Architectural Sciences

Architectural Sciences stands as a unique field of concentration in that it draws almost equally upon the natural and social sciences although classed with the humanities.

As matters now stand, with 19 applicants for the Graduate School of Design being turned away for every one accepted, the only sure road to the school led by Professor Walter Gropius is through honor work as an undergraduate in Arch Sci.

Requirements for concentration ordinarily include the intention of becoming a professional in architecture, landscape architecture, or regional planning, a certain amount of natural appreciation for form and color and the ability to visualize space, and third-year mathematics and elementary physics.

No Tutorial or Thesis

There is no tutorial in the field and no thesis requirement for undergraduates. Such faculty instruction as there is in the Senior year design problems, however, is of a personal nature while much of the learning comes through informal discussion during the long hours required in the drafting rooms.

Honors candidates have to undergo a half-hour oral examination by the Faculty of Design in addition to General Exams on the history of architectures and a 72-hour examination problem is design.

With broad distribution encouraged in economics, philosophy, sociology, and American culture and emphasis on government for future planners, the required technical courses are 36 (Graphics) and 7a (Statics) for architects, and the former alone for landscapers.

Draftsmanship Is By-Product

No course in drafting, as such, is offered since the amount of drawing required as part of the present curriculum is considered sufficient. Fine Arts courses here for the most part are probably worse than no help in understanding the School's modern approach to design.

Partial exceptions to the regular Fogg Museum fare are Professor Kenneth Conant's five half-courses in the history of architecture. Now given in cooperation with the School of Design, Fine Arts 3, 4, 5, 7 and 7b perhaps saver too much of archaeology but nevertheless remain as the basis of the General Exams.

More consistent with the objectives of the School are the three history of civic design courses by its eloquent and provocative spokesman, Dean Hudnut, in which political, economic, social, and religious factors are interpreted along with the historical. Professor Pond's 1d and 1e are equivalent courses in landscape architecture.

Introduction to Planning

Although presented as a "non-technical" introduction to regional planning, Professor G. Holmes Perkins' Arch Sci 5b tends to be weighted down with his own extensive experience and interest in the subject on all governmental levels so that architect-concentrators might well wait for the more condensed material as given in 11a.

LeBoutillier's principles of design is in many ways the heart of the whole program, but the answers given there are not always as gospel as they are presented and there is as strong a tendency toward cliches in the modern idiom as there ever was in the classic.

In beginning the Senior year curriculum, one may actually consider himself a graduate student since he joins with other First Year men in all courses. The Arch Sci concentrator therefore shortens the normal three and a half year professional course by a year.