U.C. Berkeley History of Art

Histart 190G

AMERICAN/BRITISH ART: AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE AND MODERNISM (4 units)

What does it mean to be modern in America? This course surveys the multiple responses embodied in our architecture over the past century and a half. How have architects responded to the need to express a modern American identity through our public and private architecture? What sources have they drawn from, and what other factors shaped their choices? In promoting design strategies aimed at supporting new, more modern lifestyles, what entrenched conventions did progressive architects, from Frank Lloyd Wright and Bernard Maybeck to Michael Graves and Peter Eisenman, seek to change?

If shifting attitudes toward class, race and gender relations contributed to design polemics, how have other factors such as engineering and new building technologies changed the way we view and use the land? How have roads, bridges, reservoirs, dams, and sewer systems determined where and how we live, work, learn, shop, worship, and relax? If architecture can effect social change, how has it changed our expectations about space, our notions of comfort, privacy and of community? Lectures will be supplemented with regular discussion periods and field trips to Bay Area buildings and monuments.