• Offered for Year: 2025/26

• Module Leader(s): Dr Stephen Parnell

• Owning School: Architecture, Planning & Landscape
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

To enable students to:

• Develop an awareness of the histories of architecture and an ability to learn independently about them in diverse areas of the world, encompassing both monumental and everyday buildings and spaces, their emergence in the past, and their shaping of present-day places and society.

• Recognise the range of factors in addition to design which contribute to the formal and material qualities of architecture, such as technological, social, political, economic, geographic, and cultural forces, including a preliminary awareness of architecture’s role in colonialism, resource extraction, and climate change.

• Understand historic works of architecture as cases which can inform contemporary challenges facing architects such as the climate emergency and social justice.

• Appreciate a range of forms in which architectural history can be written and presented, develop close reading skills, and a critical awareness of the inclusions, exclusions, and biases architectural histories can involve.

• Critically communicate an understanding of architectural history and its relevance using a range of written and graphic forms, informed by appropriate media, academic research, and referencing methods.

Outline Of Syllabus

The module introduces students to architecture history across the globe from the earliest civilisations to today. It is not intended to be a comprehensive survey, but to introduce students to a range of architecture histories, the narratives associated with them, and their relevance today.

Students are introduced to ways of knowing about and researching architecture and its histories so they can develop these skills later in their education and career.

Semester 1 is structured around the question, “what is architecture?” and primarily introduces pre-twentieth-century architecture.
Lectures will cover architecture histories from around the world across the ages, and talks about discovering and researching architecture history closer to home in Newcastle and ways of revealing and representing these histories.

Semester 2 is structured around the question, “what is history?”. Again, lectures will present talks on architecture, focusing on the twentieth century and its various representations in history. Other skills-based lectures, seminars, and/or workshops introduce critical thinking, reading, and writing to prepare for the assessment.

Throughout the module, architecture is presented in terms of the political, economic, social,
cultural, technological, and geographic forces which shape architectural production, including the roles that the built environment has played in colonialism, resource extraction, and climate change.
The course establishes a framework for the continuing research, knowledge, study, and appreciation of the histories of built form, the factors that produce it, its effects, and its representation in discourse.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

SEMESTER 1

A mixture of scheduled and structured activities, including lectures, readings, and tasks to be carried out individually to enable students to build their knowledge of architecture and its histories and develop the skills to locate and evaluate information independently. Learning is supported by weekly directed and independent reading, and skills practice on how to access architectural knowledge, how to interpret it and re-present it.

SEMESTER 2

Lectures for content and skills and a four-week teaching block focussed more on reading, researching, and writing skills to prepare students for their essay submission after Easter. Structured individual activities support seminars in which students discuss readings to prepare for essay writing. Skills developed are based around critical thinking, critical reading, and critical writing.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

SEMESTER 1

The poster assesses students’ understanding and interpretation of a building within a historical context that they’ve been introduced to in the lectures.

SEMESTER 2
An essay appraises the student’s understanding of themes introduced during the module and their capacity to consider buildings in terms of their historical and social context, and assesses their ability to produce a clearly written and illustrated essay using academic research and referencing methods.

Reading Lists

• ARC1015's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• ARC1015's Timetable