July 2-August 10, 2012

Course Description

[IN]ARCH is an introductory studio course designed to cross the threshold into the world of architectural thinking and design. The architecture studios are formal, intensive, and structured for experimentation with physical ideas. We create through models (physical and digital), drawing,  photography, collage, montage, diagram, scanning, mapping, and writing as we work. The architecture studio will become a place of refuge to develop a new lens for seeing and understanding the world around you. In studio you will learn how to transform invisible ideas into form.

Studio lessons establish and fortify links between architecture and the allied arts. While dealing with landscape, site, function, and program, many pursuits reflect immediate and direct associations with music, painting, collage, literature, dance, theater, filmmaking, and all of design.

The [IN]ARCH studios place emphasis on the re-iterative process, three recurring methods for making things:

• Analog drawing: to connect the eye’s observations to the hand’s description.
• Digital modeling: to explore conceptual ideas by making 3-D digital models.
• Physical modeling: to embody material ideas in model form using the CED workshop.
   

See highlights from [IN]ARCH student portfolios.

Academic Lead

Keith Plymale
Continuing Lecturer in Architecture at UC Berkeley

Professor Plymale is founding partner of the San Francisco-based Volume21: Office for Architecture. V21 is a research office that makes speculative projects, constructs houses, and pursues international competitions. The architecture of V21 is propelled by studies in bodily proportion, built-in cabinetry, pre-fabrication, material technology, art, music, and the dwelling patterns of the 21st century. Research interests include: the body and architecture, construction and material technology, earthwork art/architecture, Native American architecture, Italian modernism, and the work of architect Leonardo Ricci. For ten years Professor Plymale worked with José Oubrerie, assistant to Le Corbusier at Atelier Rue de Sèvres 35. Professor Plymale received an AIA honor award for his work with Oubrerie on the Miller House, which is published extensively. Professor Plymale served as an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies (B.Arch. program) at the University of Kentucky, where he was twice voted AIAS Outstanding Teacher of the Year. Professor Plymale also has an M.S. in Building Design from Columbia University. He has taught graduate studios at Ohio State University and California College of the Arts. He has led several ambitious travel programs through Italy, the U.S., and California and taught extensively in Venice, Italy.

Philosophy

Architectural research should ultimately lead to construction but it does not necessarily begin there. The physical embodiment of theory is the clear aim of my architecture. An actionable theory must exist simultaneously in realms that are both spatial realities and timeless, transfigural realities. Model, structure, space, form, light, and color are the programmatic content of the constructions.

UC Berkeley Courses Taught by Keith Plymale

• ARCH 100A: Fundamentals of Architectural Design
• ARCH 100B: Fundamentals of Architectural Design
• ARCH 101: Case Studies in Architecture
• ARCH 201: Case Studies in Architectural Design
• ENV DES 11B: Introduction to Design
   

Typical [IN]ARCH Weekly Schedule

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