Jan 26, 2017 08:06 AM EST By Emily Marks, UniversityHerald Reporter

Harvard University Graduate School of Design has announced that it will soon offer a free online architecture course. It will be entitled "The Architectural Imagination." In its official website, Harvard confirmed that students will "learn how to read architecture as a cultural expression as well as a technical achievement." The course will include detailed analyses of famous buildings from a range of historical contexts. It will also have hands-on exercises in drawing and modeling.

"The Architetural Imagination" will be taught by K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory; Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Harvard, Erika Naginski, Professor of Architectural History; Director of Graduate Studies, and Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology; Technology Director of Research. It will be taken through edX.

The course will start on Feb. 28, 2017. It will take 10 weeks, with 10 modules. Students can expect to put in about 3 to 5 hours per week.

The first part of the course will provide an introduction to the idea of architectural imagination as an ability that mediates sensuous experience and conceptual understanding. Perspective drawing and architectural typology, two examples of architectural imagination, will be explored using video presentations and practical exercises.

The second set of modules will focus on technology's role in the realization and understanding of architecture. The last set of modules will aim to analyze architecture's complicated relationship to its social and historical contexts as well as its audiences, achievements and aspirations.

Students enrolled in the course are expected to learn how to read, analyze and understand different forms of architectural representation. They should also be prepared to study about social and historical contexts behind major works of architecture and to have basic principles in order to produce their own architectural drawings and models.

According to Architecture Now, Harvard's program is just one of the seven current or upcoming free architecture courses offered by schools such as Delft University of Technology, the University of Tokyo and ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

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