ARCH 1010

Peter Waldman is a very intelligent and compassionate man, but struggles to accept that he no longer an effective teacher. The essay prompts are the longest run on sentences that are gibberish and writing the responses require more bs than any essay you have written before. I recommend creating continuity in your biweekly essays which begin at 1 page and increase in size until 6 for the final single spaced. Taking your own pictures of sites around UVA and including drawings you have done go a long way as well. Include the readings too. Getting a good TA is really important to help develop your responses, but at the end of the day Waldman still grades most of the essays, so write towards what he wants to hear. Going to office hours so he can put a name to a face also helps your grade a lot. Lectures are quite optional and I enjoyed listening to a few minutes before playing games or working on homework. He requires a notebook and one page entries suffice and adding a drawing of a building he talks about helps take up space.

This course was created to be a humanities course for architecture students. I find the whole class to be arbitrary, no assignments make sense. My best advice when writing the paper would to be just write and don't think much, the more connections you can make to the material presented in lectures and readings the better you will do in the class. Waldman is very friendly and if you're struggling his office hours can be helpful. I would definitely not recommend this class if you don't have to take it.
#tCFfall22

Don't take this course if it isn't required for your major (it's only a requirement in the architecture school). I took this as a first semester first year student in the College of Arts & Sciences to fulfill a humanities requirement and it was way too difficult given how much work was required. Every two weeks I was required to write a single-spaced 5-7 page paper that was very difficult conceptually. Peter Waldman is extremely intelligent and his lectures are interesting in the beginning, but they get repetitive after a while.

I wish Peter could slow down during lecture and take questions as he moves on, because this is such an abstract class and Peter focused more on satisfying his nurturing from the celestial soffit than teaching us clearly about some of the most important architectural theories. The TAs are important because they will determine your grade. There is a paper every two weeks and with a midterm and final in essay forms. Honestly, just don't take it unless you are an architecture student.

This class tested my ability to bullshit effectively. Perhaps I am not of the architectural mind, but everything in this class teaches architecture and small minute details as significant symbols of like the universe and of seemingly hyperbolic metaphor consistently. I write about windows as the void between universe like this class has taught me that anything can symbolize anything and the more crazy I can make these symbolizations the better at architecture I am. I bought all the books and never really had to read any of them, I also didn't really do any of the readings. Even going to lecture is mostly optional, however I would recommend it for when Peter talks about the case studies that you are about to write about, this is a great source of information. I went to mostly all lectures and paid attention occasionally. I expect probably a B+ maybe A- in the course. This class does teach and help one to be creative but it is so abstract that it is difficult to comprehend. The first few classes will make most everyone feel completely bewildered. in short, if you work hard you can probably do well, office hours and TA's are super important. Depend on your TA's get close with them and pay attention as much as u can and you will get a decent enough grade.

So, Waldman is 10000000% full of it, and this class is artsy balogna. Get good TAs, because they will determine your overall succcess. The class is ridiculously subjective and you really need to just fake it to get by. Lectures are near impossible to sit/stay awake through. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying, delusional, or abysmally pretentious.

The sad thing is, at its core the buildings and concepts are fascinating. I wish Waldman had actually engaged with the class for their perspectives because his voice and opinions just drone on and on. I have learned to see buildings in new light, but it’s been entirely as a result of me reading Wikipedia articles and not wasting my time with the lectures and ridiculously stuffy and pretentious readings. This class is way too dry for me to recommend to anyone who doesn’t already have to take it.

Great class. Take it. If you don't like it, you should drop out of A-School, because the theories learned in the class come back up constantly as you move up in the school. Waldman may seem crazy but he is crazy brilliant. If you want your grade to improve really go to office hours and your TAs will basically tell you specifically what you need to do to improve and though the high school writer in you may resist just do what they tell you. DO THE READINGS. The majority of them are great, so great that I have reread a lot of them.

Totally pointless. You need to have a good TA otherwise you will hate this course. Waldman tends to ramble, is very difficult to follow, and the weekly assignments are a joke. Don't take it if you don't have to.

If you can stay awake during his rambling lectures, it's pretty interesting. But if you aren't trying to be an architect, it's not worth it. Pretty much the only grades come from writing a paper every single week (2-8 pages depending)but you have to be either drunk, high, or extraordinarily creative to get it right. Waldman is a funny lecturer but most of the time he doesn't make any sense.

Especially in the first few weeks, this course is confusing and difficult to follow. However, it will broaden your mind and allow you to interpret the human-built world in a new way. It is important that you have a good T.A. for this class to be worth your while.

Peter Waldman is such an interesting person. This class is worth taking just to have him. You won't understand anything at first, and there's a lot of writing, which could make it difficult, but this is a class like no other at UVa. I believe it also fulfills the second writing requirement, so it seems truly useful for anyone to take.

don't take if you're not a major

breezee

Do not take unless you are an architecture student. Waldman is extremely quirky and his classes are out of this world. Very interesting if you are an architecture major- definitely won't forget this class. Weekly assignments due every monday that are labor intensive and require a lot of writing/diagraming.

Very interesting class, there is a lot of writing. Only take if you are interested in Architecture.

Waldman is awesome. Don't take if you're not doing architecture though.

This is an absolutely crazy class. The best way to do well in it is to accept it, embrace it, and try to develop a mindset that is fed by it. Honestly the weirder you are, the better off you are. Waldman is super nice, and truly provides you with a unique perspective.

Waldman is a really interesting guy, but make sure you have a stellar attention span during the class; daze off for just a second and you'll have no clue what's going on when you come back to reality (or rather, in this class, fantasy). Waldman contorts the truth sometimes to make things seem perhaps more profound than they may actually be. Lectures (along with readings) are essentially just information that allow you to write your weekly paper, anywhere from 3 to 8 pages depending on the week, which are graded by TAs. They are extremely helpful in honing your writing, diagramming, and observational skills. Overall a great class that focuses on architecture through a Romantic rather than pragmatic lens.

Waldman teaches you to be the worst possible stereotype of architects. The reason everyone hates architects is because most of them are like him. What he teaches you has nothing to do with architecture, it is more of a philosophy class based on an acid trip he had a few years ago. You have to take it to be in the A-school, so most of you are screwed, but do not let it change how you think. Architecture used to be a respected field, don't let that change because of a class.

Great class if you want to be an Architect. Too much work for dabblers.

You write a paper every week. The lectures are useless, so are the readings.

This class is a great course to really open up your way of thinking about architecture. There's a paper due each Monday though, ranging from 2 or 3 pages to 7 or 8 pages. Be ready to write.

a lot of writing (a paper due every week) but overall a good class.

Honestly, I have no idea what he's trying to teach during the lecture, but he makes the students to think about the architecture in an intersting way. This class is not hard, but it's very time consuming and the grades are very arbitrary since TAs grade them all-if you are not satisfied with your grade, just go to his office hour and talk about it. Once again, be prepared to read and write alot as if this is an ENWR class.

Bring your ipod and a tazer to class. They like modern art.

It was challenging, at times confusing, but nonetheless, poetic and liberating.

Hard to sit through class but makes you look at architecture in an interesting way

The professor is awful. As my TA put it, "He speaks another language that you won't understand for a couple more year. Then everything he says will make sense." I just think he's a straight out of the looney bin. Paper with 20 or more diagrams due every week. However, TA's are helpful.