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4.614
Religious Architecture and Islamic Cultures
Instructor: Nasser Rabbat
4.619
The Historiography of Islamic Architecture
Instructor: Nasser Rabbat
4.629
Mughal Landscapes: History, Heritage, and Design
Instructor: Jim Wescoat
4.286, also 11.944
Water, Landscape + Urban Design
Instructor: Jim Wescoat
_________________________________________________________
HTC@MIT Courses
School of Architecture & Planning SA+P Courses
Department of Urban Studies & Planning Courses
AKPIA at Harvard
History of Art & Architecture at Harvard
Aga Khan Program at the GSD
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4.614 (Back to top)
Religious Architecture and Islamic Cultures
Time: MW 2-3:30, in Room 3-133 (map)
Instructor: Nasser Rabbat, nasser@mit.edu, x3-1417
TA: TBA
Units: 3-0-9, HASS-D.
Class Requirements: 4 short papers (6-7 pp., 15% of the final grade each) and a final open-book exam (30 % of the final grade), and 10% of the final grade for attendance and participation in discussion.
http://web.mit.edu/4.614/www/ , also available on the Open Course Ware website
Description:
This course introduces the history of Islamic cultures through its architecture. Religious, commemorative, and educational structures are surveyed from the beginning of Islam in 7th-century Arabia to its developing into a world religion professed by one-sixth of humanity today. The survey is chronological with emphasis on distinguished patrons, influential thinkers, and outstanding designers. Representative examples of mosques, madrasas, mausolea, etc. are analyzed and their architectural, urban, and stylistic characteristics are examined in conjunction with their historical, political, and intellectual settings.
Visual media are used to elucidate the artistic/cultural varieties and historical developments of this architectural heritage. Students are encouraged to raise questions and generate debates during the lectures as well as the discussion sessions. The aim is to explore all possible venues of interpretation to better locate Islamic religious architecture within its regional, pan-Islamic, and universal and cross-cultural contexts.
Required Texts
Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar, and Marilyn Jenkins-Madina. The Art and Architecture of Islam: 650-1250. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001.
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, The art and architecture of Islam 1250-1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Recommended Texts
George Michell, ed. Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning, London: Thames and Hudson, 1978 [reprint 1984].
Robert Irwin, Islamic Art in Context: Art, Architecture and the Literary World. New York, 1997.
Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991.
Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar. The Art and Architecture of Islam: 650-1250. London and N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1987.
Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic architecture: form, function and meaning. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994.
John D. Hoag, Islamic Architecture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977.
4.619 (Back to top)
The Historiography of Islamic Architecture
Time: Tuesdays 2-5, 5-216 (map)
Instructor: Nasser Rabbat, nasser@mit.edu, x3-1417
Units: 3-0-9, H-Level Grad Credit
Prerequisite: Consent of instructor, open to advanced undergraduates
Description:
This seminar presents a critical review of literature on Islamic architecture in the last two centuries and analyzes its historical and theoretical frameworks. It challenges the tacit assumptions and biases of standard studies of Islamic architecture and addresses historiographic and critical questions concerning how knowledge of a field is defined, produced, and reproduced.
The seminar focuses on two critical issues that have emerged recently both in academe and in the architectural profession. First is the relationship between architecture and culture, a crucial query that has become one of the most debated issues in architectural and art historical circles. Second is the definition of Islamic architecture, a discursive category embraced by a devout audience but skeptically accepted by academics, which has never had a forum where it can be scholarly and critically examined without proscribed historical or ideological limits. This is especially true in the case of its presumed temporal boundaries: the polemical discontinuity from late antique to Islamic architecture, and the forced rupture between modern architecture in the Islamic world and its historical genealogy. The course aims to include both moments. But it definitely does not aim to essentialize Islamic architecture. Instead it emphasizes the cultural diversity within the Islamic context, which produced the various architectural traditions that dot the historical and geographic map of the Islamic world.
The course includes weekly reading and writing assignments and requires active participation in discussions. During the second half of the term, we will have a number of visiting scholars presenting their research and engaging in discussions with the class. A research paper is to be first presented in class and then submitted at the end of the term. Topics are limited to in-depth studies of texts, representations, and scholarly traditions. They can either be chosen from the enclosed list or should be decided in consultation with the instructor by the end of the third week of the semester. A short abstract and preliminary bibliography should be submitted by the fourth week. Required texts are available at the Coop and area bookshops. All articles and book sections required will be available on a Stellar Site.
Required Texts: Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973, 1987 2d ed.); Yasser Tabbaa, The Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival (Seattle: University of Washington Press: 2001); George Michell, ed. Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning, London: Thames and Hudson, 1978 [reprint 1984].
Background Text: Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization 3 vols. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974) Robert Irwin, Islamic Art in Context: Art, Architecture and the Literary World. (Upper Saddle River, NJ; New York: Prentice-Hall; H.N. Abrams, 1997).
Reference Tools in Islamic Architecture: http://hcl.harvard.edu/research/guides/iaa/
4.629 (Back to top)
Mughal Landscapes: History, Heritage, and Design
Instructor: Jim Wescoat
e-mail: wescoat@mit.edu
Units: 3-0-9
Level: H
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor.
Time & Location: Tuesdays & Thursdays 5:00-6:30 Room 5-216 (map)
Description:
This seminar focuses on environmental design during the Mughal empire of South Asia (16 th through 18 th centuries), a dynasty of Central Asian origins that extended over what are today the territories of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
The seminar will critically evaluate places described as gardens, cities, landscapes, and territories, along with their changing meanings over time. These sites range from tomb-gardens such as the Taj Mahal to palaces, citadels, waterworks, and pleasure gardens. They have meanings that conjoined religious symbolism with economic production, environmental functions, and political power.
We will begin with modern debates over the cultural heritage value, conservation, and design significance of Mughal landscapes. From these modern questions, which constitute "the designer's problem," we follow diverse strands of evidence that may help us reconstruct and interpret these historic places. Some students may focus on the representation of landscapes in texts, paintings, or historical photography. Others may choose to analyze extant landscape forms, shapes, and metrics. Each type of evidence raises as many questions as it answers. We will work together to weigh and synthesize the results in ways that reinterpret the history, heritage, and design of Mughal landscapes; and strive to assemble our findings in an edited report.
Each year the seminar will focus on a specific issue. In Fall 2008, we will seek to explain the transition from garden design to urban design in the late 16 th century, during the reign of Akbar, a ruler distinguished by his extraordinary combination of cultural and architectural creativity, and controversy. The sites will thus include Humayun's tomb in Delhi; the citadels of Agra, Ajmer, and Lahore; the ceremonial palace complex of Fathpur Sikri; and early Mughal encounters with Sultanate, Kashmiri, and European cultures. While Akbar's body lies in an enigmatic tomb-garden outside Agra, his legacy continues to be debated by scholars and designers over four centuries later, and we will seek to advance those debates.
4.286, also 11.944 (Back to top)
Water, Landscape + Urban Design
Instructor: Jim Wescoat
e-mail: wescoat@mit.edu
Units: 3-0-9
Level: H
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor.
Time & Location: Monday & Wednesday 9:00-11:30 Room 9-250 (map)
Description:
Water affects the design of every building, landscape, and city in aesthetic, functional, and symbolic ways. This workshop combines a systematic study of water issues with urban design projects in the U.S. and South Asia. Water has always posed integrative challenges for architects, planners, and engineers; and we will seek to build upon the history of ideas about water in these fields.
In the 21 st century, water problems will rival those of the energy sector, as will linkages between water and energy. This workshop will seek to understand how cities in wealthy countries managed to supply their populations, including many low-income residents, with reasonably safe, abundant, inexpensive, and beautiful flows of water during the 20 th century - and how those achievements can be adapted for the 21 st century. We will ask how the U.N. Millennium Development Goals can be extended to provide safe water for the 1 billion people and safe sanitation for the 2.6 billion people who lack it, through designs that are likewise safe, sufficient, just, and beautiful.
In the 21 st century U.S. cities will need to seek lessons from around the world to redesign systems that are aging and inadequate. Our investigations thus begin at home with historical and contemporary water projects in metropolitan Boston. We then shift to urban water projects in South Asia, where advances in rainwater harvesting, irrigation management, and water use efficiency warrant comparative study. The workshop will give special attention to the power and pitfalls of comparative inquiry. How can fruitful comparisons be drawn among urban water projects in India, Pakistan, and the U.S.?
Design projects will be chosen based on student interests and the urban case studies. For example, they may include rainwater harvesting, water use efficiency, wastewater reuse, stormwater management, floodplain design, constructed wetlands, waterfront development, etc. We will work together to integrate these design concepts at the site, urban, and international scales.
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