Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1894 [PAGE 135]

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136

UNIVEESITY OF ILLINOIS.

thought advisable in t h e courses of study in t h e architectural department, returned the same with the recommendation t h a t the changes be made, and the report of the committee was approved.

CHANGES I N COURSES OF STUDY I N T H E ARCHITECTURAL D E P A R T M E N T . '

URBANA, I I I . , July 3, 1893.

To the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. GENTLEMEN : I beg leave to recommend, in behalf of the department of architecture, t h a t authority be given and provision be made for dropping t h e second, or sophomore, year of mathematics from t h e course in architecture, substituting therefor the following professional studies: (A) 1. The architectural orders and their applications in architectural design. A careful study of t h e five orders in general and detail, with examples of their employment in t h e best renaissance buildings of Italy and France. Applications will be made in a series of selected problems, especially such as most frequently arise in American buildings. Ten hours weekly, mostly in designing. 2. The requirements and planning of buildings for the most important purposes. A series of lectures summarizing the general requirements and conditions controlling the plans of buildings for various purposes, illustrated by examples of such buildings, selected from the best European and American work. References to t h e university library for a course of reading supplementary to the lectures. The solution of a number of problems in the arrangement and designing of plans of most important types of buildings in accordance with t h e lecture. Ten hours weekly, mostly in designing. 3. The details of the principal architectural styles. The term to be devoted to a study of the structural details of the' chief architectural styles, a series of selected examples being drawn out at a large scale. The object of t h e course is to give the student a knowledge of the special forms and elements of each style in order t o enable him successfully to use these styles in his future practice. The study to be taught as a third term of the "History of Architecture" fully completing t h a t study. Ten hours weekly, chiefly in drawing. (B) Courses of study in architecture and in architectural engineering are to be found below, showing t h a t these changes can be made without interfering with the work in any other courses of study in the University. I t would require the teaching of mechanics and resistance of materials in simplified form, to distinct sections of those classes containing architects only. Not more than one per cent of the architects now in good practice have ever studied higher mathematics, or would advise a student to take these studies. The sole practical use of analytical geometry and calculus is merely as a preparation for the work in analytical mechanics and resistance of materials, as these subjects are now taught. But excellent works on mechanics abound, in which only a good knowledge of algebra is required. The subject of resistance of materials is made unnecessarily complicated as it is now usually taught, and is rarely of much practical service to architectural students, except after years of post-graduate study and practice. But it may easily be simplified so t h a t it can be taught after the freshman year of mathematics, and so t h a t a much more useful knowledge of the subject can be obtained, than is now too often the case with a student weak in mathematics.