Dan Tornheim

Codes are examined as explicit as well as tacit instances of social values, which reflect cultural boundaries between the built environment and human behavior. Students investigate the notion of confinement and explore the possibilities, as Michael Sorkin put it, where codes, through 'acknowledging the gravity of permanence and the oppressions of extent,'seek, in their limits, 'not to restrain associations, but to free them.' While codes are a means through which society speaks to the architect, their compliment, specifications, are investigated as a vital architectural component of architectural expression. In order for an architectural vision to be manifest in the world, it must be communicated in a common manner both comprehensible and commonly valued. In courts of law, the written always trumps the drawn, even in cases where the drawing is worth a thousand words. In addition to basic proficiency in specification writing and the surrounding professional and legal processes, students also gain crucial understanding of the role of specifications in allowing the practitioner to best control the material articulation of their architectural propositions.