This seminar examines the theme of exactitude as a design and constructional theoretical method in the creative processes of seminal architects over the past one hundred years. Conceived to readdress the concept of the classical in architectural thought and practice (understood not as style but as a rational process of distillation, clarity, economy, and syntax), the seminar emphasizes how fundamentals derived from this mode (unity, composition, proportion) have shaped the work of leading modern architects. Concepts addressed are the universal, the tectonic, permanence, cultural continuity, and the vocation of the architect. Representative practices are contrasted with other methodological modes that stem from the organic, the decorative, the parametric, and the local. Works studied include those by architects, historians, literary/artistic figures, and theorists such as Perret, Garnier, Le Corbusier, Valéry, Nietzsche, Said, Calvino, Mies, Scully, Niemeyer, Kahn, Vidler, Frampton, and Eisenman.
