Art History 690STA - Nature & the Built Environment

This course explores the history of sustainable architecture with a look back to vernacular building styles and passive design strategies that addressed climatic factors. Materials studied range from indigenous traditional architecture, through the Industrial Revolution and the celebration of the machine in the 20th century. We will contrast our study of early environmentalists and their ideas for the built environment with more mainstream efforts of architects and designers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, to better understand the formation of architecture's historical canon and the environmental outliers who critiqued the dangers of the "Machine Age." We will then explore more accelerated trends of the 1960s and `70s that paralleled the birth of modern environmentalism in the wake of exposes such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Finally, the course will conclude with an examination of recent ideas surrounding "green" buildings such as LEED certification and the Living Building Challenge. Understanding the history of the built environment offers a powerful lens for understanding our environmental future. Such history shows us our mistakes and successes and will help us move forward thinking critically about how we can live in the future.