Department:

Urban and Landscape Design

Course Leader:

conf.dr.arh Vlad Eftenie

Learning outcomes:

The discipline aims to familiarize urbanist students, as future specialists, with the urban enviroment. The city is regarded as a complex organism, defined by the architectural, urban and social dimensions, those being inseparable. City, architecture, can not exist outside the human presence. Based on this, a good knowledge of architectural and urban space and of the human nature are necessary conditions for making a viable professional gesture. The everyday life is defined by an indefinite number of layers - a difficult environment. It’s in depth research requires some suitable tools with increased acuity. The use of the photographic instrument brings together – in balance, both an objective and a subjective aproach, requiring the involvement of specific skills. Raising awareness, increasing the capacity of observing and understanding of the city and the people who inhabit it are necessary goals in the urbanist formation.

The valuation of everyday life elements is aimed, equally with the definition of the architectural-built environment. Yet, not only the major architectural elements are important. The urban scale embraces the city with successive layers whose synthesis can provide access for a knolidge widening. Awareness of the role of buildings in the city, of people, their dynamics in relation to the built space or other people, of the architect, the awareness and openness in front of seemingly insignificant but important details, the perception of what seems to be real – all are elements aimed directly to personal and professional development of the student, future urbanist.

Content:

1. City / people / urbanist: photography as a means of communication and a research tool.
2. Short history of photography: techniques, photographers, genres.
3. The "ingredients" of the urban environment.
4. Space sequences, urban micro-event. The everyday life.
5. From reality to the image. Objective and subjective representations.
6. The skills of the urban planner as a vivid observer and photographer.
7. Observation methods, tactics and strategies. The urban "immersion".
8. Light and space in the urban photographic approach.
9. Specific urban photography techniques. Crop and depth of field.
10. Time, concomitant and decisive moment.
11. The photographic frame : composition, dynamics, balance, rhythm.
12. From heterotopic towards a poetics of the urban space. Ephemeral and emotion.
13. Evaluation and analytical interpretation of the image.
14. The visual- narrative discourse. The urban portrait.

Teaching Method:

Interactive course with multimedia projections and urban incursions which includes:

- Lectures of the owner and guests - prestigious specialists
in the fields of architecture, philosophy, photography - 40%
- Photographic explorations (practical work) - 20%);

Assessment:

Individual research on various photographic subjects (20%)
Oral examination - individual presentation of a photo essay - at the end of the course (20%)

Bibliography:

1. BARRETT Terry, Criticizing Photographs, Fourth Edition, ed. Mc Graw Hill, New York, 2006
2. BARTHES Roland, Camera luminoasă, col. Balcon, trad. Virgil Mleșniță, ed. Idea Design & Print, Cluj,
2009
3. BERGER John, Ways of Seeing, British Broadcastin Corporation and Penguin Book
4. CONSTANTINESCU, Dinu Teodor, Fotografia si arhitectura, Ed. Tehnica, Bucuresti, 1984
5. EFTENIE, Vlad, Fotografia, instrument metodic de cunoastere si investigare in planul imaginii urbane,
Ed. UAIM, Bucuresti, 2012
6. FEININGER, Andreas, Fotograful creator, Ed. Meridiane, Bucuresti, 1967
7. HALL Edward T., La dimension cachée, ed. Seuil, Paris, 1978
8. LYNCH Kevin The Image of the city, The M.I.T. Press, Massachusetts, 1960
9. MIHALI Ciprian - Inventarea spațiului (Arhitecturi ale experienței cotidiene),
ed. Paideia, colecția Spații imaginate, București, 2001
10. MILLER Denise, Photography’s multiple roles, The Museum of Contemporary Photography,
Columbia College, Chicago, 1998
11. SONTAG Susan, Sur la Photographie, Collection Choix-Essais, Christian Bourgois
editeur, Paris, 2000
12. SCHULZ Christian Norberg - Genius Loci, Pierre Mardaga editeur, Bruxelles, 1981