Course Schedule and Catalog

Long Title: NOZONE

Department: Architecture

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This seminar will concentrate on zoning and the transformation of space--through cultural, social, legal and political methods. This subject is a fundamental consideration in architecture and urban planning. The topic is due in part to the university's location in Houston which is the largest city in the United States without a formal zoning code--which is both a signifier and emblem of the wildcatting culture, but which is also a contested policy that comes up for reevaluation every four years. The course will begin with a condensed overview of 'zoning' that additionally will expose the representation of utopic and dystopic communities ranging in example from the settings in Ackerman's Jeanne Dielman, Tsai's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, the slums of Tondo in Manila, Olmstead's planned community of Kohler, Wisconsin, Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation to Frank Sharp's development Sharpstown in Houston, Texas. Graduate/Undergraduate Equivalency: ARCH 650.