Contemporary Arch. Thought

I am a senior at Tufts University, soon to be heading to Architectural
Grad School (maybe SCI-ARC), with a warped degree in Structual
Engineering, Architectural History, and Art Studio. My housemate and I
are currently teaching a course called Contemporary Architectural Thought
(within our university's Experimental College) to a group of fellow
seniors, juniors and sophomores. The backbone of this discussion-based
class is the seeming dilemma between architectural theory and the actual
experience of interacting with a building. Both are fascinating, but
often clash. Through field trips (i.e. Pei's Christian Science Ctr.),
abstract design studios, papers, journals, and hard psychologial,
philosphical and current historical data, we are exploring this dilemma.
We have already ammassed a large bibliography, all the way from Rasmussen's
Experiencing Architecture to Hofstedler's Godel, Escher, Bach. In class we
began very briefly with Gestaldt Theory and it's 2-D/3-D dilemma, then
explored the "formal elements" (texture, space, color, light etc.), and
are currently embarking on a brief history of architectural theory,
culminating with thoughts for the future. I know the class covers a
a large spectrum of material, so I would not ask you for a list of books
that may be interesting, but rather the one or two great books (if they
exist) relating to our broad topic. Anything and everything would be great.
Also, knowing briefly our intentions, do you have any suggestions for our
class that we could add to our brains-storming list?

If you feel your response could be important to others, please respond on
the List Service. Otherwise, send me a note at jpohor41@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx .
Thank you very much for your time.

John Pohorylo
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