BENV1015 History of Design Thinking Assignment 2 Brief Term 2, 2025 | UNSW

BENV1015 Assessment Details 

You will produce drawings with text that analyses the traditional principle of the human analogy, considered in terms of design, as well as a beholder’s sense of affinity with a building or an interior. The assignment includes 3 tasks, each comprising text and accompanying sketches.   

BENV1015 Purpose 

The assignment develops your knowledge of historical design ideas and communication skills corresponding to the course learning outcomes below. It aims to give an appreciation of the implications of past movements, practitioners, and projects for current challenges.  

BENV1015 Learning Outcomes Assessed 

CLO1: Analyse and critique a range of significant historical design ideas and practices within their social, cultural and technological contexts. 

CLO2: Reflect on historical design approaches and their relationship to your profession. 

CLO3: Communicate historical design ideas through text and visuals.  

BENV1015 Assessment Requirements 

It is expected that you work on 1 task per week. Each is worth 1/3 of the 20%. 

Sketches are to be made freehand. 

Word limits: 200 words/task. Annotations on sketches and referencing do not contribute to the word count. 

Page limits: 2 sheets of A3 paper/task.  

The text should be in essay format (full sentences and paragraphs). You are encouraged to add thoughtful annotations. These may explore relationships between buildings and lecture themes, rather than simply labelling parts. The sketches should be thoughtfully aligned to the well-researched and argued text. 

Task 4: Michelangelo’s Capitoline Palace 

By referring to Watkins’ book and additional sources, make a series of sketches, with accompanying texts, to explore how architects compose the exterior of buildings. In specific terms, you will focus on the rhythmic interplay of forms. Analyse Michelangelo’s scheme for the Capitoline palaces, noting the relationship between the larger and smaller orders. Does such interweaving enrich the exterior of a palace? Comparisons can be made with other Renaissance buildings. These could avoid the interlacing of parts, as in Alberti’s Rucellai Palace.  

On the other hand, the relevant examples could, like Michelangelo, employ a giant order. Examples include Alberti’s San Andrea and Palladio’s Loggia del Capitaniato. Your drawings and texts should consider the relationship between the orders. The distinctive nature of an order is also significant. For instance, an order in a building can be a pilaster or a column, the latter either attached to a wall or standing in front of it. Your analysis of the disposition of the parts across a façade should refer to classical notions, such as the human body’s role as a type, which informs the proportions of all aspects of a building, including the windows, doors and details. 

Reference (essential) 

D. Watkin, A History of Western Architecture (6th ed.) London: Laurence King, 2015. (Earlier editions can be used, as they include Chapter 6 on Renaissance architecture). 

References (not essential) 

J. Ackerman, “Michelangelo’s Theory of Architecture”, chapter 1 of The Architecture of Michelangelo, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1970. 

B. Boucher, Andrea Palladio. The Architect in His Time, New York, London and Paris: Abbeville Press, 1998

Task 5: Piranesi and E-L. Boullée 

The task involves you selecting images from the lecture or books. On two sheets of paper, include your own interpretive sketches of two eighteenth-century drawings. Choose these historical examples from Piranesi’s famous series of etchings, titled Carceri (Prisons), or E-L. Boullee’s projects, such as his monument to Newton. Discuss these images by referring to the inclusion of human figures. How are these people related to their accompanying spaces or external forms? Is there a critique of classicism’s regard for an analogy between the scales of the body and architecture? Can the illustrated human figures in drawings by Piranesi and Boullee add to the evocation of vast, sublime architectural forms?  

Please note that there are many texts on Piranesi’s drawings.

References (not essential) 

Chapter 8: Eighteenth-century Classicism - David Watkin's A History of Western Architecture (6th ed.) London: Lawrence King, 2015. 

S. Kostof, A History of Architecture, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, 253-67. 

E.L. Boullée, ‘Treatise on art’, in Boullée and visionary architecture, ed. H. Rosenau, London: Academy, 1976, 81-116.

Task 6: The stair hall of Garnier’s Paris Opera  

Write an essay that addresses Garnier’s belief that the people attending the opera will empathise with the lively forms of his Paris Opera. You may explore the designer’s fascination with the themes of ritual, as well as dressing as an adornment of people and a building. For Garnier, human beings and built forms are not dull but have a vivid personality and wit. He explored this in the Paris Opera, where visitors would be atÝred appropriately. Their building was also well-dressed. Opera goers are brought together to gossip in a scintillating manner, within the building’s most sumptuous interior. This is the splendid stage-like setÝng of the stair hall.  

Accompanying drawings combine the text with illustrations of the Paris Opera. In these sketches, you could reflect on the ways that citizens would dress. Try to convey the idea that their presence was taken into consideration in the dressed surfaces of the stair hall. 

References (essential: one of these) 

D. Van Zanten, Designing Paris: the architecture of Duban, Labrouste, Duc and Vaudoyer, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1987, 83-98;  

or 

D. Van Zanten, 'Architectural composition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from Charles Percier to Charles Garnier', in The architecture of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, ed. A. Drexler, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1977, 254-88. 

References (not essential) 

C.C. Mead, Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera, Cambridge, Mass. and London: M.I.T. Press, 1991. 

D. Watkin, Charles Robert Cockerell, London; Zwemmer, 1974  

P. Kohane, “Order and variety in the work of C. R. Cockerell”, Fabrications, 10, 1999, 100-111

Feedback Strategy 

Initial feedback is provided in tutorials. Feedback for the completed assignment will be given within 2 weeks of submission in the form of rubric ratings and written comments, accessed in Moodle. The aim of the tutorials is for your tutor to provide general comments each week on drawings for tasks leading to the assignment in class.   

Criteria for Success 

The assignment is assessed on the following criteria: 

• Rigour of Analysis (30%) 
• Reflection (30%) 
• Visual Communication (20%) 
• Written Communication (20%)