Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 29

FUTURE CONSTRUCT

Facing page, courtesy of the subjects / This page, Karl rabe

New technologies are not only changing how
buildings are built, but also how architecture
is taught.
Teaching architecture in the classroom
poses an obvious challenge: buildings are
just too large to fit through the door. Over
the centuries, architecture instructors have
tackled this challenge in various ways, using
renderings, photographs, and models to
illustrate architectural forms. The relatively
recent explosion of new technologies, however,
has fundamentally altered the way instructors
are able to bring architecture to life.
"When I went to architecture school 20 years
ago, everyone was starting new courses in
digital design," says Tobias Armborst, Associate Professor of Art and Director of Urban
Studies at Vassar. "Now," he says, "it'd be
like having a course in using the telephone."
Computer-aided design (CAD) software such
as Rhino 3-D has become so ubiquitous most
students start immediately designing in three
dimensions.
That can have benefits as well as drawbacks, says Karen Van Lengen '73. "These
tools can quickly generate an enormous
number of options for you," she says. But
students must still create the parameters
that determine those options based on their
knowledge and the needs of the project. "You
can use the computer to produce variations
on a theme, but you are never going to pick
the right one unless you have a real understanding of what works."
Even so, the speed and ease with which
students can create new designs can free
them up to think more holistically about how
buildings fit together with the surrounding
landscape. For a class last year, Armborst
used CAD software and 3-D printing to

quickly generate models of all of the buildings on the Vassar campus. Students could
move buildings around in order to understand
the trade-offs involved in the college's new
master plan. "Students could start reading
and understanding the logic of a place, and
thinking about strategically where we could
put our resources," Armborst says.
New technologies are influencing the
teaching of architectural history, as Vassar
Professor of Art Andrew Tallon has illustrated.
He specializes in medieval architecture and
has worked with students to use drones to
take 360-degree aerial photographs of campus
buildings. He has applied such techniques
in his own work documenting the roof of
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. He uses
cutting-edge technologies like laser scanners
inside French cathedrals to generate
three-dimensional renderings of the space
down to the millimeter. That can reveal small
imperfections in the design that shed light
on how a building was built and how it has
settled over time.
He hopes to use similar technologies to
teach Vassar students how to investigate
the history of the Poughkeepsie Underwear
Factory, an abandoned 19th-century factory
that, with Vassar's assistance, has been
transformed into loft apartments, artist
studios, and businesses. Using such deep
analysis can teach students not only about
how to design better buildings, but also how
to reveal the social history of a place.
That's one of the appeals of studying
architecture at a liberal arts college, says
Armborst. "Using these architectural tools,
you can read a building like a text," he says,
"understanding how spatial relationships
relate to cultural ideas."

Professor Andrew Tallon, left, often uses drones
to help students study campus buildings.

VA S S A r Q U A r T E r LY

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018

Contents
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - Cover1
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - Cover2
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - Contents
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 2
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 3
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 4
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 5
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 6
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 7
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 8
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 9
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 10
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Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 28
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 29
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 30
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Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - Cover3
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - Cover4
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