NEW REQ: Your Research Paper for this course will be a 3000-word review of a work of contemporary architecture. In your review, you will draw upon some of the theories, concepts, and keywords you have encountered in the course so far. A review is not simply a description of the building or project. It should interpret, analyze, explain, situate, speculate, offer conjectures, historicize, and/or contextualize rather than simply describe. A review need not be purely positive or purely negative, but should make a strong argument for the importance of the building or project you select. You will be answering the question: why should we care about and study this building or project? Please don’t include this question in your paper’s body text. Your reader (i.e. me) will already know that this is your purpose.
Your paper should include 6-8 illustrations with appropriate captions (these should include both drawings and photographs, and precedents/comparanda). Additionally, create and include two (2) analytical sketches of the building that reinforce your interpretation of the building. As a basic standard, you should assume that your reader is not at all familiar with the building you have selected, and should include as many illustrations as you feel are necessary to capture the building design.
Your paper must also include correctly formatted Chicago Style citations (full footnotes or parenthetical citations + bibliography) for all sources you directly quote or draw upon.
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See previous assignments Research Paper – Prospectus + Bibliography and Research Paper – Draft for links to the list of suggested buildings, examples of good reviews, and some good sources for illustrations.
Here is a link to some general recommendations on formatting, organization, and tone in your papers: ARCH4270-6275_PaperRecommendations.pdf
I attached my draft with instrac comment:
Research Paper Draft RubricCriteriaRatingsPts
Meets assignment requirements for length and adequately explains review’s scope and intent
5 pts
Full Marks
0 pts
No Marks
Comments
This is long enough, but you need to review the recommendations document that I linked in the assignment and do some of what I’ve said there, including making section titles useful instead of bureaucratic, and giving a sense of what you’ll be saying in the review early on.
In general, this is bogged down by a lot of repetition. You only need to say once in a text this length who the architect is, where the building is located, and who was behind its commissioning, and that light is carefully controlled.
There are also obvious factual innaccuracies such as stating that the LAD is the result of “several building phases, including destructions, modifications, and restorations.” This is simply not true.
1.75 / 5 pts
Includes illustrations as well as complete, thorough, and correctly formatted citations
5 pts
Full Marks
0 pts
No Marks
Comments
This text includes nearly-identical sentences from my own San Rocco text that was linked in the assignment description without attribution, with a citation to the museum’s website. None of these sentences seems relevant at all to your analysis of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. I’m concerned about your process and editing.
1 / 5 pts
Grammatical correctness and completeness of submission
5 pts
Full Marks
0 pts
No Marks
Comments
There is a lot of inconsistency in spelling and acronyms here (ALD vs LAD, Abudhabi or Abu Dhabi). There aren’t any grammatical issues after the first page, but there is a lot of repetition and not much depth of analysis.
3 / 5 pts
Engagement with issues and debates discussed in course content
5 pts
Full Marks
0 pts
No Marks
Comments
Please remember that part of your assignment here is to incorporate some course content in the form of quoting texts or ideas or keywords like Technology, Digital, and Virtual. Typology, Precedent, and Language . Environment, Energy, and Climate and Urbanity, Sociability, and Publicness
2 / 5 pts
Total Points: 7.75
