Grundkurs: What is Architecture About?

In this collection of idiosyncratic lessons, architect and teacher Pier Paolo Tamburelli engages with the very foundations of architecture, proposing a series of new and open-ended perspectives on how we build the world. Developed for the ‘Grundkurs’, or ‘basic course’, at Vienna Technical University, Tamburelli’s lessons are presented through the annotated sketches that form the basis of his lectures – variously rough and precise, sarcastic and sincere, and always uniquely expressive. This volume is a rich visual sourcebook of architectural ideas that form an accessible and discursive introduction to the discipline – one which pauses on the road to grand theories to learn from the intuitive processes of notetaking, drawing, and association.

Tamburelli’s lessons are based around a series of dialectic couples, including Roof/Wall, Shelter/Memory, and Language/Action. The pairs are experimental and often provocative, offering a framework to be used to climb in the direction of architecture. Tamburelli trusts in the capacity of images to suspend the restraints of more rigorous theoretical approaches, embraces the flexible wisdom of the note, and relishes the intrigue of the cryptic messages we leave for ourselves. Reproduced here in their entirety, these eight lessons offer countless routes towards, through, and around architecture, providing newcomers and experts alike with an intimate and refreshing encounter with a millennia-old discipline.

With an introduction by the author and a text by Mark Lee, Chair of the Department of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design