Ken Walsh, Civil and Environmental Engineering - Technology for Interacting with Construction and Culture

2. The Big Picture: This class is not about how things are built, it’s about why , and what happens afterwards.

4. Video “Readings” Video readings augment the text with a more engaging medium. Sufficient content is available for frequent interaction.

5. “ Virtual blogs” Blogs ladder to a final project analyzing a structure.

8. Architecture and eloquence are mixed arts, whose end is sometimes beauty and sometimes use.

9. We cannot ask ‘ What ?’ in the presence of any architectural feature without also asking ‘ Why ?’… If we ask the reason why, we are brought at once to the study of the constructional facts.

10. Not infrequently men have hit upon new methods of construction in endeavoring to meet utilitarian necessities, and these new methods have stimulated new artistic expressions.

11. Mechanical invention and aesthetic feel were never separated in the minds of the Gothic builders… The Gothic movement, though wonderful as a structural organism, is even more wonderful as a work of art.

12. The ribs and bars and shafts are all at bowstring tension. A mason will tap a pillar to make its stress audible; we may think of a cathedral as so ‘high strung’ that if struck it would give a musical note.

13. When I say artist I mean the man who is building things -- creating molding the earth -- whether it be the plains of the west -- or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction -- some with a brush -- some with a shovel -- some choose a pen.

14. Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.

15. Architecture in general is frozen music.

16. Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.

17. She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never condescended to construct a decoration.

18. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.