This retired course was offered to incoming first-year students as their introduction to architectural drawing. The students in the course developed a set of measured and dimensioned drawings of a generic suburban house dating from the1960s-1970s.
For my sections, I redeveloped the syllabus around a case study house that met two criteria: it was accessible to the students and there are drawings available for the students to reference. I found that some of the historic house museums in New York City, including the Dyckman House in Inwood and the Lefferts House in Prospect Park both met these criteria (both are documented in the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) in the Library of Congress. We took the students to these houses so they could spend a day sketching, measuring, and photographing. The students were encouraged to return to the house on their own to continue to build their first-hand experience of the building, making their drawing assignment work more meaningful (application of place-based learning principles as well as meaningful learning (See Mayer, Rote versus Meaningful Learning, 2002).
Syllabus:
Samples of Student Work for Dyckman House Case Study:
Sample of Student Work for Original Generic Suburban House:
