wash, toned ink wash, full color wash, shades and shadows, atmospheric perspective, and sheet composition using examples of the Beaux-Arts drawing type, the analytique. Classes are conducted primarily in a studio format, with formal lectures, hands-on instruction, and demonstrations. View a video from last year’s course here.
This course provides an introduction to drawing the Ionic Order. The class begins with an overview of the Ionic Type and to the terminology of its constituent parts. Participants will learn how to draw the Ionic Order and review related syntax such as intercolumniation. One-on-one guidance will be provided by the instructor while participants practice drawing the order/component at their desks. Comparison will be made amongst normative versions of the Ionic Type as described and delineated in key treatises such as James Gibbs, Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture. The class will conclude with a brief look at the use of the Ionic type in both historic and contemporary architecture.
Leon Battista Alberti’s much-celebrated Ten Books on the Art of Building are the first comprehensive theoretical writings on Architecture since Greek and Roman Antiquity. Significantly, they would then become the authoritative argument for the Classical in Architecture for the next several centuries, remaining thus until the Neo-Classical Revolt of the later 18th century. And yet—they are not Alberti’s sole work to explore the fundamentals of the Architectural Art. That neglected work is Alberti’s On the Art of Painting. This class offers an introduction to Alberti’s foundational reflections on Architecture, framing them through this indispensable work on the Art of Painting. The course includes a visit to the European Painting Galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.