Kent State University – College of Architecture and Environmental Design The Forces that Shape Cities – UD 55705 Fall 2012 – Steve Rugare, Instructor

Final Exam
Directions
You have one week after the studio jury to compose responses to each of the questions below. Your response to each of the first three questions should be no more than four pages (double-spaced, 11 point type). The purpose of the page limits is to force you think through what you write. Unlike a conventional, in-class essay exam, in which you would be required to “dump” your knowledge as completely as possible in a limited time span, this exercise requires you to sit back and organize your thoughts carefully. Each of the questions could be answered in many ways, using many different examples and texts that we have discussed in class, and each of the questions opens a vast terrain that would require far more than four pages to cover completely. You will be evaluated both on the quality of the ideas and information you supply and on the way in which you select and organize that material. Your responses are due to me in either electronic or printed form by 5:00pm on Friday, December 14.

Question 1

It is generally agreed that the massive growth of urban populations that accompanied the industrial revolution led to qualitative differences in the character and form of cities. Discuss at least three new phenomena in the design, administration and inhabiting of urban space that appeared in the course of the 19th Century. What specific changes in techonology, policy or society made them possible? Finally, discuss at least one design school or ideology that developed in response to these changes in the period BEFORE 1914. What theoretical propositions motivated this attempt at re-form? What do you think were the results?

Question 2

Planners and architects associated with the modernist movement produced a large number of theoretical propositions about how to design and/or re-design cities. While many of their proposals remained on paper, many informed public and private decisions about actual urban places. Looking at the ideas of Le Corbusier