• Journal of architectural history
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.39-54
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• 2006

Focusing on the emergence of the basic course in American schools of architecture, in particular Gyorgy Kepes' courses at MIT, this paper studies the transformation of architectural pedagogy during the years after World War II. Kepes centered his architectural pedagogy on the picture plane, which was to function as the primary media for applying the principles of Gestalt psychology, that is the identification of the whole and its parts and the reciprocity between the internal human organism and the outside world. Kepes hence introduced a set of unconventional visual practices that were not readily assimilated to architectural conventions. Paralleling the establishment of the basic course, MIT also formulated a functionalist and spatial pedagogy with its two initial design studios, courses 4.721 and 4.722. These studios shared the notion that architectural design evolved from the inside toward the outside, an idea that took hold not just in the pragmatic environment of MIT's studios but also in conservative academic programs as well as in popular magazines, picture books, and exhibitions for the consumer public. The architectural surface became inseparable from the objects of art, furniture, and design, all of which were to be the generators of space. Hence, during the 1950s, the architectural surface provided a specific locus of intersection between the visual fundamentals of the basic course and the working principles of architectural design. Kepes, however, had by this time become disillusioned with architecture's potential as the medium of unity. Though he maintained the Gestalt logic of identity, he expanded it toward the goal of grander synthesis of society and consciousness freeing himself from the constraints of disciplinary instruction. In the case of Kepes, the mediating role of the picture plane was foregone in a regressive turn toward a primal, innocent, and direct experience.