WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2009-2010       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Chicago Architecture and Urbanism,1880-2000
ARHA 345
Spring 2010
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: AMST 354

This seminar focuses on the full range of Chicago's metropolitan built environment over the two centuries of its development. Beginning with the city's regional history and early architecture before the Great Fire of 1871, this course then traces the postfire Chicago School of commercial architecture that pioneered in the development of the skyscraper. Architects considered are Henry Hobson Richardson, William Le Baron Jenney, Burnham and Root, Holabird and Roche, and Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. The politics, planning, and design of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 are studied as a prelude to the Chicago Plan of 1909, the first American urban master plan. Suburban development and architecture are considered through the early work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Beaux-Arts architecture and planning, the related the Chicago Tribune Tower competition, and efforts to implement the Chicago Plan through the 1920s were followed by the Century of Progress Exhibition in 1933. Also studied are the rise of modernist architectural culture in postwar Chicago, in the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Skidmore Owings and Merrill, and major urban renewal in the form of public housing and highway planning. Finally, we will study recent alternative approaches to affordable housing, neighborhood gentrification, and efforts at civic renewal like Millennium Park.

Essential Capabilities: Interpretation, Speaking
Interpretation: The course emphasizes interpretation of architecture and urban development and design from historical, economic, political, social, technical, and art historical perspectives.

Speaking: The course requires two extended oral presentations of individual research. Each student is asked to carefully prepare remarks in terms of analytical argument and informational content, in preparation for the final research paper.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: None
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST)
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available

Last Updated on DEC-21-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459