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Good morning, students,
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Below are the questions for your midterm take-home exam. The exam will need to be uploaded two weeks from today. I will circulate a google link for this shortly. Each response needs to be roughly two double-spaced pages in length. Be sure to include footnotes. Some of the material has already been covered, some has not. Please note that you will need to visit the newly renovated Museum of Modern Art to complete this assignment. I recommend you visit as soon as possible. Let me know if you have questions.
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Best,
Prof. V.
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1.???? Walter Gropius¡¯ Bauhaus building in Dessau, Germany can be interpreted as ¡°built manifesto.¡± Indeed, it shares much in common with the school¡¯s pedagogy. What was the Bauhaus¡¯ mission, and how does the Bauhaus building embody it? What does it reveal about the school¡¯s attitudes toward technology and modernity?
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2.???? Find El Lissitzky¡¯s painting ¡°The New Man¡± (1920-1921) in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and compare it to Le Corbusier¡¯s Modulor Man, which we will be discussing this week. What basic assumptions about the body does each artist bring to bear on their subject? How does each frame the relationship between humans and machines?
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3.???? Locate the Frankfurt Kitchen installation in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. With your phone, I want you to produce a photocollage that explains the programmatic strategies thay informs the design of this artifact. I also want you to summarize at least one feminist critique that has been leveled against this design. How would Sch¨¹tte-Lihotzky, the architect of this design, respond to her critics?
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4.???? The Museum of Modern Art currently houses a fragment of the curtain wall from Wallace Harrison, et. al.¡¯s UN building in New York. In what ways does this artifact reflect the modular character of the postwar American skyscraper? How does it differ, in terms of both its design and performance, from the cladding systems that were used for the construction of Rockefeller Center, across the street
