Objectives: 

*challenge critical reading skills

*introduce relationship of ideas to things

*introduce multiple uses of a variety of texts

*read text as a means to inspire the making of drawings and constructions

Choose a reading from either What is Architecture? by Paul Shepard or Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and interpret as an inspiration for a drawing as a manifestation of your impression of the text.  Lastly, use the text as an inspiration for a 3-dimensional representation, which does not necessarily have to be related to your drawing.  Focus on analysis, interpretation, abstraction, representation, critical reading, and relationship of thinking to doing.

THIN CITIES

    If you choose to believe me, good.  Now I will tell

how Octavia, the spider-web city, is made.  There is

a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is

over a void, bound to the two crests with ropes

chains and catwalks.  You walk on the little

wooden ties, careful not to set your foot in the open

spaces, or you cling to the hempen strands.  Below

there is nothing for hundreds and hundreds of feet: a

few clouds glide past; farther down you can glimpse

the chasms' bed.

This is the foundation of the city: a net which

serves as a passage and as support.  All the rest, instead

of rising up, is hung below: rope ladders, ham-

mocks, houses made like sacks, clothes hangers, ter-

races like gondolas, skins of water, gas jets, spits,

and rings for the children's games, cable cars, chande-

liers, pots with trailing plants.

Suspended over an abyss, the life of Octavia's in-

habitants is less uncertain that in other cities.  They

know the net will last only so long.

 -Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities