What is beauty? What is beauty in terms of architecture? This class sought to pair eight world renowned architects with a term reflected how their work could be defined as “beautiful.” In the case of OMA and Rem Koolhaas the pairing looked at the term excess and two of his buildings (the Seattle Public Library and Maison à Bordeaux).

Titled, Excess Beauty and the Ugly (Truth) in Architecture, the two drawing exercises sought to combine the essence of OMA’s two projects under the ideas of totality, the sublime and Mary Douglas’s idea of “Matter in Place”. Totality was represented by having many small components combining into a singular picture. The sublime was suggested through an excess of boundary conditions. These two conditions were resolved by following Mary Douglas’s concept through strategic placement of linework.

Spring 2019

Critic: Carlos Arnaiz