history and theory studies

HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES – GENERAL INFORMATION

GUIDE TO ESSAY WRITING AND REFERENCING

WRITING AN ESSAY

Mark Cousins

Director of History and Theory Studies

These notes are designed to help students understand the importance of writing during their training at

the AA, to understand the nature of an essay, and to provide advice on how best to prepare to write an

essay, and how to plan it. It may be that some lucky individual students already possess a proven way

of doing this and if this is the case then they can continue with their method and the habits that suit

them. But experience teaches us that very few students have thought about the issue carefully and

have developed a successful solution to the problems involved. Hopefully this guide will help them to

approach the question in an intelligent way.

Architecture and writing

Often students take a negative view of the role of essay writing in their work as students at the AA. I

have often heard it said that students feel that their ‗real‘ work as students is design and learning to

design. In this sense students often experience the obligation to write essays as a rather unwelcome

supplement, as if essay writing is an onerous diversion from their real work. And so the first issue to

be addressed is why essay writing is a vital part of a student‘s work. Firstly, essay writing is central to

the overall objective of enabling a student over a five year period, to develop an individual identity

not just through their design work but through the capacity to articulate an independent and critical

intelligence in respect to architecture. At the end of five years students should know what they think

and should be able to justify that in terms of argument. One of the central functions of writing essays

is to develop a skill in argument, which is the student‘s own argument. This skill determines their

capacity to explain and justify their own design work and to assess the designs of others. These are

skills, they can be learned and the best way to learn them is to practice them. The second point which

needs to be made is that professionally speaking, arguing in both speech and in writing is a

fundamental dimension of the work of an architect and someone who lacks the skills will soon find

themselves severely disadvantaged in practice. To this should also be added the general point that

architects need to be able to describe architecture and architectural projects in words whether written

or spoken. But the verbal description of architecture is a complex skill. We may think that architecture

is best represented by plans, elevations, sections, etc. and we may use various forms of imagery to

describe buildings and projects but this does not dispense with the centrality of the word. A student

who graduates without having acquired the skill of describing buildings will not be able to animate

their relation to architecture with the power of speaking or writing. The essay is a crucial starting

point of being able to represent architecture in discourse. It is a skill just as much as drawing.

What is an essay?

An essay is the attempt to answer a question through argument and the presentation of evidence for

the argument. In this sense a good essay requires a good question. You cannot write an essay on a

topic. It makes no sense to write an essay on the architecture of Michelangelo or of Le Corbusier. A

topic is just a title. It provides the student with no definition of the essay- which is a problem to be

solved. All that a topic invites is information. But information can never be the basis of an essay even

though information has a subordinate role as evidence. This is why from the beginning reliance upon

sources of information such as Wikipedia or encyclopedias, or even scholarly books can never

provide the basis of an essay. Of course information or ‗facts‘ are crucial in the field of evidence. You

cannot construct a reasonable argument which doesn‘t have evidence or which runs counter to the

evidence. In this sense an essay is by its nature hybrid, it is an argument but one which must appeal to

the evidence. In practice this means that every time you use a fact in an essay it must be in support of

an argument. An essay then is an answer to a question based upon an argument which in turn justifies

itself by reference to evidence or facts.

But what is an argument? This is worth asking because the answer is to some extent counter to the

ways in which some educational systems have developed. There are still some systems in which a

certain privilege is accorded to an official ‗line‘ whether that is expressed by the lecturer or manifest

in a textbook. In this case learning, memorizing, and repeating the ‗line‘ is the desired outcome. If

anything the essay would simply be a test to the student‘s capacity to reproduce the ‗line‘. This is

absolutely what we do not mean by an essay. Taken to an extreme this is actually what we would call

plagiarism. Perhaps this is why there is still some confusion about what the AA and other universities

mean by plagiarism. Had one been brought up in an authoritarian educational system, the uncritical

reproduction of the official ‗line‘, be it the professor‘s or the textbook‘s, then what we call plagiarism

would presumably be judged as a virtuous form of the completion of an academic task. We do not

take this view at all. While we would hope that you find lectures helpful and interesting and while we

insist that you read more than you do, the objective of the essay is not to reproduce them but to ask

you what you think about them. In this sense the essay is a subjective response to a question. You ask

yourself what you think about the question and your essay will be guided by your conclusions. In this

way you are using the essay to come to a decision about what you yourself think. This may take the

form of agreement with what you‘ve read or it may take the form of violent disagreement. But in

either case what is important is what you think. Only in this way can you come to learn what you

think. Perhaps you will change your mind next year but this doesn‘t matter, you will still be using the

basic skill of asking yourself what you think now.

We have established that an argument must be made from a subjective point of view. It must be from

your point of view. But that does not mean that it is what we might call ‗merely subjective‘. An essay

is not just the dogmatic presentation of personal opinions. While the whole essay is from a subjective

point of view, at the same time it is controlled by the need to justify your claims and perhaps to

changing your views in the light of the evidence which you have been studying. An argument is

different from the expression of an opinion because it is constructed via the use of evidence. The

evidence you use will support your argument. Central to the nature of the essay is this connection

between the argument and the evidence. To establish your argument you need to select and present

evidence that supports it. Sometimes this might involve your need to deal with the fact that your

argument is in opposition to other arguments. In this case you will use evidence to reject the opposing

arguments. So the fact that the essay is subjective, is your own argument, nonetheless has to be

justified in terms of evidence. We might think of evidence as the public space of arguments. My

definition of the essay is one which both insists upon its subjective character, that it is your answer

and what you think but that this is quite different from it being just a personal expression of feeling

and intuitions. You are as it were subjecting your subjectivity to the public forum of evidence. The

essay is both subjective and public. You can see then that it follows the basic logic of design- of a

private creation transformed into a public object.

Preparing for the essay

Having tried to explain what an essay is, let us look at the stages of preparing for it. Obviously it is

here that you will be preparing by consulting a range of sources. It would be too much to call this

research but it has about it the elements of research and the skills which you acquire here will enable

you to undertake larger projects than just the essay. Assuming that you have attended the lectures and

have done the reading indicated by the course bibliographies and assuming that perhaps in

conjunction with your tutor, you have formulated an appropriate question at a certain point you will

be ready to prepare the essay. You should regard this preparation as a vital and independent stage.

Many students still leave no gap between the research they have been doing and starting to write the

essay. It is as if they are largely concerned to get the essay ‗done‘. This is a minor but real piece of

insanity. You cannot start writing without knowing what to write. You need to prepare for the essay

by thinking about the essay. Some will do this with a piece of paper, some will do it by going for a

walk, and some will ask a friend to listen to their proposal. Each person will probably find a different

way of performing this task. You should follow whatever device seems to suit you. But in one way or

another it is a vital and indispensable moment. You are asking yourself what you think and you are

coming to some sort of conclusion. As we have already implied, those conclusions which will form

the outline of your argument need to be fitted together with the evidence for them.

Planning the essay

Many students‘ essays do the students a real injustice. The essay they produce, one can tell, is not

nearly as good as it could have been. This is not necessarily about the quality of the student or the

amount of research done, it stems solely from the student‘s failure to plan the essay and therefore to

organize the argument of the essay. They could have done it but they didn‘t. No one can write an

essay expecting to answer the question as a result of just writing it. You must make a clear distinction

in your mind between the structure of your argument and the process of writing. In other words you

must have a plan which contains both the argument you wish to make and what is a separate issue, the

sequence in which you are going to make it. If perhaps out of urgency if you think you will just start

writing and hope that the argument will miraculously appear, you will inevitably produce a much

poorer essay than you are capable of. You cannot burden the process of writing with too many

simultaneous tasks. If we look at this problem carefully we see that there are in effect three quite

separate tasks. The first we can call the argument as such or the ‗logic‘ of the argument. You should

put down, and it need not take more than half a sheet of paper what the overall argument is and how it

connects to different pieces of evidence. The second stage is a somewhat different task- it is how you

are going to sequence the first stage in a continuous piece of writing. You may, for example, decide to

start the essay in a way which is different from a logical sequence of your argument. Often successful

openings concentrate upon the nature of the question rather than stating the logical sequence of the

argument. Often conclusions return to the opening paragraph as a way of ending the essay. The end of

an essay is rather different from the conclusion of the essay. If the first stage is a plan for the logic of

the essay, the second outline concerns a plan of the sequence of the essay- what we might call the

rhetoric of the essay. In all events this process of planning the essay should leave you in no doubt

about what you are going to argue and how you are going to argue. You are now ready to write the

essay, and can now concentrate on the literary task of writing it in as clear and interesting a way as

you can. You are no longer burdening the writing with all the other tasks of organization within the

essay. You now know at every moment in writing the essay what is coming next. Indeed if you have

planned properly, you yourself will no longer be burdened with the anxiety of what you are going to

say next. You already know. I would hope at this point that you begin to experience the pleasure

which can come from writing. If you experience it as a dreaded punishment, it almost certainly means

that you haven‘t prepared the argument.

The essay and the paragraph

This section is implied by the previous section but looks at the problem from a functional point of

view. The essays you are asked to do are really very short. But even in a short piece of writing it is

worth breaking it down further into basic units. We might say that the basic unit of an essay is the

paragraph. In an essay of say 3,500 words there are only a limited number of paragraphs- perhaps

between ten and twelve. There is here a useful convergence between the number of paragraphs and

the number of points which you might make in the essay. Each paragraph is the place where you make

a point, an element of your overall argument. In this case we can look at the essay overall in which it

is useful to think of the first paragraph as a statement of your overall argument. Paradoxically the first

paragraph is really a statement of your conclusion. Apart from anything else this makes it much easier

on the reader. It is as if the reader is now in the position of immediately seeing what it is overall that

you wish to argue. The reader can now understand where you are going in the essay. This is very

important. Too often students write essays without any sense that the essay is designed to be read by

someone else. Too often one reads an essay which might in itself be full of interesting observations.

But at the same time one has no idea where the essay is going and you begin to suspect that the writer

did not either.

These points establish a kind of strategic link between the opening paragraph and all subsequent

paragraphs. Indeed what is true of the essay as a whole is true about each paragraph. One can regard

each paragraph in terms of an opening sentence which establishes the nature of the point that the rest

of the paragraph argues for as well as presenting evidence that supports the argument. This advice

should not become a mechanical formula for the essay but it is certainly worth applying it to the plan

for the essay. The actual essay will deal with the plan by drawing it back to considerations of the

essay in terms of its literary composition. But I have never seen an essay which suffered from too

much clarity.

Footnotes and Bibliography

Overall these notes are designed to help students think about how to do an essay. There are of course

published guides on how to write an essay but they tend both to be very obvious and not very

concerned with how skills of argument and writing are in fact part of the general skill of an architect.

But such guides might be useful in establishing a number of conventions such as how to present

footnotes and bibliographies. My only observations on these issues would be that footnotes are mostly

used by students to identify the source of a quotation. Obviously students must always acknowledge

quotations, or they risk being accused of plagiarism. Certainly the correct way to acknowledge a

quotation is to provide the source with a footnote. But there are other uses of a footnote. Sometimes

one will have some very interesting piece of information which one wishes to express to the reader

although it may not be relevant to the argument. It might confuse the reader if it were in the main

body of the text. In this case it is better to put it as a footnote and to free the main text from it.

Sometimes it is worth putting in your own thoughts in a footnote if they do not directly bear on the

argument.

Conclusion

Although these notes were intended to deal with issues which are not usually part of the practical

guides to essay writing, they also I hope serve as a justification for the importance of essay writing.

An essay is an opportunity to develop your skills in argument and writing. These skills at an

intellectual level are an absolute condition of acquiring an independent identity as an architect. Like

all skills it is neither natural nor spontaneous, it develops only through and with practice. In

professional terms it cannot be overstated how important these skills are. Without them, a student

would emerge into a professional world with one hand tied permanently behind his or her back. It is

the means through which you will be able to translate your design skills into a public world of

architecture. The practice of architecture requires skills of analysis, of advocacy, and of analysis. The

architect is by definition a public intellectual. No one can and no one can afford to neglect the

centrality of these skills. Their effective employment is one which is both required and rewarded in

architecture. I hope you find these notes useful and I am more than willing to discuss them

individually with students during the year.

ARCHITECTURAL ESSAY WRITING: REFERENCING GUIDELINES

Mollie Claypool and Ryan Dillon

Course Tutors History and Theory Studies

Referencing

Referencing may seem constraining or overly detailed. Keep in mind, these systems exist to facilitate

research. Once you learn a system, it becomes automatic and enhances your research and writing.

Referencing is a type of hypertext link. Instead of connecting you to another website, references

indicate other sites of knowledge.

Bibliographies are a way to categorise information, enabling you to work with sources in more

creative ways. A bibliography places a work within a larger constellation of works, showing the

corpus of knowledge from which it is drawn and the position it takes in regard to previous arguments.

A footnote can lead to unexpected material, indicating new possibilities or holes in the argument.

Notes document as well as develop connections and arguments not central to the main arguments of

the paper. In some styles of writing, footnotes carry the burden of academic proofand argument,

which allows the main text to become more fluid.

Inconsistent referencing is unacceptable. Casual citation displays a general lack of rigour; it becomes

unclear how you have utilised the materials of the course and how you understand and interpret them;

your arguments are less clear, and it is difficult to discern what you are trying to say versus the

opinions the other authors are referencing. In extreme cases, casual referencing practices veer into

plagiarism.

Do not plagiarise. You must cite the words of another author. This is not confined to verbatim

transposition; excessive paraphrasing is also plagiarism. Cite anything you did not generate that is not

of "general knowledge.‖ Cite images. Cite music. Cite recognisable code.

Every academic professional journal requires standard referencing. If you are interested in writing or

publishing your design work, learn the conventions as soon as possible. Transforming or developing

variations of a standard referencing style is often effective as long as you understand exactly what is

being altered. Referencing

must be treated in a precise and critical manner.

For ―creative referencing‖ that falls within acceptable academic parameters see Rosalind Krauss‘

annotated referencing style in The Optical Unconscious.

Referencing Manuals

The following are perhaps the two most complete reference books used for referencing and for the

preparation of manuscripts. Most academic journals use one of these as their model. These

compendiums have an example for every type of reference imaginable including referencing samples

for electronic sites and databases. They are available in most libraries and bookstores. Alternately, the

notes, used by a major publisher may clarify more common citations. Be careful which publisher you

use and utilize the same one throughout (MIT Press is a good example).

The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/cmosfaq.html

The Humanities Referencing Style

This form of referencing puts the bibliographic information into a footnote or endnote called out in

the text by corresponding superscript number. Short articles may be accompanied by a bibliography,

although this is unnecessary if every source is cited in a reference. Longer works almost always have

a bibliography. Please note, according to this style, references within a note or within the bibliography

have slightly different forms. It‘s also the most common within architecture.

Referencing with a footnote- at the bottom of the page for a footnote or at the end of the text as with

endnotes, you have the following citation:

57 PaulVirilio,War and Cinema (London:Verso Books, 1989), 68

The reference marker occurs within the body of the text, usually as a superscript number. Full

footnotes appear at the bottom of the page on which the reference occurs, endnotes at the end of a

chapter or at the end of an entire work. Both footnotes and endnotes refer to a quote, paraphrase or

reference to a text or object.

Don‘t over footnote; provide one whenever you are utilising an idea from another writer that is not a

well-known fact / something that could be assumed to be common knowledge.

Referencing with the bibliography- at the end of the text you may have a bibliography in which the

book appears in alphabetical order according to author:

Virilio, Paul.War and Cinema:The Logistics of Perception. London:Verso Books, 1989.

Bibliographies should list every book used in the construction of your argument, whether explicitly

cited in the text or not. More traditionally a bibliography would list the complete corpus of writings

on a topic; anything less complete would be called ―References‖ or ―Works Cited.‖ Bibliographic

citations have different forms than the footnote/endnote and are listed alphabetically according to the

author‘s last name. If you use more than one work from a single author, list these in ascending

chronological order. If a text has more than one author (e.g. Deleuze and Guattari), use the name that

appears first on the title page of the text.

Remember that bibliographic references and footnotes/endnotes vary slightly in form.The former is

considered a complete and independent phrase; the latter is a dependent, an extrapolation, or refers to

the main text.

Using ―ibid‖and―op. Cit.‖- Most people who use―ibid‖within their citations do so improperly. Ibid

may be used only when a reference is exactly the same as the one immediately preceding it. You may

not use ibid if any aspect of the reference is different besides the page number.

For example:

34 Rosalind E, Krauss,The Optical Unconscious (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), 56

35 Ibid, 67

―op.cit.‖or―loc. cit.‖[Latin abbreviations for ―in the works cited‖ and ―in the place cited‖respectively]

are often used to refer to a previously cited work.

For example:

34 Rosalind E, Krauss,The Optical Unconscious (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), 56

57 Krauss, op. cit., 78

Both of these methods can confuse the reader and are prone to mistakes. For example, what if you

also referred to another book by Krauss earlier in the text, but overlooked this fact? Or, of the last

reference was pages before, the reader must do too much work to find the information. In such a case,

using ―op. cit.‖ could misdirect the reader. As a result, general use of―ibid‖ and ―op. cit.‖ is now

discouraged Instead, use the short form of author, date, page number.This does not take any more

time, is clearer, and avoids any confusion due to mistakes in referencing. For word processing, it has

the added advantage of remaining correct even if the citation moves to a different point in the text;

this is not necessarily so with the abbreviations.

Examples of some basic references-

Footnote:

1.RudolfWittkower, ArchitecturalPrinciplesintheAgeofHumanism, (NewYork:W.W. Norton,

1962), 89

The footnote's bibliographic reference:

Wittkower, Rudolf. ArchitecturalPrinciplesintheAgeofHumanism. NewYork:W.W. Norton,

1962.

The following examples are offered as bibliographic references.

Two authors:

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia.Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.

An article in a journal:

Hacking, Ian.―Canguilhem among the Cyborgs.‖Economy and Society, 2 & 3, vol. 27 (1998):

202-215.

An article or essay on an edited anthology or monograph:

Canguilhem, George.―Machine and Organism.‖Zone6:Incorporations. NewYork: Zone

Books, 1992.

An edited anthology or monograph:

Crary, Jonathan and Sanford Kwinter, ed. Zone6:Incorporations. NewYork:Zone Books,

1992.

An entire internet site:

CNN.com. 2004. Cable News Network. 20 January 2004 <http://www.cnn.com/>.

Information form a website:

―Symbiosis.‖UCMP Glossary. Ed. Allen Collins et al. 1 May 2002. U of California Museum

of Paleontology, Berkeley. 15 May 2002. <http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss5ecol.html>.

Quoting Material

If a quoted passage of text is shorter than three lines, it should be indicated by quote marks (―and‖)-

If you leave out part of the quote, use an ellipsis (...) at the point of omission unless it is absolutely

obvious the quote is a fragment. If the omission occurs at the end of a sentence add a period or ending

punctuation. If the omission is longer than three lines of text, indicate this by breaking the quoted text

into a new paragraph after the ellipsis. For example:

As Georges Bataille states ―monsters thus would be the dialectical opposite of geometric regularity.‖1

If longer than three lines it should be set on its own without the use of quotes, the following paragraph

is an example-

As Georges Bataille states in his short essay,―Deviations of Nature:‖

Without broaching…the question of the metaphysical foundations of any given

dialectic, one can affirm that the determination of a dialectical development of facts as concrete as

visible forms would be literally overwhelming…2

From this statement, one can begin to understand the problematic moment when the ideal, the average

becomes epistemologically consonant – they are, as Georges Canguilhem argues, degree zero of

monstrosity.

Quotes within quotes should use single marks (‗and‘)-

As Georges Bataille states,―a ‗freak‘ in any given fair provokes a positive impression…‖3

HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES FIRST YEAR

Autumn and Winter Terms

CONSTRUCTS + CONTEXTS: AN INTRODUCTION TO HISTORIES

AND THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM

Course Lecturer: LARA BELKIND

Course Tutor: MOLLIE CLAYPOOL

Teaching Assistants: DANIEL AYAT and MARLIE MUL

This course introduces foundational concepts and seeks to create a dialogue between contemporary

practice and themes of investigation within the history of architecture and urbanism from antiquity to

the present. Employing wide-view thematic lenses such as authority, pluralism, language, media,

landscape, ecology, technology, utopia and fantasy, we will explore key moments in a global history

of buildings, cities and texts. Although rooted in the Western tradition, our discussion will draw upon

case examples from a range of continents and cultures.

Our approach will incorporate an analysis of evolving theoretical concepts of formal production and

aesthetics and will also situate built environment constructs within their social and political contexts.

Course readings will provide an orientation in fundamental ideas while writing assignments

emphasize the development of original arguments and criticism.

Autumn:

1 Introduction

2 Authority

3 Cosmos

4 Language

5 John Soane house: lecture + visit

6 Pluralism (Architecture)

7 Pluralism (Urbanism)

8 Media

Winter:

1 Landscape

2 Ecology

3 Technology

4 The Barbican: lecture + visit

5 Infrastructure

6 Utopia

7 Fantasy

8 Conclusion

Course Texts:

Kostof, Spiro. A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals

Ching, Francis, Jarzombek, Mark and Prakash, Vikramaditya. A Global History of Architecture

Trachtenberg, Marvin. Architecture from Pre-history to Postmodernity

Curtis, William. Modern Architecture since 1900

Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture: a critical history

Ockman, Joan ed. Architecture culture 1943-1968: a documentary anthology

Hays, K. Michael ed. Architecture Theory since 1968

Nesbitt, Kate ed. Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture

Sykes, A. Krista, ed. Constructing a New Agenda: Architectural Theory 1993-2009

Select Readings:

Tafuri, Manfredo. Architecture and utopia: design and capitalist development

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and punish

Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio. Empire

Easterling, Keller. Enduring Innocence: global architecture and its political masquerades

Gandelsonas, Mario. ―From Structure to Subject: the formation of an architectural language‖

Vidler, Anthony. ―The Idea of Type: the Transplantation of an Academic Ideal, 1750 – 1830‖

Frampton, Kenneth. ―Industrialization and the Crises in Architecture.‖

Fisher, Ole W. ―Precisions on ‗Precisions‘ – Architecture, Art and Science‖

Picon, Antoine. ―Architecture and the Sciences: Scientific Accuracy or Productive

Misunderstanding?‖

HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES SECOND YEAR


ARCHITECTURES: THEIR PASTS AND THEIR CULTURES

Course Lecturer: MARK COUSINS

Course Tutor: RYAN DILLON

Teaching Assistants: ALEJANDRA CELEDON and IVONNE SANTOYO

The 2nd

Year History and Theory course has typically been a history course. This is certainly not a

‗survey‘ course. Thus, we will focus on the variety of types of architecture both in historical terms and

within different cultures. In this sense, the lecture and seminar course is about how culture influences

architecture and about how architecture influences culture. The aim of the lecture series will attempt

to show how different cultural forms produce different architectural forms. To demonstrate this we

look at how different religious forms have been related to different architectural forms; or how

different forms of political power have produced different types of architecture; or how people have

argued that different national identities have resulted in different architectural styles. The course

attempts to make students aware of the relation between architectural form and a range of social

focus.

The lectures will cover a wide range of topics exposing the relationship of architecture to culture. We

will look at the variety of ways in which buildings are designed in many cultures and traditions

throughout time. We will investigate modernity‘s recent invention of the figure of the ‗architect‘

while comparing this with other building traditions, as well as buildings without an architecture and

with vernacular architecture. The concentration of architectural designs within the profession of

trained architects would strike many cultures as strange and it is important to be aware of the other

methods and design practices that are devoid of the ‗architect‘.

A central dimension of the course is to provide an opportunity for students to develop their own

arguments through the practice of writing. Unlike previous courses, the Thursday morning session

will start with the seminar and conclude with the lecture. The seminar will provide the students a

forum to discuss readings, present readings to the class in groups, and engage with graphic exercises

that are aimed at developing arguments through research and writing. Time will be set aside to deal

with the problem of how to research and write well-structured essays. This course-booklet contains

an example paper on how to think about writing an essay. We hope you find it and the course useful

in improving your ability to construct an argument through the important skill of writing.

Autumn Term

Please note that all assigned readings for each lecture topic will be discussed in the seminar portion of

the class during the following week. For example, Week 1 readings on ‗Architecture‘ will be

discussed during the Week 2 Seminar.

Week 1 – ARCHITECTURE

How is architecture defined, and how is it distinguished from building, from the vernacular

and from ‗architecture without architects‘.

Required Seminar Readings:

Readings for this week will be a collection of short texts provided by the tutors from a diverse

selection of many publications including but not limited too the following: Vitruvius, Then

Books on Architecture; Alberti, L.B., On the Art of building in Ten Books; Laugier, Marc-

Antoine, An Essay on Architecture; Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis, Précis of the Lecture on

Architecture; Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture; Gideon, Sigfried, Space, Time and

Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition; Venturi, Robert, Complexity and

Contradiction; Koolhaas, Rem, Delirious New York

These texts will be handed out to the students prior during Week 1 Seminar

Week 2 – DESIGN

What is design? How did it evolve? How does it relate to the emergence of architectural

representation, plans, sections, etc.?


Forty, Adrian, ‗Design‘, p. 136-141, in Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern

Architecture

Agrest, Diana, ‗Design versus Non-Design‘, p. 198-213 in Hays, Michael K. (ed.), in

Architecture Theory since 1968, The M.I.T. Press, 1998.

Suggested Seminar Readings:

Koolhaas, Rem, ‗Junkspace‘, in Chuihua, Judy Chung; Inaba, Jeffery; Koolhaas, Rem; Leong,

Sze Tsung, et al, Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, Harvard Design School,

2001.

Latour, Bruno, ‗A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design‘

presented as the Keynote Lecture for the Networks of Design for the meeting of

Design History Society, 3 September, 2008.

Week 3 – THE ARCHITECT

Can there be architecture without architects? How did the figure of the architect evolve?


Saint, A. 1985, ‗The Architect as Hero and Genius‘, p. 1-18, in The Image of the Architect,

Yale University Press.

Koolhaas, Rem, ‗The Talents of Raymond Hood‘, pp. 162-77, in Delirious New York: A

Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, Monacelli Press, 1994.

Alberti, L.B., ‗Prologue‘, p. 1-6, in On the Art of building in Ten Books, The MIT Press,

1991.

Rudofsky, B., ‗Before the Architects‘, Design Quarterly (118/119), pp. 60-63, 1982.


Rand, A., The Fountainhead, 1st edition ed. Blakinston Co. 1943.

Kostof, S., ‗The Architect in the Middle Ages, East and West‘, p. 59-95, in The Architect:

Chapters in the History of the Profession, University of California Press, 2000.

Week 4 – PROFESSION

The nineteen-century emergence of architecture as a profession is compared with medicine.

Why has the architect occupied a weaker position then the lawyer or the doctor?


Wigley, Mark, ‗Prosthetic Theory: The Discipline of Architecture‘ in Assemblage No 15,

August 1991, p. 7-29.

Martin, Reinhold, ‗Architecture and Its Pasts‘ Symposium Lecture at the Architectural

Association, 22 May 2010. http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1222


Hays, Michael, ‗Oppositions of Autonomy and History‘ (Introduction), p. xi-xv in

Oppositions Reader, Princeton Architectural Press, 1998.

Michel, Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse of Language, Vintage,

1982.

http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1222

Week 5 – ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY

An account of how architectural history has evolved as a concept and as a practise in the

nineteenth-century. Why is it based upon a narrative of a successions of styles, classical,

gothic, renaissance, baroque, etc. and why this is a problem for architectural students?


Colquhoun, Alan, ‗Introduction: Modern Architecture and Historicity‘, p. 11-19 in Essays in

Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change, MIT Press,

1995.

Forty, Adrian, ‗History‘, p. 196-205, in Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern

Architecture, Thames and Hudson Ltd. 2004.

Gideon, Sigfried, ‗History A Part of Life‘, p. 1-10, in Space, Time and Architecture: The

Growth of a New Tradition, Harvard University Press, 2008 Edition.


Benjamin, Walter, ‗Theses on the Philosophy of History‘, p. 235-264 in Illuminations,

Schocken Books, 2007.

Vidler, Anthony, ‗Foreword‘ and ‗Introduction‘, p. 1-16, and ‗Postmodern or Posthiorie?‘, p.

191-200 in Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism,

MIT Press, 2008.

Colquhoun, Alan, ‗Three Kinds of Historicism, p. 1-17 in Oppositions 26.

Week 6 – RELIGION

Each of the major monotheist religions is associated with major architectural outcomes. The

lecture will question the extent to which the religions in themselves stamped particular forms

upon architecture. It shows how each of them derived from Roman and other forms.


Kostof, S. & Castillo, G., ‗The Reinassance: Ideal and Fad‘, p. 403-412 in A History of

Architecture: Settings and Rituals, Oxford University Press, 1995.

Kostof, S. & Castillo, G., ‗Chartres‘, p. 333-348, in A History of Architecture: Settings and

Rituals, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995.

Laugier, Marc-Anotine. 1985, ‗On the Style in Which to Build Churches‘, p. 100-120, in An

Essay on Architecture, Hennessey & Ingalls, 1985.


Kostof, S. & Castillo, G., ‗The Triumph of Christ‘, p. 245-68 in A History of Architecture:

Settings and Rituals, Oxford University Press, 1995.

Wittkower, R., Part 1. ‗The Centrally Planned Church and The Renaissance‘, p. 1-32 in

Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, Academy Editions, Chichester,

West Sussex, 1998.

Alberti, L.B., The Seventh Book: ‗Art of Building. Ornament to Sacred Buildings‘, p. 189-

243 in On the Art of Building in Ten Books, The MIT Press, Cambridge,

Massachusetts, 1991.

Miller, K., St. Peter's, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2007.

Week 7 – POWER

Architecture has emerged as always been central to the exercise and expression of power.

Rulers have tried to convey their power through architecture; different types of regimes have

sought to clarify their nature through architecture. Considers the form of the ‗palace‘ and its

mutations.


Foucault, M., ‗Space Power and Architecture‘, p. 296-306, in M Hays (ed), Architecture

Theory Since 1968, MIT Press. 1998.

Benevolo, L., Chapter 3: ‗Rome, City and Worldwide Empire‘, p. 135-251, in The History of

the City, Scolar Press, 1908.


Benton, T., Elliott, D., Ades, D. & Hobsbawn, E.J., Art and Power: Europe Under the

Dictators 1930-1945, Hayward Gallery catalogue ed. Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1995.

Foucault, M., ‗Docile Bodies‘, p. 135-148 in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison,

Vintage Books, 1995.

Hirst, P.Q. 2005, ‗Foucault and Architecture‘, p. 155-178, in Space and Power: Politics, War

and Architecture, Polity, 2005.

Week 8 – THE HOUSE

Describes why the house, a site of human shelter has often been regarded as its fundamental

unit of architecture and why I argue that this is wrong. Considers the emergence of the

nineteenth-century of the category of ‗housing‘ as a category of urbanism.


Laugier, Marc-Antoine, ‗Introduction‘, p. ‗General Principles in Architecture‘, p. 11-32, in An

Essay on Architecture, Hennessey and Ingalls, Inc. 1977.

Alberti, Leon Battista, ‗The Lineamants‘ Book One Chapter 9, p. 23-24 in On the Art of

Building, Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor, The MIT

Press, 1988.

Le Corbusier, ‗Eyes Which Do Not See‘, p. 85-129 in Towards a New Architecture, Dover

Publications, 1986.

Rossi, Aldo, ‗Problems of Classification, p. 48-55 in Architecture and the City, The MIT

Press, 1984.


Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis, ‗Private Buildings‘, Volume Two, Section Three, p. 170-181 in

Précis of the Lecture on Architecture, The Getty Research Institute, 2000.

Le Corbusier, ‗Mass-Production Houses‘ p. 229-265 in Towards a New Architecture, Dover

Publications, 1986.

Alberti, Leon Battista, ‗Works of Individuals‘ Book Five Chapter 14-18, p. 140-153 in On the

Art of Building, Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor, The

MIT Press, 1988.

Twain, Mark, The Diaries of Adam and Eve, Fair Oaks Press, 1998.

Winter Term

Week 9 – MODERNITY AND ITS EXPORT

The lecture will look at the new types of architecture, which evolve in industrial capitalism.

The Factory, the Office, the Railway Station.


Quatremère de Quincy, ‗Type‘, p. 616-620 in Oppositions Reader, Princeton Architectural

Press, 1998.

Banham, Reynar, ‗Introduction‘, p. 9-12, ‗Germany: Industry and the Werkbund‘, p. 68-78,

‗The Factory Aesthetic‘, p. 79-87 in Theory and Design in the First Machine Age,

The MIT Press, 1983.

Pevsner, Nicholaus, Foreword and Introduction, p. 6-10, ‗Railway Station‘, p. 225-234,

‗Warehouse and Office Buildings‘, p. 213-224, ‗Factories‘, p. 273-288.


Le Corbusier, ‗Eyes Which Do Not See‘, p. 85-129 in Towards a New Architecture, Dover

Publications, 1986.

Frampton, Peter, ‗The Deutsche Werkbund 1898-1927‘, p. 109-115 in Modern Architecture:

A Critical History, Thames and Hudson, Ltd. London, 1992.

Week 10 – THE ENGINNER AND INFRASTRUCTURE

The lecture traces the overlap between architects and engineers in building and projects to

provide an infrastructure for cities, for transports, etc. It will also attempt to specify the

different by tracing the hostility of architects to the proposal for the Eiffel Tower.


Berman, M., ‗In the Forest of Symbols: Some Notes on Modernism in New York‘, p. 287-348

in All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, Viking Penguin,

1998.

Saint, A., ‗Eiffel and 1889‘, p. 161-71, in Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry,

Yale University Press, 2007.

Benevolo, L., Chapter 12: ‗The 'Post-Liberal' City‘, p. 765-839 in The History of the City,

Scolar Press, 1980.


Benevolo, L., Chapter 11: ‗The Setting of the Industrial Revolution‘, p. 733-64, in The

History of the City, Scolar Press, 1980.

Barthes, R., ‗The Eiffel Tower‘, p. 3-18, in The Eiffel Tower, and Other Mythologies,

University of California Press, 1997.

Pevsner, N., ‗Engineering and Architecture in the 19th Century‘, p.118-147 in Pioneers of

Modern Design: from William Morris to Walter Gropius, Yale University Press,

2005.

Week 11 – NATIONAL IDENTITY AND ARCHITECTURE

In what sense are the national identities, which are expressed in architecture? The lecture will

discuss of contemporary India and China, architecture and national identity.


Frampton, Kenneth, ‗Critical Regionalism: modern architecture and cultural identity‘, p. 314-

327, in Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Thames and Hudson, Ltd. London,

1992.

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell and Johnson, Phillip, ‗Introduction‘, p. 33-37; ‗Chapter IV-VII‘, p.

55-89, in International Style, W.W. Norton & Company, 1995 Edition.

Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terrance (Ed.), ‗Introduction‘, p. 1-15, in The Invention of

Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 2003 Edition.


Trevor-Roper, Hugh, ‗The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland‘, p.

15-42, in The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 2003 Edition.

Hobsbawm, Eric, ‗Mass-Producing Tradition: Europe, 1870-1914, p. 263-308, in The

Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 2003 Edition.

Week 12 – POLITICAL IDENTITY AND ARCHITECTURE

Can we speak of architectural forms as an expression or representation of politics? Was there a Nazi

architecture, or a Fascist architecture, or a Communist architecture? What does it mean by calling a

building conservative, or indeed revolutionary?


McLeod, M., 1989, ‗Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to

Deconstructivism‘, p. 23-59, Assemblage (8), 1989.

Frampton, K. 2007, ‗Giuseppe Terrangi and the Architecture of Italian Rationalism‘, p. 203-9,

in Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Thames & Hudson, 2007.

Frampton, K., ‗Architecture and the State: Ideology and Representation‘, p. 210-223 in

Modern architecture: A Critical History, Thames & Hudson, 2007.


Harvey, D., ‗Consumerism, Spectacle and Leisure‘, p. 209-224, in Paris, Capital of

Modernity, Routledge, 2003.

Harvey, D., ‗Natural Relations‘, p. 245-52, in Paris, Capital of Modernity, Routledge, 2003.

Eisenman, P., Tafuri, M. & Terragni, G., Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations,

Decompositions, Critiques, illustrated ed. Monacelli Press, 2003.

Week 13 – THE MONUMENT

Architecture has had a traditional task to help the remembrance of events and persons. How

can one think of dimensions of memory within the contemporary city and architecture?


Sert, J.L., Leger, Fernand, Gideon, Sigfried, ‗Nine Points of Monumentality‘ p. 27-30 in

Architecture Culture 1943-1968, Rizzoli, 1993.

Riegl, Alois, ‗The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin‘, p. 621-651 in

Oppositions Reader, Princeton Architectural Press, 1998.

Libeskind, Daniel, ‗Global Building Sites - Between Past and Future‘, p. 69-83, Memory

Culture and the Contemporary City, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.


Harbison, Robert, ‗Monuments‘, p. 37-67, in The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable: In

Pursuit of Architectural Meaning, The MIT Press, 1991.

Yates, Frances, The Art of Memory, Pimlico, 1992.

Choay, Francoise, ‗The Concept of the Historical Monument As Such‘, p. 84-94, in The

Invention of the Historic Monument, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Week 14 – ARCHITECTURE WITHOUT BUILDING

Architects have traditionally designed objects, which are not ‗built‘ – theatrical entertainment,

pageants into twentieth-century projects for staging, exhibition, design as well as furniture

and household objects. How does architecture relate to the general industrial field of design?


Tschumi, Bernard, The Manhattan Transcripts, John Wiley & Sons, 2nd

Edition, 1994.

Libeskind, Daniel, ‗Chamber Works‘, p. 476-479, in M Hays (ed), Architecture Theory Since

1968, MIT Press. 1998.

Evans Robert, ‗In Front of the Lines That Leave Nothing Behind‘, p. 480-489, in M Hays

(ed), Architecture Theory Since 1968, MIT Press. 1998.

Forty, Adrian, ‗Foreword‘ and ‗Introduction‘, p. 4-10; Design and Mechanisation, p. 42-61, in

Objects of Desire, Design and Society Since 1750, Thames & Hudson, 1986.


Forty, Adrian, ‗Differentiation in Design‘, p. 63-69, ‗Design, Designers and the Literature of

Design, 239-245, in Objects of Desire, Design and Society Since 1750, Thames &

Hudson, 1986.

The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Jacobs, 010 Publishers,

2007

‗Power of Ten‘, Film Documentary by Ray and Charles Eames, 1968

Week 15 – THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ARCHITECTURE

Most architectural histories treat ‗history‘ of a building as the date of design and construction.

But one important dimension of architecture is that it frequently survives. Through the case

study of the Parthenon and its new Museum the life span of the building will be addressed.


Hugo, Victor, The Hunchback of Notre Dame,

Ruskin, John, ‗The Lamp of Memory‘, p. 146-164, in The Seven Lamps of Architecture,

Dover Books, 1990 Edition,

Phelan, Peggy, ‗Building the Life Drive: Architecture As Repetition‘, p. 289-300, in Herzog

de Mueron, Natural History, Lars Mueller, 2003,


Forty, Adrian, ‗Memory‘, p. 206-219, in Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern

Architecture

Forster, Kurt, ‗Monument/Memory and the Mortality of Architecture‘, p. 25-35 in

Oppositions Reader

Lavin, Sylvia, ‗The Temporary Contemporary‘, In: Perspecta No. 34, p. 128-135

Week 16 – CONCLUSION

Why should we be concerned with the architectural past? What is it?

HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES THIRD YEAR


16 CANONICAL BUILDINGS/TEXTS + 16 ALTERNATIVES,

1901 - 1968

Course Lecturers: CHRISTOPHER PIERCE and BRETT STEELE

Teaching Assistants: SHUMI BOSE, BRADEN ENGEL and

EMANUEL ROCHA FERREIRA DE SOUSA

In 2010/11 Year 3 will continue to re-calibrate its sixteen entries to a twentieth-century architectural

canon while also introducing an equal number of alternative, less consensual, projects that signal

other important architectural trajectories in the rise of modern architecture in Western Europe. The

course will start with the Amsterdam Bourse and Adolf Loos‘s ―Ornament and Crime‖ and this finish

with the Vanna Venturi House and Denise Scott Brown‘s and Robert Venturi‘s, ―On Ducks and

Decoration‖. On a week-by-week basis students will come to understand and interpret key texts and

decipher their different terms and issues. At the same time, they will learn ways to comprehend and

analyse wildly different architectural projects and consider and question the role of the architect in

practice. Between design and architectural theory there is a constant exchange of categories and

students will develop knowledge of these and the wide range of debates and practices defining

modern architecture.

In short, this course will make the discourse of modern architecture more intelligible, while expanding

and interrogating its definition, and ground the idea of an experimental or critical modern practice and

the relationship between architectural theories and projects. The autumn term will chart the arrival of

modern architecture at the start of the 20thc to pre-World War II. The winter term will trace the

expanding nature and geography of this architectural discourse up to 1968. It prioritizes individual

buildings over urban schemes (like ones that consumed Kahn, Corbusier and Niemeyer in the middle

of the century) and it privileges built work, although a few un-built projects have slipped in. You will

gain a clear and rigorous historical sense of the emergence of contemporary practice and develop a

robust knowledge of the history and theory necessary for the practice, analysis and interpretation of

modern and contemporary architecture and urbanism.

AUTUMN TERM

Session 1 Reading Adolf Loos, ―Ornament and Crime‖ (1908)

Session 1 Project Hendrik P. Berlage, Stock Exchange, Amsterdam (1898-1903)

Alternative Reading Hermann Muthesius – ―New Ornament and New Art‖ (1901)

Alternative Project Antonio Gaudí, Colonia Güell, Santa Coloma de Cervelló (1900,

unfinished)

Session 2 ‗Architecture as Project‘

Session 2 Reading Robin Evans, ―Translations from Drawing to Building‖ (1986)

Session 3 Reading Paul Scheerbart, ―Glass Architecture‖ (1914)

Session 3 Project Erich Mendelsohn, Einstein Tower, Potsdam (1917-1921)

Alternative Reading Theo van Doesburg, ―Towards a Plastic Architecture‖ (1924)

Alternative Project Eileen Gray, House E-1027, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-1027

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquebrune-Cap-Martin

Session 4 Architecture as Publication‘

Session 4 Reading 1 Beatriz Colomina, ―Publicity‖, in Privacy and Publicity (1994)

Session 5 Reading Walter Gropius, ―Principles of Bauhaus Production [Dessau]‖ (1926)

Session 5 Project Walter Gropius, Bauhaus, Dessau (1926)

Alternative Reading Werner Oechslin, ―Raumplan versus Plan libre‖

Alternative Project Ivan Illich Leonidov, Lenin Institute, Moscow (1927)

Session 6 ‗Architecture as Provocation‘

Session 6 Reading Antonio Sant‘Elia and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, ―Futurist

Architecture‖ (1914)

Session 7 Reading Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, Intro to ―The International

Style‖ (1932)

Session 7 Project Giuseppe Terrangi, Casa del Fascio, Como (1932-1936)

Alternative Reading R. Buckminster Fuller, ―Designing a New Industry‖ (1946)

Alternative Project R. Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion House (c. 1920-1945)

Session 8 ‗Architecture as Portfolio‘

Session 8 Reading Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries (1999)

Key Source Texts Banham, Reyner, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London: Architectural Press, 1960)

Conrads, Ulrich, ed., Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture (Cambridge, MA: The

MIT Press, 1970)

Frampton, Kenneth, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 3rd

rev. and enl. ed. (London: Thames

& Hudson, 1992)

Giedion, Sigfried, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (1941) (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1968)

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell and Philip Johnson, The International Style (1922) (New York: W. W.

Norton, 1995)

Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, tr. Frederick Etchells (London: Architectural Press, 1948)

Mallgrave, Harry Francis and Christina Contandriopoulos, eds., Architectural Theory, Volume 2: An

Anthology from 1871-2005 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008)

Mallgrave, Harry Francis, Modern Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673–1968

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Ockman, Joan, ed., Architecture and Culture 1943-1968: A Documentary Anthology (New York:

Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1993)

Pevsner, Nikolaus, Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Yale: Yale

University Press, 2005)

WINTER TERM

Session 9 Reading José Luis Sert, Fernand Léger, Sigfried Giedion, ―Nine Points on

Monumentality‖ (1943)

Session 9 Project Oscar Niemeyer, Casino, Pampulha, Brazil (1942)

Alternative Reading Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, ―Technology and Architecture‖ (1950)

Alternative Project Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois (1946-1951)

Session 10 Reading Colin Rowe & Robert Slutzky, ―Transparency: Literal and

Phenomenal‖ (1955-56)

Session 10 Project Gordon Bunshaft, Lever House, NY (1950-1952)

Alternative Reading Louis Kahn, ―Order Is‖ (1954)

Alternative Project Alvar Aalto, Säynätsalo Town Hall, Finland (1951)

Session 11 Reading Philip Johnson, ―The Seven Crutches of Modern Architecture‖ (1954)

Session 11 Project Le Corbusier, Unité d‘Habitation, Marseilles, France (1947-53)

Alternative Reading William Katavolos, ―Organics‖ (1960)

Alternative Project Constant, New Babylon (1959-)

Session 12 Reading ‗Situationists‘: International Manifesto (1960)

Session 12 Project Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY (1943-1959)

Alternative Reading Richard J. Neutra, ―Human Setting in an Industrial Civilization‖ (1958)

Alternative Project Pierre Koenig, Case Study House 21, Los Angeles (1958)

Session 13 Reading Manfredo Tafuri, ―Modern Architecture and the Eclipse of History― (1968)

Session 13 Project Le Corbusier, Palais des Congrès-Strasbourg, France (1962-64)

Alternative Reading Aldo van Eyck, ―Steps toward a Configurative Discipline (1962)

Alternative Project James Stirling and Gowan, Leicester University Engineering Building (1959)

Session 14 Reading Werner Ruhnau/Yves Klein, ―Project for an aerial architecture‖ (1960)

Session 14 Project Eero Saarinen, TWA Terminal, New York (1956-62)

Alternative Reading Peter Cook, ―Zoom and ‗Real‘ Architecture‖ (1964)

Alternative Project Friedrich Kiesler, Endless House (1958-60)

Session 15 Reading Charles W. Moore, ―Plug it in, Rameses, and See if it Lights Up‖ (1967)

Session 15 Project Jorn Utzon, Sydney Opera House (1965)

Alternative Reading Reyner Banham, ―A Home is Not a House‖ (1965)

Alternative Project Paul Rudolph, Art & Architecture Building, Yale University (1963)

Session 16 Reading Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, ―On Ducks and Decoration‖ (1968)

Session 16 Project Robert Venturi, Vanna Venturi House, Chestnut Hill, PA (1959-1964)

Alternative Reading Alan Colquhoun, ―Typology and Design Method‖ (1967)

Alternative Project Claude Parent & Paul Virilio, Church of Saint Bernadette, Nevers, France

(1966)

Key Source Texts Banham, Reyner, A Critic Writes: Selected Essays by Reyner Banham (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1997)

Colquhoun, Alan, Collected Essays in Architectural Criticism (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2009)

Eisenman, Peter, Ten Canonical Buildings, 1950-2000 (New York: Rizzoli International Publications,

2008)

Nesbitt, Kate, ed., Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory

19651995 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996)

Stern, Robert A.M. et al., Re-Reading Perspecta (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005)

Tafuri, Manfredo, Theories and History of Architecture (London: Granada, 1980)

Tafuri, Manfredo and Francesco Dal Co, Modern Architecture, tr. Robert Erich Wolf, 2 vols.

(London: Faber, 1986)

Venturi, Robert, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art,

1968)

Vidler, Anthony, Histories of the Immediate Present (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008)

Submissions

The submission, which will be discussed in group and individual tutorials, is to develop and present

an in-depth understanding of a single project/building (built or un-built) or text which has not been

directly addressed in the lectures and that was conceived or written between 1900 and 1968. You will

be expected to present your initial ideas to your tutorial group in the form of a short PowerPoint

presentation outlining your essay topic and outline during the middle part of the term. The form of the

final submission will normally be a written submission. However we are willing to accept

submissions in other forms e.g. drawing etc., although we will expect that the alternative submission

format be substantial enough to replace a 3,000-word essay.

HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES DIPLOMA SCHOOL

Autumn Term only

The HTS courses are listed in alphabetical order by course tutor surname

LABOUR, CITY, FORM: TOWARDS A COMMON ARCHITECTURAL

LANGUAGE

PIER VITTORIO AURELI

The seminar addresses the development of the modern city through the lens of architectural and urban

theories from the 15th to the 20

th century. The aim is to trace implicit and explicit ideas of and for the

city that can be found in speculations about architectural and urban form. Instead of viewing form as

the by-product of forces that transcend the materiality of the city, the seminar addresses form as the

necessary precondition any project of political and economic government of the city.

Form will be addressed as the dialectical relationship between two categories that have a fundamental

impact on the development of the modern city: the concept of the political and the concept of labour.

As such the concept of form will be addressed as mode of relationship, as the organizational principle

that binds the constituent elements of the city. The hypothesis that the seminar maintains is that issues

that are internal to the discipline of architecture such as order, representation, imitation, composition,

abstraction, genericness are rooted within the transformations of the organization of labour. From the

15th century with the rise of Capital the organization of labour has been a fundamental, if not the most

important, act of government. Even if, according to the famous definition of Hannah Arendt, political

action must be considered autonomous from the other two essential spheres of the human condition –

labour and work - labour has been a fundamental site of political struggle. It is for this reason the

relationship between form and labour is never a symmetrical relationship. The destabilizing factor is

always the possibility of political decision. Political decision intervenes by directing the organization

of labour in order to confront and tame the class of producers. The outcome of this process has

consequences on (and sometimes is anticipated by) issues of formal syntax in architecture, and

invention of new urban types. In this process architecture and urban form become a fundamental

instrument of government whose subject is not only the power(s) that architecture celebrates, but also

those new emerging subjects whose power is suppose to be subjugated. Subjugation, or better

subjectification, is here intended as the establishment of apparatuses whose goal is to subtly control

emerging subjects by giving to them the possibility of development. This process of subjectification –

a process that in history has taken radically different forms from language, to culture, to space, to art -

has forced urban form to evolve and transform itself. In order to analyze deep into architecture the

conditions of this process the seminar will analyze architectural and urban theories that have

formulated an idea of form either for architecture, for the city, or for both. Categories such as

abstraction, reification, and the generic in relationship with the rise and affirmation of capital will be

addressed as the fundamental conceptual background of the evolution of architectural language and its

consequences on the form of the city.

General Readings for the Seminar:

Manfredo Tafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 2006), 1-22.

Karl Marx, Grundrisse, translated from German by Martin Nicolaus (London: Penguin Classics,

1973), p. 81-114.

Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, translated from German by George Schwab (New

Brunswick, NJ:. Rutgers University Press, 1976).

Hannah Arendt, ―Introduction into Politics,‖ in Arendt, The Promise of Politics, ed. Jerome Kohn

(New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 186–187.

Leonardo Benevolo, The Origins of Modern Town-Planning, (Cambridge, Ma.: The Mit Press, 1995).

1st Session:

What is a city? What is labour? Notes on the organization of the city from the Ancients to the

Moderns.

Readings:

Stephen Greenblat, ―Murdering Peasants: Status Genre, and the Representation of Rebellion”, in

―Representations no.1‖, Feb. 1983, p. 1-29.

2nd

Session:

The order of space: On Filippo Brunelleschi‘s perspectival space, and Leon Battista Alberti‘s concept

of Concinnitas.

Readings:

Eugenio Battisti, Filippo Brunelleschi (London: Phaidon Press).

Leon Battista Alberti, On the art of building in ten books, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach,

Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Ma: The Mit Press, 1988)

3rd

session:

The order of form: On Sebastiano Serlio‘s materialist approach to architecture.

Readings:

Sebastiano Serlio, Books I-V of “Tutte l’opere d’ architettura et prospettiva”, translated from the

Italian by Vaughan Hart, and Peter Hicks (New Haven: Yale University Press), 2005.

4th

session:

Towards Inclusivism: On Jean Nicholas Louis Durand‘s rational design method

Jean Nicholas Louis Durand: Precis of the Lectures on Architecture: With Graphic Portion of the

Lectures on Architecture, Translated by David Britt with an introduction by Antoine Picon (Los

Angeles: Tex & Documents Getty Research Institute, 2000).

Antoine Picon, French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment, trans. Martin Thom

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 107.

5th

Session:

Background Architecture: On Pierre Le Muet‘s architecture d‘accompagnament

Readings:

Carl Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Faliure of a

Political Symbol, Translated by George Schwab and Herna Hilfstein (The University of Chicago

Press: Chicago, 1996).

6th

session

From city to Urbanization: On Ildefonso Cerdà‘s. Teoría general de la urbanización

Readings:

Ildefonso Cerdà, The Five Bases of the General Theory of Urbanization, ed. Arturo Soria y Puig,

trans. Bernard Miller and Mary Fons i Fleming (Madrid: Electa España, 1999), 81. This book is a

partial translation of Ildefons Cerdà, Teoría general de la urbanización (Madrid, 1867).

Joan Busquets with the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Barcelona: The Urban

Evolution of a Compact City (Rovereto: Nicolodi; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate

School of Design, 2005).

7th

session:

Towards Nothingness: on Ludwig Hilberseimer and Mies Van Der Rohe and the rise of post-fordism.

Readings:

Massimo Cacciari, Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture, trans.

Stephen Sartarelli (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993)

Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New Regional Pattern: Industries and Gardens, Workshops and Farms

(Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1949).

See Sven-Olov Wallenstein, The Silences of Mies (Stockholm: AXL Books, 2008).

8th

session:

The dissolution of the city: on Cedric Price, and Archizoom‘s city without form.

Conclusions

Readings:

Raniero Pnazieri, “The Capitaist use of Machinery, Marx vs. the Objectivist”, Originally published in

―Quaderni Rossi‖ n.1, 1962, available in English at

http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/panzieri.html

Andrea Branzi and Archizoom Associati, No-Stop City (Orleans: HYZ 2006), pp. 139-155.

FLOW

LARA BELKIND

This seminar investigates the spaces and infrastructures of an emerging 21st century urban

paradigm: the polycentric megacity or ‗city of flows.‘ Focusing on high-speed transport and

communications links, we will employ frameworks from the field of science, technology, and

society studies (STS), including the work of Bruno Latour, to explore the cultural complexity

underlying technological megaprojects. In addition, we will make use of a technological

megaproject currently unfolding in Paris, Supermétro, as a field in which to test conceptual

ideas.

On one hand, the evolution of the city from node to network has been characterized by

splintering and specialization. The design of a network is a battleground upon which

metropolitan culture, form, and power relations are determined – lines between civil and

social engineering are finely drawn. Yet infrastructure may open an ‗other space‘ within the

city, a heterotopia as conceptualized by Michel Foucault. Networks are also liminal zones

that invite participation or subversion in a dispersed, polarized metropolis. Here is a new

public sphere, one appropriated by graffiti artists, political protest, happenings, teen

subcultures, and the subtle everyday exchanges of urban dwellers.

Autumn:

1 Flows and Networks

2 Remaking Paris as the City of Flows

3 Technology and Conflict

http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/panzieri.html

4 Infrastructure as Heterotopia

5 Civil and Social Engineers

6 Paris Workshop

7 Presentations

8 Presentations

READINGS

L‘Architecture d‘Aujourd‘hui # 376, Special Volume on Grand Paris (Feb-March 2010)

Marc Augé, The Metro Revisited (2008)

Marc Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995)

Samuel Beckett. “Roundelay” (1976)

Manuel Castells, ―The Space of Flows‖ in The Rise of the Network Society (2nd

edition, 2000)

Michiel Dehaene and Lieven de Cauter eds., Heterotopia and the City: public space in a postcivil

society (2008)

Gilles Delalex, Go With the Flow: Architecture, Infrastructure and the Everyday Experience of

Mobility (2006)

Keller Easterling, Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and Its Political Masquerades (2005)

Michel Foucault, ―Of Other Spaces‖ (1967)

Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological

Mobilities and the Urban Condition (2001)

Peter Hall and Kathy Pain, ―From Metropolis to Polyopolis‖ in The Polycentric Metropolis: learning

from mega-city regions in Europe (2006)

Alan Latham and Derek McCormack. ―Globalizations big and small: notes on urban studies, Actor-

Network theory, and geographical scale‖ in Ignacio Farias and Thomas Bender eds. Urban

Assemblages: How Actor-Network Theory changes urban studies (2010)

Bruno Latour, Aramis, or the Love of Technology (1993/2002)

Bruno Latour, ―Spheres and Networks: Two ways to Reinterpret Globalization‖ in Harvard Design

Magazine 30, Spring/Summer 2009

Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

Lars Lerup, ―Stim and Dross: Rethinking the Metropolis‖ in After the City (2000)

Mauro Magatti ed., The City of Flows: territories, agencies and institutions (2010)

Francois Maspero, Roissy Express: A Journey through the Paris Suburbs (1990/1994)

Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (1996/2001)

Gary Strang, ―Infrastructure as Landscape‖ in Simon Swaffield, ed., Theory in Landscape

Architecture (1996/2002).

Tommasso Venturini, ―Representing Controversies‖ (2008)

VIEWINGS:

Chantal Akerman, News from Home (1977)

Luc Besson, Subway (1985)

Laurent Cantet, Entre les Murs (2008)

Walter Hill, The Warriors (1979)

Mathieu Kassovitz, La Haine (1995)

Ugo Rondinone, Roundelay (2003)

Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant, Style Wars (1983)

THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL HOUSE

MARK CAMPBELL

Scratch beneath the surface of normality and you are likely to find the complete opposite – the

perverse, paranoiac, or maladjusted. This course will examine the architectural dynamics of normalcy

and perversion in the post-war American suburb through a critical reading of a series of textural,

cultural, and filmic references. As JG Ballard once offered, this architecture expressed his fear that

―nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again, the future is just going to be a

vast, conforming suburb of the soul.‖

Course Outline:

Session 1: This may be my Beautiful House: Julius Shulman and the invention of

California, Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies

(1971), The Truman Show (1998)

Session 2: This is not my Beautiful Wife: The Stepford Wives (1975), Invasion of the Body

Snatchers (1956; 1978), Far from Heaven (2002), Beatriz Colomina, Sexuality

and Space (1992) & Cold War Hot Houses (2004)

Session 3: Suffer Little Children: Daniel Paul Schreber‘s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness

(1903), Funny Games (1997; 2008)

Session 4: She‘s Lost Control: Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (1946),

Reyner Banham, The Great Gizmo (1965), Jean Baudrillard, The System of

Objects (1968), and Mr Blandings builds his Dream House (1948)

Session 5: That‘s not Natural: The Swimmer (1968), Straw Dogs (1971), The Wicker Man

(1973), Blue Velvet (1986) and The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life

(1999)

Session 6: On the Couch: Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological (1943),

Frederic Jameson, ‗The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism' (1992), Klute (1971)

and The Ice Storm (1997)

Session 7: Suburban Apocalypse: Cul-de-Sac (1966), Clockwork Orange (1971), Death

Wish (1974), Revolutionary Road (2008), JG Ballard, Super-Cannes (2000) and

Rem Koolhaas, ‗Junkspace‘ (2002)

Session 8: Dead Ends: Richard Hofstadter, ‗The Paranoid Style in American Politics‘

(1964), The Zapruder Film (1963) and Parallax View (1974)

Bibliography:

Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971), Design by Choice (1981)

Jean Baudrillard, System of Objects (1968)

Victor Burgin, In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture (1996)

Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological (1943)

Beatriz Colomina, Sexuality and Space (1992), Cold War Hot Houses (2004)

Don DeLillo, Americana (1971), White Noise (1985)

Joan Didion, The White Album (1979)

Sigmund Freud, Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia

(Dementia Paranoides) (1911), A Case Of Paranoia Running Counter To The Psycho-Analytic

Theory Of The Disease (1915)

Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (1946)

Richard Hofstadter, ‗The Paranoid Style in American Politics‘ (1964)

Frederic Jameson, ‗The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism‘ (1992)

Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York (1978)

Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (1994), Side Effects (2006)

Eric Santner, My Own Private Germany: Daniel Paul Schreber's Secret History of Modernity (1996)

Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903)

Felicity Scott, Architecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics after Modernism (2007)

Georges Teyssot (ed.), The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life (1999)

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the

American Dream (1972)

Anthony Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture (2002)

Mark Campbell is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture at Princeton University. His

research interests include contemporary American culture between 1960 and 1975, paranoia, cultural

exhaustion and dreams. A practising architect,

he is a founding principal of paperaeroplane and has taught at Auckland University, Princeton

University and the Cooper Union.

THE HISTORY OF HOMECOMING

MARK COUSINS

In our culture the term ‗home‘ is usually associated with a built object—the home. But the

equation is not always or everywhere true. Even now when a migrant or an exile speaks of home, we

do not assume that this is the same as a house. To start, the course will consider how we have come to

conflate the house with the idea of home, a largely modern and urban phenomenon.

In order to organize a large body of literature, the course will concentrate upon the aspect of

the topic which we will call homecoming. What has the subject ‗lost‘ by needing to return home? The

course will look at the most famous case of homecoming, that of Odysseus, told by Homer. It

considers how the emotional appeal of ‗returning‘ has an effect, not simply on narrative but within

philosophy. It then considers how culturally the loss of home led in the seventeenth century to the

clarification of ‗nostalgia‘ as an illness. From that it investigates the role of exile as a figure, within

modernity of displacement.

At the same time it considers how ‗home‘ became territorialized leading to the discourse of

patriotism and nationalism, in which the defence of ‗home‘ became the basis for exclusionary

strategies. Part of this involves understanding the relation of the family and terms of kinship in which

father and mother are projected onto geography.

As a way of tracing these themes into the contemporary, the course will engage in a detailed

analysis of Jean Luc Godard‘s film ‗Le mépris‘ (Contempt) which concerns a film about Odysseus

being made and its location in Capri and the famous twentieth century house La Casa Malaparte, as

well as the apartment of the central couple.

Lectures

1. The home/house and its role in architecture.

2. The loss of home: exile and nostalgia.

3. Odysseus and the epic of the return to Ithaca.

4. The ‗return‘ as a figure in culture and knowledge.

5. The territorialization of home.

6. Dwelling and Heidegger.

7. Le mépris (Contempt)

8. The Casa Malaparte

Bibliography

J. L. Godard: Le Mepris (DVD)

M. I. Finley: The World of Odysseus

Homer: The Odyssey

J. P. Vernant: The Universe, The Gods and Mortals

Cavafy: Poems

A. Moravia: Contempt

M. Cousins: Away from Home

THE JEAN-ERIC

Or

EIGHT LECTURES ON EVERYTHING ZAHA HATES

Or

IF THIS CRISIS IS THE SPECTACLE, WHERE IS THE REAL?

PAUL DAVIES

Jonathan Meades ten page essay (Zaha; The First Great Female Architect; Intelligent Life, The

Economist 2008) is the ‗best thing I‘ve read about architecture for years‘ said a good friend of mine,

who was the best architect I knew, until he started throwing so much coke up his nose. In that

sentence resides the content of the course; a penetrating if oblique and over stylish essay; a smart but

inebriated and now dulled individual (lost) a hoity, self aggrandising and often preposterous discourse

to be slapped around; a concern for the everyday, for the wider facts (whatever they are) with

Bukowskiesque leanings.

When people ask me what the generic in architecture might be (not often) since reading Jonathan

Meades essay, I say ‗By the look of it, everything Zaha hates.‘

By outlining what she dislikes, I hope to show (each of us in our own minds) what she is for, or what

in general contemporary architectural genius seems to consist of. As JM points out, ZH appears to talk

perfect sense about everything OTHER than architecture. This would seem problematic. It is not easy

to tell what Zaha does and why and how she does it. It is no longer easy to work out what architecture

students are doing and how and why they do it either (as you know from personal experience).

The process will be rather satirical, but grounded in the analysis of deeply troubling historical

processes.

Sessions:

1. The Jonathan Meades essay: General Introduction.

2. General Questions of representation of space and time.

3. General Questions on the future in the past

4. General Questions as to being a great architect today

5. General Questions as to architecture and everyday life

6. Particular discussion of theories supporting the ugly and the ordinary

7. Particular discussion of architecture in the service economy

8. Group discussion of essay topics.

Reading List

Chase. J: Glitter Stucco and Dumpster Diving

Badiou. A : The Communist Hypothesis

Jerde, J: You are Here

Hickey, D: Air Guitar

Fuller, B: Ownership Manual for Spaceship Earth

Waugh, E: Decline and Fall

Venturi, R: LFLV

Girouard, M: Big Jim

Klosterman, C: Chuck Klosterman 1V

Eagleton, T: After Theory

Hudson, M: Super Imperialism

ORNAMENT: BETWEEN VIRTUE AND INIQUITY

OLIVER DOMEISEN

The Rococo of the 18th century, the stylistic eclecticism of the 19

th century, and the Art Nouveau of

the early 20th century have habitually been described as architectural periods of decline and

decadence. But who is it that condemns such ornamental virtuosity? And what are their ulterior

motives? Are there alternative points of view? Using source texts from all three periods we will

discover how ornament had repeatedly become the battleground upon which the future of architecture

was forged. Authors such as William Hogarth, Gottfried Semper, Owen Jones, Alois Riegl, John

Ruskin, Louis Sullivan or Adolf Loos have all defined ornament for their own age and for their own

wilful objectives. We will discuss the historical contexts, underlying pathologies and enduring

legacies of these seminal texts, and we will determine their relevance in establishing a desperately

needed contemporary theoretical framework. We will also discover how each author provides us with

interpretative tools that allow us to critically assess contemporary ornamental production, be it by

Herzog & de Meuron, Toyo Ito or yourself. This course will give you a glimpse into one of

architecture‘s biggest conspiracies and equip you with the knowledge and vocabulary to partake in a

rapidly emerging discourse.

Sessions will take place on Wednesday afternoons from 3pm.

Session 1 (06/10/2010): Introduction: The Four Elements of Ornament

(Naturalism, Geometry, Materialism, Iconography)

Session 2 (13/10/2010): 18th Century: The Rocaille: Line of Beauty or Micromegalic

Intemperance?

Required reading: WILLIAM HOGARTH, The Analysis of Beauty, 1753.

F.A. KRUBSACIUS, Reflections on the Origin, Growth, and Decline

of Decoration in the Fine Arts, 1759.

ISABELLE FRANK, The Theory of Decorative Art (chapter III:

Introduction pp245-253), Yale University 2000.

Recommended reading: Karsten Harries, The Bavarian Rococo Church. Between Faith and

Aestheticism (pp210-219; 243-246), Yale University 1983.

Coffin/Davidson/Lupton/Hunter-Stiebel, Rococo. The Continuing

Curve, 1730 – 2008 (pp3-10), Smithsonian Institution 2008.

Session 3 (20/10/2010) 19th Century (1): Ornament as Symbolic Mask or Expression of

Structure?

Required reading: GOTTFRIED SEMPER, Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or,

Practical Aesthetics 1860.

ISABELLE FRANK, The Theory of Decorative Art (chapter II:

Introduction pp135-137), Yale University 2000.

Recommended reading: Debra Schafter, The Order of Ornament, The Structure of Style,

(chapter 2: Gottfried Semper and Evidence of Function pp32-44),

Cambridge University Press 2003.

Mari Hvattum, Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism

(pp57-83), Cambridge University Press 2004.

Hartmut Mayer, Die Tektonik der Hellenen: Kontext und Wirkung

der Architekturtheorie von Karl Bötticher (pp92-98), Edition Axel

Menges 2004.

Session 4 (27/10/2010) 19th Century (2): Style as Formal Eclecticism or Historical

Evolution?

Required reading: OWEN JONES, The Grammar of Ornament, 1856.

ALOIS RIEGL, Problems of Style, 1893.


(chapter 2: Owen Jones and Natural Structure pp22-32; Alois Riegl

and the Psychological Disposition pp44-59), Cambridge University

Press 2003.

Heinrich Wölfflin, Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture

(VII. Ornament; VIII. Principles of Historical Judgment), 1886.

Session 5 (03/11/2010) 19th Century (3): Ornament as Indexical Icon or Machined

Decoration?

Required reading: JOHN RUSKIN, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (The Lamp of

Beauty; - Truth; - Life; - Sacrifice), 1849.

P. RIOUX DE MAILLOU, The Decorative Arts and the Machine,

1895.


(chapter 2: John Ruskin and the Representation of Divine Order

pp17-22; Ornament as Emblem pp63-72), Cambridge University

Press 2003.

Augustus Welby Pugin, On Metal-work, 1841.

William Morris, The Arts and Crafts of To-day, 1889.

Session 6 (10/11/2010) 20th C. (1): Ornament as Emotional Expression or Machined

Impression?

Required reading: LOUIS H. SULLIVAN, Ornament in Architecture, 1892.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, The Art and Craft of the Machine, 1901.

BRETT STEELE, Bending and Stacking by Code: Machines and

Ornament in Architecture (in: Re-sampling Ornament pp26-28),

Merian 2008.

Recommended reading: Kent Bloomer, The Nature of Ornament (chapter 11: Ornament and

Modern Technology pp137-171), W.W. Norton & Company 2000.

David Van Zanten, Sullivan’s City (chapter 4: Architecture as

Ornament pp114-119; chapter 5: Finis pp134-151), W.W. Norton &

Company 2000.

Louis H. Sullivan, The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,

1896 (in: Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings pp202-213), Dover

Publ. 1979

Session 7 (17/11/2010) 20th C. (2): Ornament as Crime or Redemption?

Required reading: ADOLF LOOS, Ornament and Crime, 1908.

ADOLF LOOS, Ornament and Education, 1924

LE CORBUSIER, The Decorative Art of Today, 1925.

Recommended reading: Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses (chapter 1: The

Clothing of Space; Prosthetic Fabrications; Architecture after the

Eye pp9-33; chapter 3: The Architect’s Dresses pp67-76), MIT 1995.

Panayotis Tournikiotis, Adolf Loos (chapter 2: Writings pp22-31),

Princeton 2002.

Debra Schafter, The Order of Ornament, The Structure of Style,

(chapter 5: The Subsequent Impact pp183-194), Cambridge

University Press 2003.

Session 8 (24/11/2010) 21st C.: Future Ornament: A Production of Meaning or Pattern?

Required reading: KENT BLOOMER, The Nature of Ornament (chapter 13: On the

Absence of Ornament pp205-229), W.W. Norton & Company 2000.

ANDREA GLEINIGER, Editorial; New Patterns? Old Patterns? On

the Emotional Appeal of Ornament. (In: PATTERN Ornament,

Structure and Behaviour pp7-24), Birkhäuser Verlag 2009.

Recommended reading: Robert Venturi, Iconography and Electronics upon a Generic

Architecture (A Not So Gentle Manifesto (1994) pp11-38), MIT

1996.

Henri Focillon, Forms in the Realm of Space, 1934.

Kent Bloomer, Ornament or Decoration? (In: Re-sampling

Ornament pp46-48), Merian 2008.

Required Submission: Illustrated essay, min. 2000 words (incl. captions). The essay will describe and

compare the ornament of two buildings, one historical and one contemporary, in light of relevant

theories discussed during the seminar. You will present your selection of buildings and bibliography

during session 8 (or earlier). Submissions are due Friday 10th December.

Oliver Domeisen AA dipl. produces, teaches, curates and writes about architecture, currently with a

focus on ornament. He produced the ―Re-sampling Ornament‖ exhibition for the Swiss Architecture

Museum Basel and Arkitekturmuseet Stockholm in 2008-09. He as lectured on the topic at the V&A,

Eikones Institute Basel, Yale University, Art Basel and the Werner Oechslin Foundation. His writings

on ornament were published in Detail, S AM, Volume, A.D., Archithese et al. He has been a Unit

Master at the AA since 2001, currently teaching Diploma Unit 13. Previously a project architect at

Zaha Hadid he founded dlm architectural designers ltd in 2000.

ERROR: THE FALSE ECONOMY OF PRECISION IN

ARCHITECTURE

FRANCESCA HUGHES

This course concerns itself with physical (and not ethical) error in architecture; though as we shall see

morality does permeate all questions of error. Head in the clouds, feet in the clay: the cliché adroitly

defines architects by their location between abstraction and materialisation. The architect‘s feat: to put

into material that which is outside of materiality is necessarily plagued by the error that accompanies

all physicality. Not for nothing then are the architect‘s relations to precision, error and matter both

highly convoluted and highly compromised. This course is a critique of these relations. Through an

analysis of Aristotle‘s original conflation of matter with error the seminars will argue that

examination of error as a category in its own right provides a potential ‗way in‘ to the sticky question

of matter. Establishing a distinction between enforceable and redundant precision, the sessions will

argue further that the symptomatic excess of precision in architectural culture, inflated above all

reasonable performance, is nothing less than the architect‘s fear of matter itself. Not surprisingly then

do we find a complex architecture of fortification erected to protect all formal production from

incursions by erroneous matter: margins for error, standards and specifications, tolerance and material

failure thresholds. Within this, at a systemic level, strategies of inference, approximation and

ideological weighting have been imported from other fields to establish a false economy of precision

deployed versus error controlled. Meanwhile in the cultures of architecture, ever-increasing apparent

precision (often largely redundant in its error reducing efficacy) is highly fetishised. Suffice to say

there is little neutral or rational about architecture‘s relations to error and the currency of precision.

Through critical analysis of key operative and historical moments in architectural production and its

representation - see session outlines below - we will examine the construction of these relations and

the peculiar economy it engenders.

Session presentations will be illustrated with slide and video material and followed by discussion

informed by weekly reading of specified chapters or passages in texts listed below. Students are

required to submit a 3000 word written (and drawn if appropriate) essay to be discussed initially

mid term and presented in progress to the group in session 8 before final submission in term 2.

Session 1: Error & Precision

The Troping of Precision: From Hooke’s needles to Wittgenstein’s beads.

In order to look critically at the economy of error and precision in architectural production, this

introductory seminar plots the historic shifts in the meaning of precision - itself a most ‗imprecise‘

term – and the consequent changing role of approximation.

Required reading:

Wise, M.Norton, ed: The Values of Precision, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wright, Rees, Anscombe eds.,

trans Anscombe, Oxford, Blackwell, 1964, II-66-78

Hooke, Robert: Micrographia, New York, reprint of Royal Society edition of 1665, Dover

publications,1961

Further reading:

Hacking, Ian: ‗Speculation, Calculation, Models, Approximations‘, Representing and Intervening,

Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1983

Session 2: Error & Matter

Forensics of an Ideology

In Metaphysics, Aristotle set out the architecture of form and matter relations, which, despite the

many changes C20th ‗matter‘ has undergone, to this day underpin almost all material and formal

thought. Crucially, within this schema, error is conflated with matter, emerging as both a possible

agent of matter, and, its only physical (formal) register.

Required reading:

Aristotle: The Metaphysics, trans Lawson Tancred, London, Penguin Books, 1998.

Further reading

Bowness, Alan ed: ‗Alan Bowness: Conversations with Barbara Hepworth‘, Barbara Hepworth 1960-

1969, London, Lund Humphries, 1971.

Session 3: Error & Material I - Indeterminacy

Room for doubt: Instrumentalism, Inference and Ideology.

The architect‘s engagement is of course not with matter per se, but with material, always mediated by

material technology. In the period between the wars, a massive cultural shift in material tolerance saw

a wholesale rejection of organic materials, even in the perhaps most sacred site of technological

instrumentalism: aviation engineering. This seminar examines what happens when, haunted by error,

technological sites become ideological. How does the latent indeterminacy inherent in such sites

provide prime territory for false inference and ideological colonisation? Given this, how then can

architecture apply to technology as acultural arbitrator of its own conflicts?

Required reading:

Le Corbusier: ‗L‘esthetique de L‘ingenieur: Maison en Serie‘, Nouvelle Esprit, 13, December 1921.

Ricoeur, Paul: ‗Ideology and Utopia‘, From Text to Action, Trans. Blaney and Thompson,

Northwestern University Press, 1991

Schatzberg, Eric: Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal, Culture and Technical Choice in American

Airplane Materials, New York, Princeton University Press, 1999

Further reading:

Cartwright, Nancy: How the Laws of Physics Lie, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983.

Session 4: Error & Material II: Authorship

Abdicated Measures: The Politics of Optimisation

One hundred years before parametric optimisation, in pursuit of the miraculous potential of buildings

that could literally be poured into being, the construction industry embarked on the frenzied invention

of standards and specifications: as lab coats first walked into the dust of the construction site to

contain unruly slurry, precision and error relations in architecture reconfigured forever. Through joint

examination of the rhetoric of Le Corbusier‘s euphoria at his drawing being ―poured in from above‖

and that of contemporary writing on parametric production where form ―is found‖, this seminar asks:

what does instantaneity do to the cultural economies of architectural production? What does it do to

authorship and its potential abdication? How is it that the instantaneous, when properly marketed, has

the authority of the immaculate and, more curiously, the neutrality of the ‗optimised‘?

Required reading:

Le Corbusier: ‗Mass production Housing‘, Towards a New Architecture, trans Goodman, London,

Frances Lincoln ltd, 2008.

Various sample articles regarding parametricisation – see folder provided.

Further reading:

Lesley, Robert W: ‗Appdx D, American Society for Testing Materials, Standard Specifications and

Tests for Portland Cement‘, History of the Portland Cement Industry in the United States, Chicago,

International trade press Inc, 1924, pp303. http://www.archive.org/details/historyofportlan00lesl

Slaton, Amy E.: Reinforecd Concrete and the Modernisation of American Building 1900 – 1930, John

Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Session 5: Error & Representation

Radical Exteriorisation: Visuality, Vitality and Viridicality

In seminal accounts of the genesis of architectural form a crucial middle stage is always eclipsed -

usually by an over emphasised beginning (concept sketch) and end (rendered perspectives). However

in recent years ‗concept‘ has been declared dead. If so, with it must go the metaphoric internalisation

of gestation: morphogenesis concealed. This class focuses on the radical exteriorisation of

methodological interiority in Gordon Matta-Clark‘s Unbuilding works and Mary Kelly‘s Frankenstein

in order to ask: if concept is dead, then how might the exteriorising action of representation now meet

the previously hidden phases of architectural production? With reference to Aristotle‘s inflection of

matter with impermanence, and therefore vitality, putting matter firmly on the wrong side of the

visuality/vitality axis that so polarised Newton and Hooke, (then becoming Bohr‘s battle between

‗light and life‘), we will ask: exactly how does matter disrupt representation? How are these battles

now manifest in the representations of architecture where, increasingly, we are able to conjure up

vitality that is not there and a viridicality (truthfulness) that is not reliable? As imaging technology

homes in on matter, does its illusion of apparent precision paradoxically only obscures matter further?

Required reading/viewing:

Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, London, Penguin Books, revised edition,

1992.

Gordon Matta-Clark: Splitting, Super 8, 10:50 mins, 1974. Baroque, 16mm, 44 mins, 1977. Conical

Intersect, 16mm, 18:40 mins, 1975.

Fox Keller, Evelyn: Making Sense of Life, Explaining Biological Development with Models,

Metaphors and Machines, Harvard University Press, 2002.

Further reading/viewing:

Atlee, James and Lefeuvre, Lisa: Gordon Matta Clark, The Space Between, Nazraeli Press, 2003.

Diserens, Corinne, ed: Gordon Matta Clark, London, Phaidon Press, 2003.

Jacob, Mary Jane: Gordon Matta Clark A Retrospective, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago,

1985.

Lee, Pamela M: Object to be Destroyed, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2000.

Verne, Jules: Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Penguin, London, 1994.

Video of Jane Crawford lecture at AA.

Session 6: Error & Reproduction

Matter and Message

“A question that can be deferred, though not forever, is whether there is some other matter in

addition to that of substances of the kinds that we have been examining, whether we should look for

some other sort of substance, such as, perhaps, numbers.”

Aristotle, Zeta 11

“They are law code and executive power – or, to use another simile, they are architects plan and

builders craft – in one‖

Schrödinger 1944 on chromosomes

“ A hen is merely an egg’s way of making another egg” Wierner, God Golem Inc

Matter and error in the digital model: Behind the digital model is the cybernetic machine. Within the

cybernetic machine that is increasingly central to the way we not only make but also think architecture

is the body that has always been embedded in architecture‘s discourses of production: the reproducing

body. This session examines how the cybernetic tools that drive contemporary practice owe their

origins to the critical return to embryogenesis in the 1960‘s in order to crucially account for and

incorporate difference and nonlinearity. Here, Aristotle‘ lingering doubt and the post-war cells that

would not obey Schrödinger ‗architects‘ met as somatic body and message conflated, and matter was

allowed to become information.

Required reading:

Evelyn Fox Keller: Refiguring Life, Metaphors of Twentieth Century Biology, New York, Columbia

University Press, 1995.

Wiener, Norbert: God Golem Inc: a Comment on Certain Points Were Cybernetics Impinges on

Religion, MIT Press, Cambridge: 1964.

Schrödinger, Erwin: What is Life? 1943 Dublin Lectures, Folio Society, London, 2000.

Session 7: Error & Ornament

The sublimation of ornament: Lineament, Error and the Indexicalised Surface

Ornamentation has traditionally been the key surface strategy for the incorporation (and concealment)

of error: the fertile sites of ornament are the seminal low tolerance junctions, the meeting of wall and

floor, wall and ceiling. With reference to Loos‘ surface lineament and Wittgenstein‘s saturation

precision, this chapter examines the relations between the rise of a desire for an effect of precision that

marks modernism and the concurrent reorganisation of the space of ornament. An analysis of Loos‘

lineament of veneers, argues that ornament was not ‗removed‘ as such but in fact sublimated; and

second, of Wittgenstein‘s house, that sublimated ornament here resurfaces as a not localised but

uniform distribution of precision, prefiguring the distrubution of precision in the digital. This session

concludes that redundant precision is, in fact, the ornament of our age.

Required reading:

Leitner, Bernhard: The Wittgenstein House, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.

Loos, Adolf: ‗My First Building!‘, ‗Architecture‘ On Architecture, Riverside CA, Ariadne Press,

2002.

Further Reading:

Leitner, Bernhard: The Architecture of Ludwig Wittgnestein, London, Academy Editions, 1995.

Gravagnuolo, Benedetto: 'The Removal of Ornament' in Adolf Loos, Theory and Works, London, Art

Data, 1995.

Loos, Adolf: Ornament and Crime, Selected Essays and On Architecture, both trans Michael Mitchell,

Ariadne Press, 1998 and 2002.

Session 8: Conclusion and student presentations

This final session will be used for a general conclusive discussion and for students to present a full

synopsis of their submission.

Having taught at the Bartlett for 5 years, Francesca Hughes joined the AA in 2003 where she has

been unit master of Dip 15 since 2004 and intermittently taught HTS. She has lectured internationally

and served as external examiner in numerous schools, both in the U.K. and abroad. Author/editor of

The Architect: Reconstructing her Practice (MIT Press: 1996), she is currently completing a book

entitled Error. Hughes Meyer Studio is an art /architecture practice whose work has been published

by AR, ANY, Art Forum, Merrel, Routledge and Wiley and exhibited in the UK and abroad.

POLITY AND SPACE

JOHN PALMESINO

The seminar investigates the relations between the process of construction of inhabited space and the

forms of polity in the twenty-first century. Using architecture as both the object and the method of

inquiry, we will analyse a series of complex territorial transformations to reveal the underlying

organisational processes in the theoretical junctures between notions of inhabitation, architecture,

space, territory, government, intervention. The contemporary territory is the seat of a multiplicity of

transformational patterns and evolutive rhythms wrought by concurrent and often distant interests and

promoted by a growing number of actors. Their interplay and competition reshapes, carves, moulds

and reorganises their spaces of operation. Natural, mineral, technological, linguistic, biological,

economic, political, cultural, social and institutional factors constantly interact and form the materials

that constitute the complex dynamics of the contemporary territory. The seminar with explore a series

of transformations in the connections between organisation of contemporary politics and their spaces

of operation with architecture and urbanism being agents of that relation.

Course Outline:

Session 1: Observing transformations: uncertainty in the inhabited landscapes

Session 2: Between space and society

Session 3: Self-organisation: multiple autonomous agents

Session 4: A Nature: contemporary sovereignties

Session 5: Territories, circulations, boundaries, horizons: knowledge production and architecture

Session 6: Inter Alia: architecture as a practice amongst other practices

Session 7: Agency

Session 8: Potentialities

Bibliography:

Giorgio Agamben , ‗State of Exception‘, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2005

Arjun Appadurai, ‗Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization‘, University of

Missesota Press 1996

Étienne Balibar, ‗We, The People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship‘, 2004

Fernand Braudel, ‗The Perspective of the World‘, Berkeley: University of California Press 1992

Norman Davies, ‗Europe – A History‘, London: Harper Collins 1996

Gilles Deleuze, ‗Bergsonism‘, New York: Zone Books 1991

Gilles Deleuze, ‗Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life‘, New York: Zone Books 2001

Manuel De Landa, ‗A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History‘, New York: Zone Books 1997

Keller Easterling, ‗Enduring Innocence‘, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 2007

Okwui Enwezor et al. (eds.) ‗Democracy Unrealized. Documenta 11 Platform 1‘, Ostfildern: Hatje

Cantz 2002

Michel Foucault, Security, ‗Territory, Population, Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-1978‘, New

York: Picador 2007

Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, ‗Empire‘, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 2001

Nicole Loraux, ‗The Divided City‘, New York: Zone Books 2006

Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel eds., ‗Making Things Public‘, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press

2005

Jean-Luc Nancy, ‗Being Singular Plural‘, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2000

Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma: ‗Geography‘s Visual Culture‘, London and New York: Routledge 2000

Aldo Rossi, ‗The Architecture of the City‘, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1984

Saskia Sassen, ‗Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages‘, Princeton:

Princeton University Press 2008

Carl Schmitt, ‗Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty‘, Chicago: University

of Chicago Press 2006

Daniel Heller-Roazen, ‗The Enemy of All. Piracy and the Law of Nations‘, New York: Zone Books

2009

Isabelle Stengers, ‗Cosmopolitics I‘, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2010

Immanuel Wallerstein, ‗World System Analysis‘, Durham: Duke University Press 2004

John Palmesino has established with Ann-Sofi Rönnskog Territorial Agency, an independent

organisation that combines contemporary architecture and urbanism, advocacy and action for

integrated spatial transformation of contemporary territories. He is Research Advisor at the Jan van

Eyck Academie, Maastricht. He is Diploma Unit Master at the AA where he also teaches at the MA

HCT. He previously has been Head of Research at ETH Studio Basel – Contemporary City Institute.

He has co-founded Multiplicity in Milan, an international network that investigates transformations of

the contemporary city. He is the initiator of the multi-disciplinary project ‗Neutrality‘ that researches

the transformations of contemporary space. He is researching for his PhD at the Research Architecture

Centre at Goldsmiths, where he also is in charge of the MA seminars.

ARCHITECTURE AND BEAUTY, A TROUBLED RELATIONSHIP

YAEL REISNER

Those outside the architectural profession often perceive a building to be brilliant for the aesthetic

experience it offers. And yet bizarrely, from the advent of modernism, architects have invented a

multitude of strategies to absolve themselves from making visual judgments.

The prevailing architecture of the 20th century with its impersonal nature resulted with a consistent

reduction of the complexity of our profession where its cultural, artistic, poetic, or metaphysic aspects

were questioned too often while rationality, economy, utility and technologies were always deployed.

Objectifying the design process, enhancing a cerebral input and reducing the intuitive personal

moves, especially involving the eye as a tool of judgment (the ‗I‘ and the ‗eye‘) and not resorting to it

as a secret weapon, led in time to a lack of confidence in how much intellectual depth can be

captured by intuitive architectural imagery.

The modern usage of the word ‗aesthetics‘, meaning taste or ‗sense‘ of beauty, tied the term to a

personal attitude and therefore conflicted with an objectified architectural process.

Self expression doesn't necessarily lead to beauty, but when the self is removed beauty is avoided.

The battle among vanguard architects is at a new peak; there are new voices for who the removal of

the Self is not an issue anymore and the ‗I‘ goes along with the ‗eye‘ as they generate form and spatial

experience with character and atmosphere. The computational design process does not limit the

presence of personalities if the aspiration is there.

We will discuss the Troubled Relationship between Architecture and Beauty, based on my new book

written with Fleur Watson entitled: Architecture and Beauty, Conversations with Architects about A

Troubled Relationship, published by Wiley at 2010.

We will focus on the architectural culture that brought this troubled relationship through the profile of

sixteen leading architects* of different generations discussing their formative experiences, creative

processes and motivations, whether they think beauty is integral or non-essential to architecture.

We will raise poignant issues regarding the place of beauty, aesthetics and self-expression, within the

psychology of the design process of the architectural avant-garde, and many more relevant terms that

influenced the discourse, such as determinism in design, non-determinism, lateral visual thinking,

architectural contents, the notion of vision, imagery, poetics and aesthetics.

*Frank O. Gehry, Zvi Hecker, Peter Cook, Juhani Pallasmaa, Lebbeus Woods, Gaetano Pesce, Wolf

D.Prix(Coop Himmelblau), Thom Mayne (Morphosis), Eric Owen Moss, Will Alsop, Zaha Hadid,

Odile Decq, Mark Goulthorpe(dECOi), Greg Lynn, Kolatan-McDonald(Kol/Mac), Hernan Diaz

Alonso

1st session

Introduction- As seen by Reisner: the genesis of a troubled relationship between architecture

and beauty & Pallasmaa’s view on Beauty in architecture.

Required reading: Yael Reisner and Fleur Watson, Architecture and Beauty, Conversations with

Architects about A Troubled Relationship, Wiley, 2010. (Introduction: pp.11- 29, (always including

footnotes), Juhani Pallasmaa: pp.77-87)

Recommended reading: Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin, Architecture and the Senses.

Polemics, Academy Editions, UK, 1996.

Rowe, Colin, The Architecture of Good Intentions, Towards a Possible Retrospect, Academy

Editions, London, 1994. pp.15-29

Pehnt, Wolfgang, Expressionist Architecture, Thames and Hudson, London 1973. (Forward pp.7-12,

Hans Poelzig pp.13-22.)

Miller, Arthur I., Insights of Genius, Imagery and Creativity in Science and Art, MIT Press,

Cambridge USA, 2000 (Preface, Common sense and Scientific Intuition, pp. 1-23, 35-36.)

Banham, Reyner, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, Architectural Press, Butterworth-

Heinman, Oxford, 1997 (Choisy: Rationalism and Technique pp.23-34, De Stijl: the Dutch phase

pp.148-162, Expressionism: Amsterdam ad Berlin pp.163-184, Conclusion: Functionalism and

Technology pp.320-330)

Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word. Yale University Press, Yale, 1967 (The word and the

Sensorium pp.1-16. )

2nd

Session

Frank Gehry, Wolf Prix and Zaha Hadid - Deconstructivist Architecture

Required reading: Yael Reisner and Fleur Watson, Architecture and Beauty, Conversations with Architects about A

Troubled Relationship, Wiley, 2010. (Ghery pp.31-43, Prix pp.117-131, Hadid pp.176-191.) (always

including footnotes)

Recommended reading: Prix, Wolf D, Get Off of My Cloud, Texts, 1968-2005. Kandeler-Fritsch, Martina, and Kramer,

Thomas, (eds). Publisher, Vienna, 2005. (Programatic Texts pp. 24-109, Coop Himmelblau in

conversations with Alvin Boyarsky pp.232-249.)

Domenig, Gunther, Stone House at Steindorf, Dawings and Models, Ritter Verlag, Klagenfurt, 1993

Johnson, Philip and Wigley, Mark, Deconstructivist Architecture, The Museum of Modern Art, New

York. June 23 - August 30, 1988, [exhibition catalogue].

Wines, James, De-Architecture, Rizzoli, NY, 1987. (De-Architecture pp.133-142, Project Portfolio

pp.168-187)

3rd

Session

Zvi Hecker, Lebbeus Woods and Gaetano Pesce.

Ethics vs. Aesthetics; Art Povera, Social critic Angst and Humor.


Troubled Relationship, Wiley, 2010. (Hecker pp.45-57, Woods pp.89-103, Pesce pp.105-115.)

Recommended Reading:

Pehnt, Wolfgang, Expressionist Architecture, Thames and Hudson, London 1973. (Visionary

Architects pp.89-106)

Woods, Lebbeus ‗Lebbeus Woods: Anarchitecture: Architecture is a political Art‘, Architectrual

Monographs No.22 , Wiley, London, 1992 (Anarchitecture pp 8-13, Heterarchies p. 46, Glossary

p.142.)

4th

Session

Peter Cook, Will Alsop and Odile Decq - Drawings Models Metaphors and Imagery


Troubled Relationship, Wiley, 2010. (Cook pp.59-75, Alsop pp.163-175,Decq pp.193-205.)



Cambridge USA, 2000 (Scientific Progress and Metaphors, pp.217-225, 246-249, Visual Imagery in

Scientific thought pp.312-320, Art, Science, and the history of ideas pp. 379-439, Conclusion

pp.441-445)

Forty, Adrian, Words and Buildings, A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, Thames & Hudson,

London, 2000 (The Language of Modernism pp.19-27, Character pp.120-131, Space, pp.256-275.)

Cook, Peter, The City seem as a Garden of Ideas, The Monacelli Press, NY,2003. (The city of surprise

pp.76-95, Looking at and Looking out pp.162-164)

5th

Session

Thom Mayne and Eric Moss - Complex Systems vs. A Deterministic Voice


Troubled Relationship, Wiley, 2010. (Mayne pp.133-147, Moss pp.149-161)


Moss, Eric Owen, Gnostic Architecture, Monacelli, New York, 1999. (1.The Oustside of the Inside

pp.1.1-1.14, 3.The Glue pp.3.1-3.33, 5.Inside of the inside pp.5.1-5.12.)

Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation. Vintage, London, 1961 (Against Interpretation pp.3-14, On

Style pp.15-36, One Culture and New Sensibility pp.293-304)

6th

Session

Mark Goulthorpe and Greg Lynn - Indifferent Beauty, Form and Technique


Troubled Relationship, Wiley, 2010.(Goulthorpe pp.207-217, Lynn pp.219-231.)


Big Bang, Creation and Destruction in the 20th Century, Centre Pompidou, 2005.[exhibition

catalogue]

The Modern Big Bang by Catherine Grenier pp.13-20

Goulthorpe, Mark ‗Notes on Digital Nesting: A Poetics of Evolutionary Form‘ ,AD magazine,

‗Poetics in Architecture‘ ,March 2002

Carpo, Mario ‗L’architecture a lere du pli’, L‘architecutre d‘aujourd‘hui Vol 349, Nov-Dec 2003,

p.98 (in English)

Lynn, Greg (ed), AD magazine, ’Folding in Architecture’, 1993

Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, 1958, (translated to English, 1964).

(Read the ‗Introduction‘ chapter)

7th

Session

Kolatan–Mac Donald and Hernan Diaz Alonso - Creative Impurities & Virtuosity


Troubled Relationship, Wiley, 2010. (Kol-Mac pp.233-243, Hernan Diaz Alonso pp.245-258.)


Frazer, John, An Evolutionary Architecture, Architectural Association, London, 1995.pp.58-103

Kolatan, Sulan and McDonald, Bill ‗Lumping‘ AD magazine, vol 72 no 2 , Jan. 2002

Diaz-Alonso, Hernan, Exuberance I don’t know; Excess, I like, AD magazine, Exuberance: New

Virtuosity in Contemporary Architecture,March/April, 2010. pp.70-77.

8th

Session

Conclusions & Students’ presentations*

Recommended reading: Beckley, Bill and Shapiro, David, Uncontrollable Beauty, Towards New Aesthetics, Allworth Press,

New York, 1988.

*Students will submit one page submission abstract and an eight minutes presentation as an

introduction to their essay.

Seminar Requirements: attendance, weekly readings, active participation, production of a 3000

word illustrated essay (including captions) with relevant images.

Bibliography

Books in general

Yael Reisner with Fleur Watson, Architetcure and Beauty, Conversations with Architects about A

Troubled Relationship, Wiley, 2010. (The seminar is based on Reisner‘s new book)

Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, 1958, (translated to English, 1964).

(The ‗Introduction‘ chapter.)

Banham, Reyner, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, Architectural Press, Butterworth-

Heinman, Oxford, 1997 (Choisy: Rationalism and Technique pp.23-34, De Stijl: the Dutch phase

pp.148-162, Expressionism: Amsterdam ad Berlin pp.163-184, Conclusion: Functionalism and

Technology pp.320-330)

Beckley, Bill and Shapiro, David, Uncontrollable Beauty, Towards New Aesthetics, Allworth Press,

New York, 1988.

Forty, Adrian, Words and Buildings, A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, Thames & Hudson,

London, 2000 (The Language of Modernism pp.19-27, Character pp.120-131, Space, pp.256-275.)

Frazer, John, An Evolutionary Architecture, Architectural Association, London, 1995.pp.58-103


Cambridge USA, 2000 (Preface, Common sense and Scientific Intuition, pp. 1-23,35-36, Scientific

Progress and Metaphors, pp.217-225, 246-249, Visual Imagery in Scientific thought pp.312-320, Art,

Science, and the history of ideas pp. 379-439, Conclusion pp.441-445)

Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word. Yale University Press, Yale, 1967 (The word and the

Sensorium pp.1-16.)

Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin, Architecture and the Senses. Polemics, Academy Editions,

UK, 1996

Pehnt, Wolfgang, Expressionist Architecture, Thames and Hudson, London 1973. (Forward pp.7-12,

Hans Poelzig pp.13-22, Visionary Architects pp.89-106)

Rowe, Colin, The Architecture of Good Intentions, Towards a Possible Retrospect, Academy

Editions, London, 1994. pp.15-29

Wines, James, De-Architecture, Rizzoli, NY, 1987. (De-Architecture pp.133-142, Project Portfolio

pp.168-187)

2. Architects’ Monographs

Cook, Peter, The City seem as a Garden of Ideas, The Monacelli Press, NY,2003. (The city of surprise

pp.76-95, Looking at and Looking out pp.162-164)

Domenig, Gunther, Stone House at Steindorf, Dawings and Models, Ritter Verlag, Klagenfurt, 1993

Moss, Eric Owen, Gnostic Architecture, Monacelli, New York, 1999.(1.The Oustside of the Inside

pp.1.1-1.14, 3.The Glue pp.3.1-3.33, 5.Inside of the inside pp.5.1-5.12.)

Prix, Wolf D, Get Off of My Cloud, Texts, 1968-2005. Kandeler-Fritsch, Martina, and Kramer,

Thomas, (eds). Publisher, Vienna, 2005. (Programatic Texts pp. 24-109, Coop Himmelblau in

conversations with Alvin Boyarsky pp.232-249, On Friends and Foes –(Choose your mix)... On Eric

Moss p.394, On Zvi Hecker p.414....)

Woods, Lebbeus ‗Lebbeus Woods: Anarchitecture: Architecture is a political Art‘ Architectrual

Monographs No.22 , Wiley, London, 1992 (Anarchitecture pp 8-13, Heterarchies p. 46, Glossary

p.142.)

3. Exhibition catalogues

Big Bang, Creation and Destruction in the 20th Century, Centre Pompidou, 2005.[exhibition

catalogue] (The Modern Big Bang by Catherine Grenier pp.13-20)

Johnson, Philip and Wigley, Mark, Deconstructivist Architecture, The Museum of Modern Art, New

York. June 23 - August 30, 1988, [exhibition catalogue].

4. Magazines

Diaz-Alonso, Hernan, Exuberance I don’t know; Excess, I like, AD magazine, Exuberance: New

Virtuosity in Contemporary Architecture, March/April, 2010. pp.70-77.

Goulthorpe, Mark ‗Notes on Digital Nesting: A Poetics of Evolutionary Form‘ ,AD magazine,

‗Poetics in Architecture‘ ,March 2002,pp...

Kolatan, Sulan and Macdonald, Bill ‗Lumping‘ AD magazine, vol 72 no 2 ,Jan. 2002, pp...

Lynn, Greg (ed), AD magazine, ‘Folding in Architecture‘, 1993

Dr. Yael Reisner has a PhD in Architecture from RMIT in Australia, a Diploma from the

Architectural Association in London and a BSc in Biology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Born in Tel Aviv, she lives in London since 1990 where she runs her own Studio of Architecture and

Design. She currently teaches internationally after nine years of teaching at the Bartlett (UCL) where

she was the Master course coordinator, a group tutor and a Unit master of Diploma Unit 11. Her book

with Fleur Watson Architecture and Beauty, Conversations with Architects about A Troubled

Relationship was published in April 2010 by Wiley UK. She is one of the contributors for the AD

Magazine on the issue of Exuberance, March 2010. Lately she was commissioned by the Karelic

company to be the art director of a new porcelain lighting line, to be designed by architects.

www.yaelreisner.com

TRAVELS IN KEILLERLAND

PATRICK WRIGHT

This course develops on a recent collaboration between Patrick Wright, the architect and film-maker

Patrick Keiller and the geographer Doreen Massey (‗Landscape and Mobility‘, 2007-2010). Intended

as the elaboration of a critical perspective connected to contemporary urbanism, it will use Patrick

Keiller‘s films as the prompt for a broader enquiry into melancholy, ruin, facadism, memory and

forgetting and other concepts central to the collaboration. We will also consider Keiller‘s new film,

Robinson in Ruins (2010).

Course Outline:

Session 1: Melancholia: archaic mental disorder or modern critical perspective? On the meaning

and modern afterlife of Dürer‘s angel (see the engraving ‗Melancolia I‘).

Session 2: Film: London (1994)

Session 3: London‘s East and the contemporary cult of ruin

Session 4: Pilgrimage in a land of Potemkinist facades: journeying as enlightenment or critique

Session 5: Film: Robinson in Space (1997)

Session 6: History/Heritage: remembering and forgetting

Session 7: Film: The Dilapidated Dwelling (2000)

Session 8: Enclosure and Clearance: the legacy of Speenhamland

Film: Robinson in Ruins (2010)

Bibliography (in approximate order of appearance)

Jacky Bowring, A Field Guide to Melancholy, Oldcastle Books, 2008.

Jacky Bowring ‗London and Passaic: The Melancholy Geographies of Patrick Keiller and Robert

Smithson‘, unpublished article (available as typescript by permission of the author), 2009.

Jacques Rancière, ‗Victor Hugo: The Ambiguities of a Bicentenary, August 2002‘ in Rancière‘s

Chronicles of Consensual Times, Continuum, 2010.

http://www.yaelreisner.com/

W. G. Sebald, Rings of Saturn, Harvill, 1995.

Emanuel Litvinoff, Journey Through a Small Planet, Penguin Modern Classics, 2008.

Patrick Wright, A Journey Through Ruins: the Last Days of London, Oxford University Press, 2009

Peter Hall, ‗The City of Capitalism Rampant‘, in Cities in Civilization, Orion, 1998, 888-931.

Tim Edensor, Industrial Ruins, Berg, 2005.

Owen Hatherley, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (London: Verso, 2010).

Michel de Certeau, ‗Walking in the City‘ in The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California

Press, 1984, 91-110.

Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World (1968), Penguin, 1971.

Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant (1926), Exact Change, 1999.

‗Potemkin Villages‘ – an entry from Joseph L Wieczynski (ed.), The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian

and Slavic History, Vol. 29. Academic International Press, 1982.

Patrick Wright: Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War, Oxford University Press, 2007 (paperback

2009)

Paul Connerton, How Modernity Forgets, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Patrick Wright, On Living in an Old Country (1985), revised and enlarged edition, OUP, 2009

Karl Polyani, The Great Transformation (1944), Beacon Press, 2002.

Patrick Keiller, Robinson in Space, Reaktion, 1999.

A DVD set combining Patrick Keiller‘s films London and Robinson in Space is issued by the BFI.

Copies of The Dilapidated Dwelling are available in the AA. The new film, Robinson in Ruins, is to

be distributed by the British Film Institute.

Patrick Wright is Professor of Modern Cultural Studies at Nottingham Trent University and a fellow

of the London Consortium. His books include Passport to Peking: A Very British Mission to Mao’s

China (2010); Iron Curtain: from Stage to Cold War (2007); Tank; the Progress of a Modern War

Machine (2000); The Village that Died for England (1995); A Journey Through Ruins (1991, revised

edition 2009); On Living in an Old Country (1985, revised edition 2009). He has written widely for

the Guardian and other papers, and his television work includes The River (BBC 2 2000), a four part

series about the Thames.