Topics in Modern Architecture: Elemental Perspectives

Histories of architecture often interpret Alberti's "window onto nature" as the medial interface between the denaturalizing abstraction of linear perspective and another more elemental nature exterior to architecture itself. This plane, however, is often marked by a range of material disturbances, from momentary obfuscations of passing clouds, to irregularities in glass to the invisible risks of fire and finance. By reconceptualizing immaterial representations as actions made through elemental media, students address the long chains of material and technical transfers that architectural techniques assemble into "windows onto nature."