Theory, History & Criticism
Is there a cultural paradigm for architectural practices nowadays? How does architecture respond to its cultural environment without disrupting the constitutive elements of the discipline? How shall architects reclaim a significant sphere of knowledge and production in a constantly changing and technologically oriented society? The seminars in Theory, History, and Criticism will try to promote the reflection around this questions—among others—by encouraging students to review the historical context of architectural debates and their current significance. Writing and designing can no longer be understood as impervious to each other but constantly determined and mutually influenced. We would like to reinforce the idea that designing, thinking, and writing are intimately linked and entail a central and unitary process in the production of architecture. In so doing, we expect to increase students’ consciousness about the relevance of critical practices as well as to stir them into self-reflection in the final production of architecture. We intend to develop students’ critical awareness of the cultural milieu that will deepen and inform their future approach to design culture.Courses
A Paradigm Shift: Mediating Architecture Culture(Pep Avilés, Fall Term)
Architecture as a technocratic practice seems quite often reluctant to integrate and follow the fast-speed cultural, technological, and politic changes that society experiences. Entangled among many other disciplines and deeply rooted in its codified tradition, architectural developments are always contingent to a ‘longue-durée’ array of historical forces shaping its formal appearance and its theoretical grounds. Within such a framework in mind, the class will concentrate on the significance of specific historical discussions for contemporary debates.
Images: Architecture and the iconic turn (Philip Ursprung, Fall Term)
The trend towards the visual in the industrialized societies has been defined, in the 1990s, as ‘iconic turn’ or, as it is sometimes called, as ‘visual turn’. Broadly speaking, the notion of the iconic turn refers to phenomena predominantly being perceived as images – in contrast to the earlier ‘linguistic turn’ when phenomena were primarily received as texts and ‘read’ as such. Whereas the iconic turn has triggered a vivid theoretical debate in various academic fields, namely the theory and history of art – the notion of the image being the common denominator between science, humanities, and art – it has hardly affected the field of architecture.
Landscape or Landscapes? Why theory matters(Michael Jakob, Fall Term)
Today we use the term landscape in many ways and seem to understand quite well at what kind of phenomena it refers to. In reality, things are far more complicated: landscapes are both realities constituted in our mind and fixed images. And what about landscape architecture, a quite recent term and practice (1789)? Or the verb to landscape? Or the languages and cultures without a similar word? Once we start to inquire landscape, other problems emerge: is the rise of landscape linked to some kind of civilization (Mitchell’s imperial landscape) and ideology?
Space, Film, Architecture (Gloria Moure, Spring Term)
The course focuses on the intersection between film and architecture, analyzing film\\\'s capacity to represent architecture through the construction of a space that blurs the boundaries between the real and the imaginary. The history of these artistic developments will be traced through the interaction of two straits of culture: Modernism, and the cultural discontinuity that materializes in the 1960s; examining, in particular, their confrontation and the development of the vicissitudes of the century’s ongoing modernization.
Theory Seminar (Stan Allen, Spring Term)
The course aims to explore through a set of discussions the ways in which landscape effects are apparent in contemporary architecture: not as an interdisciplinary phenomenon but as new design techniques, new formal strategies and new problems within architecture itself. New technologies, digital representation and a demand for enhanced environmental performance have motivated a rethinking of architecture’s traditional relationship to the ground. Some of today’s most innovative buildings no longer occupy the site but instead, construct the site itself.
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