EX | Designing "Backwards"

Building and Design Analysis on the Historical Object

The exercise in the summer semester concludes the four-semester introduction to architectural history with a practical research project. The individual research tasks lead the students directly to the historical building, which is to be investigated in many ways. The analysis of the specific building form with measurements and drawings is carried out on the object in the course of the semester and precisely documents the structural condition of architecture in its appearance with all the changes due to time.

The exercises are assigned to different topics, which are supervised in groups of various sizes. The course of the exercise takes place in three phases: At the beginning of the semester, two lectures explain, on the one hand, the method of analytical drawing and, on the other hand, various fundamentally important elements that have always constituted architecture, such as wall and support or door and entrance. They form the basis for a second intensively supervised phase in which the concrete building – beginning with a joint excursion – is examined both in its urban context and as an individual building. Finally, the elaborated drawing of a building detail is used to develop the thematic focus of the final oral presentation.

In this semester, the following building tasks or building types will be considered in the course of the exercise:

Group 1 – Neo-Classicism in Aachen (Bruno Schindler)
Group 2 and 3 – University buildings in Aachen (Tobias Glitsch)
Group 4 and 5 – Town Houses in Aachen (Sara Dolls)
Group 6 and 7 – Neo-Gothic in Aachen (Yannick Ley)