Taubman College

Directory

Caroline Constant

Professor of Architecture

Office: 3112

cbconsta@umich.edu

Teaching Areas:

  • Design
  • Theory/Criticism
  • Architectural History

Interests in the conceptual and experiential aspects of meaning in architectural form underlie Caroline Constant's teaching, as well as her research in architectural history and theory, in which she engages the traditional disciplinary boundaries of architecture by exploring relationships among architecture, landscape design and the "decorative arts." Constant teaches design studios at all levels in the curriculum as well as the required undergraduate course, Design Fundamentals 2, which she teaches in collaboration with a diverse range of design faculty. Her seminars explore ways in which the territory of modern architectural history and theory can be expanded, particularly in relation to contemporary issues of landscape design.

Constant's book on Eileen Gray (2002) examines the work of this twentieth-century practitioner and theorist whose designs challenged certain theoretical assumptions of modern architecture to reinstate the bodily experience of space as a primary value. In her forthcoming book, The Modern Architectural Landscape, Constant explores the reintegration of architecture and landscape in twentieth-century architectural practice, a current within modernism that falls outside its polemical boundaries, yet evolves out of its utopian aspirations. Her earlier books The Palladio Guide (1985) and The Woodland Cemetery: Toward a Spiritual Landscape (1994) comprise earlier efforts to engage related disciplinary issues.