ARC4501H S
Instructor: Wei-Han Vivian Lee
Meeting Section: L0101
Thursdays, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

"The pioneer brain surgeon Harvey Cushing asked his apprentices: Why had they taken up medicine?
'To help the sick.'
'But don’t you enjoy cutting flesh and bone?' he asked them. 'I cannot teach men who don’t enjoy their work.'"¹

"…when you get right down to it, a composer is simply someone who tells other people what to do."²

 

It is tempting to locate the essence of the architectural profession in the act of design; some might go further and say simply “architects draw”. However, before any design may occur, there is first the act of project management. Project management is the clearing within which design can take place; it is by far the most important and pervasive activity engaged by the profession. Thus one could just as easily say that at their most essential and before they can begin to design “architects manage”. Management encompasses design, and design is an act of management. When we draw a detail for example, we are in fact setting out organizational relationships for the project as a whole. The first of these is budgetary in regards to materials and construction tolerances; the second pertains to the tradespeople that will be engaged on site and the third is the schedule for the sequence of their work. A drawing can even imply by its precision and representational conventions the necessity for greater construction administration or custom fabrication; lines on a page are connected to contracts, budgets and schedules through the locus of project management.

“Building Stories” aims to document and share the project management expertise embedded in contemporary buildings by looking at the process in 10 case studies across scales, program, and locale. Each case study is predicated on the initial participation of the architect and/or the project manager in a lengthy interview process to document the entire project, from the beginning of programming and concept to the completion of construction. The primary material of the interview combined with full access to project photographs, drawings and schedules is the raw material of the lecture portion of the class. Students are expected to further research on the state of contemporary building through several structured exercises and presentations.

“Building Stories” is a seminar that integrates the subjects of construction, structures, mechanical engineering and professional practice through the lens of project management. Students will be provided an understanding into the architectural profession about how buildings are really built by contemporary practices today.

2 John Cage, A Year From Monday: New Lectures and Writings. (Wesleyan: 1967) p. ix