ARC3703 
Instructor: Laura Miller

Throughout its history, wallpaper has been a means to achieve many things: to blur the boundaries between interior and exterior; to serve as a vehicle for historical recall and allusion; to imitate other materials; to import the natural realm into the domestic; to obscure the limits of enclosure; to enhance personal identity; to express political ideas; to bring life to an otherwise ordinary space – to delight, comfort, instruct, entertain, distract, reassure, energize, amuse, and embellish. 

For some, decoration – and wallpaper as its most explicit expression – has been seen as superfluous to architecture's core structural, functional, and environmental concerns – particularly within the interior, where some have viewed decorative elements as merely frivolous. Embracing such frivolity, this course explores the pleasures of the decorative in perhaps its most immaterial form – through the paper-thin application of colour, pattern, image, and texture to the surfaces enclosing the inhabited spaces of daily life – walls and ceilings. 

After an introduction to the history of wallpaper and its various genres, we will explore the principles that underpin pattern-making, the geometric subdivision of space, and pictorial forms of illusion. We will design and produce wallpaper using hand-printing techniques (block and stencil printing, and possibly, screen printing) as well as digital design and printing. The seminar will build upon students' hand-drawing abilities to sketch, develop, and refine patterns. By the end of the course, each student will create a 'sample book' of their 1:1 patterns (including studies and sketches) and scale model dioramas to exhibit their designs. 

Students from all programs at the Faculty are welcome.