Syllabus
Eight weeks, in this order
Each session is ninety minutes: an hour of material and half an hour of questions, which usually overruns.
Why buildings are the shape they are
Materials, span and money. Almost everything follows from these three.
Reading a facade
Rhythm, hierarchy and the places where a building tells you it is lying.
Windows
The single most reliable way to date a building from across the road.
What was changed
Scars, infill and the bricked-up doorway that explains the whole street.
The street as one object
Why terraces work and why the gap between two of them is never an accident.
After the war
System building, and how to look at it without contempt.
Conversions
Mills, chapels and banks, and what a building resists being turned into.
Walking your own street
You bring photographs and we read them together.
About the course
Do I need to know anything first?
No. Several people each cohort have never read anything about architecture.
What if I miss a week?
The recording is up the next morning and stays for a year.
Is there homework?
There is looking. About twenty minutes a week, on a street you already walk down.