History and Theory Studies 2013-2014

HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES FIRST YEAR
Terms 1 and 2
Course Lecturers: CHRISTOPHER PIERCE / BRETT STEELE (Term 1)
Course Lecturer: PIER VITTORIO AURELI (Term 2)
Course Tutor: MOLLIE CLAYPOOL
Teaching Assistants:
FABRIZIO BALLABIO
SHUMI BOSE
POL ESTEVE
Course Structure
The course runs for 3 hours per week on Tuesday mornings in Terms 1 and 2. There are four parallel
seminar sessions. Each seminar session is divided into parts, discussion and submission
development.
Seminar
10.00-12.00
Mollie Claypool, Fabrizio Ballabio, Shumi Bose and Pol Esteve
Lecture
12.00-13.00
Christopher Pierce, Brett Steele and Pier Vittorio Aureli
Attendance
Attendance is mandatory to both seminars and lectures. We expect students to attend all lectures
and seminars. Attendance is tracked to both seminars and lectures and repeated absence has the
potential to affect your final mark and the course tutor and undergraduate coordinator will be
notified.
Marking
Marking framework adheres to a High Pass with Distinction, High Pass, Pass, Low Pass, Complete-toPass system. Poor attendance can affect this final mark.
Course Materials
Readings for each week are provided both online on the course website at
aafirstyearhts.wordpress.com and on the course library bookshelf. Students are expected to read
each assigned reading every week to be discussed in seminar. The password to access the course
readings is readings.
TERM 1:
CANONICAL BUILDINGS, PROJECTS, TEXTS
In this first term of the lectures for this course, we will examine some of what are considered to be
the most important modernist buildings, projects and texts from the 20th century. The course sets
out to not only forensically scrutinise significant architects, movements, buildings/projects and texts,
which by general consensus are considered to represent key moments in the history of architectural
thinking/production, but also to raise new questions and understandings of them with the objective
of developing and engaging the students critical faculties of creative thinking and interpretation in
relation to the built environment's embarrassment of riches. The lectures will introduce the ways in
which architecture exists as a form of human knowledge. The lectures will alternate between Brett
and Chris each week.
In the first term of the seminars for the course, we will position the architects, buildings/projects
and texts from the lectures with contrasting architects, movements, buildings/projects and texts
from around the same time as those in the lectures. This will enable students to learn how to
comprehend, compare, analyse and re-interpret very different buildings, projects and texts via
varying forms of scrutiny.
Each week a small group of students will be responsible for presenting about the relevant seminar
architects, buildings/projects and texts and how they are positioned against the material given in the
previous week's lectures. This will enable us to think how we can use the forms of a presentation
and comparison as an argument.
The submission for the first term of the course will be in the form of a piece of writing (2,000 +/words) comparing two buildings/projects from the 20th century, ideally which would not be included
in the most obvious list of canonical modernist projects, as well as an archive of at least 20 images
(etchings, plans, sections, photographs, paintings, sketches, collages, renderings, film stills, etc.). The
submission should be viewed as a critical project, have an argument and be rigorously produced.
This will be developed within the seminars and in conjunction with the lecture material.
Session 1
Seminar
Lecture
Session 2
Seminar
Lecture
Session 3
Seminar
Lecture
Introduction to the course

A Short discussion about seminar assignments in Weeks 3, 4
Adolf Loos, Villa Mller (1930) and Ornament and Crime (1920)
Hermann Muthesius & Henry Van de Velde, Arts and Crafts Movement, 'Werkbund
these and antitheses' (1914)
A Create a series of comparative discussion points (at least 3 but 5 would be good)
to be discussed in seminar on the lecture on Loos and the Muthesius/Van de Velde
text and present them to the class in discussion format.
B Students should look at a list of buildings for the submission this week and
choose 2.
Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Dessau (1925) and Bauhaus Manifesto
Le Corbusier, Citrohan House (1922)
A Bring 2 comparative images of the Bauhaus Dessau and Citrohan House to
seminar, printed in colour on A3 paper, 1 image from each building on each page (so
2 images per A3 page).You should be able to start a discussion about the two
buildings from these images.
B 5 images for the submission are due this week in seminar, printed on A4 paper in
colour. At least two of the images should be of the buildings you are choosing to
write about be creative with the kinds of images you choose and they cannot be
from an Internet source (not from Wikipedia or Google Images, they must be from a
book, journal, magazine or archive) the other 3 can be any other kind of graphic
material you would like to use to support the beginnings of a comparative analysis
between the two buildings (collages, photographs not from the Internet, news
clippings, reviews, drawings, etc).
C Short discussion about seminar assignments in Weeks 5, 6
Lina Bo Bardi, El Centro Cultural SESC de Pompia (1982) and "Theory and
Philosophy of Architecture" from Stones Against Diamonds (AA Publication)
Session 4
Seminar
Lecture
Session 5
Seminar
Lecture
Session 6
Seminar
Lecture
Session 6
Seminar
Cedric Price, Interaction Centre (1971) and A Summertime Breeze from AA Files
No. 5
A As a group, we will write a short manifesto (300 words max) using text and
concepts from both Bo Bardi and Price's texts. Come prepared with at least 5
sentences from each.
B At least 5 key sources for the submission are due in this week in seminar, printed
out on A4 paper. At least 2 of these sources need to be primary texts on the two
buildings you are choosing to write about i.e. they are either by the architect or by
a key contributor to reviews, criticism, etc. on the building. They cannot be from the
Internet, they must be from a book, journal or archive. The other 3 sources can be
any other secondary source material by they must be written by architectural
historians, critics, theorists or educators. They cannot be from a blog unless that
blogger has made a significant contribution to the architectural discipline (i.e.
Lebbeus Woods) or any other Internet source that is not academic.
C Short tutorials for presentations in Weeks 7, 8
Kenzo Tange et al, Osaka Expo 1970 and Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New
Urbanism
Coop Himmel(b)lau, The Cloud (1968)
A Come prepared with at least 10 key words you think describe the comparison
between Tange and Coop Himmel(b)lau's projects. We will put together a short
Lessig-style presentation as a group.
B At least 5 key quotes for your essay are due this week in seminar along with 20
images. We will be doing a Pecha Kucha-style presentation today where you have 20
seconds each to present your 20 images.
Alison (and Peter) Smithson, Hunstanton School and 'Introduction' to Team 10
Primer (1968)
Aldo van Eyck, Amsterdam Orphanage (1961) and Aldo van Eyck's Threshold: The
Story of an Idea by Georges Teyssot in Log No. 11 (Winter 2008).
A for Group 1 A first attempt at a matrix or outline for your submission is due this
week in seminar. This should build off of the images, quotes and sources you brought
to seminar in the previous weeks. This should be a way for you to organise how you
will execute your submission (essay and images) and begin to show how you will
structure the analysis. Have fun with this!
John Hejduk, Houses and 'Introduction' to Five Architects (1972) by Colin Rowe
Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey, Richard Meier, Michael Graves from Five
Architects
A Create a series of comparative discussion points (at least 3 but 5 would be good)
to be discussed in seminar on the lecture on the architects in Five Architects.
B for Group 2 A first attempt at a matrix or outline for your submission is due this
week in seminar. This should build off of the images, quotes and sources you brought
to seminar in the previous weeks. This should be a way for you to organise how you
will execute your submission (essay and images) and begin to show how you will
structure the analysis. Have fun with this!
Lecture
Session 7
Seminar
Lecture
Denise Scott Brown (and Robert Venturi), Roma Interrotta (1978) and Learning from
Las Vegas (1978)
Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971)
A Part of the writing of your submission is due this week in seminar (500 words). It
is the last week of seminar so please utilise the material you put together in the
previous weeks. All captions for images should also be brought to class this week.
Rem Koolhaas, Villa dallAva (1991) and The Chicago Tapes (1986)
Submission Hand-In: Friday 13th December 2013

TERM 2:
AN OUTINE OF URBAN HISTORY
The seminar aims to offer to the students a synthetic overview of the history of the city. This
overview will be developed from the vantage point of two issues: rituals and the spaces that have
enacted/contained these rituals. A ritual is a form of life that is irreducible to individuals and
addresses instead a collective subject. Trough the orthopraxis of rituals it is possible to read the city
as the place in which collectivity is best manifested no matter if the city is initiated by autocratic
rulers, tyrants or whatever vested interests.
Within the course will travel from ancient China, to Greek-Roman city making, from the rise of the
Islamic city to baroque planning, from the affirmation of the industrial city to the collapse of urban
form. The seminar should be understood as a primer in urbanism, but this rather complex (and
ambiguous) body of knowledge will be addressed from the point of view of architecture and its
physical manifestation as specific artifacts. Therefore the goal of the course is to place architectural
form right at the core of the project of the city. In this way the students are encouraged to
understand the history of architecture, not as a history based on master narratives or as a sequence
of styles and personal attitudes, but as a collective process that necessarily involve a multiplicity of
disciplines and actors. At the same time the seminar will pursue the belief that it is architecture the
ultimate index of the complex history of the city. Therefore it is through architectural literacy that
we can understand how deeply rooted in the past are still the problems that we face within present
condition of the cities we inhabit.
Session 1
What is a city? Nomos, Politics, City, Citizenship, Enmity and other preliminary concepts.
Readings:
Hannah Arendt, What is Politics? In The Promise of Politics
Session 2
The Rise of the Polis: The Ancient Greek City
Readings:
Morgens Herman Hansen, Polis: An Introduction (Oxford University Press: New York, 2006).
Louise Bruit Zaidman, Pauline Schmitt Paintel, Paul Cartledge: Religion in the Ancient Greek City
(Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1993).
Session 3
Urbs and Civitas: The Ancient Roman City
Readings:
John E. Stambuagh, The Ancient Roman City (John Hopkins University Press, 1988)
Session 4
The Temple and the Gate: Observations on the Ancient Chinese city
Readings:
Paul Weathley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Enquiry Into the Origins and Character
of the Ancient Chinese City (Aldine publishing Company: London, 1971)
Session 5
Walls and Fields: The Rise of the Islamic City
Readings:
Hamed Khosravi, Medina and the Idea of the Islamic City from Camp of Faith: On Political Theology
and Urban Form (Phd Dissertation: Delft 2014).
Session 6
Urban Space and the Rise of Governance: From the Medieval Town to the Baroque City
Readings:
Leonardo Benevolo, The European city (Wiley Blackwell: London, 1995).
Session 7
The Rise and Fall of the Capitalist City
Readings: Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (Mit Press:
Cambridge, Ma., 1976).
Submission Hand-In: Friday 21st March 2014
HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES SECOND YEAR

Terms 1 and 2
ARCHITECTURES: THEIR PASTS AND THEIR CULTURES
Course Lecturer: MARK COUSINS
Course Tutor: ZAYNAB DENA ZIARI
GABRIELA GARCIA DE CORTAZER
ALISON MOFFETT
ALEXANDRA VOUGIA
Course Structure
The course runs for 3 hours per week on Thursday mornings in Terms 1 and 2. There are four parallel
development.
Seminar
10.00-12.00
Zaynab Dena Ziari, Gabriela Garcia de Cortazer, Alison Moffett and
Alexandra Vougia
Lecture
12.00-13.00
Mark Cousins
Attendance
notified.
Marking
Introduction
The Second 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 modernitys 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.
TERM 1:
Session 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, MarcAntoine, An Essay on Architecture; Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis, Prcis 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
Session 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
Foster, Hal, Design and Crime in Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes), Verso, 2002, p. 1326
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.
Suggested Seminar Readings:
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.
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.
Session 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.
Session 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?
Illich, Ivan, Disabling Proffesions, in Disabling Professions, Boyars, 1977, p. 11-37
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.
Session 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.
Session 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., Chartres, p. 333-348, in A History of Architecture: Settings and
Rituals, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995.
Letterist International, Ken Knabb (trans.), Proposals for Radically Improving the City of Paris,
1955, http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/paris.htm
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.
Kostof, S. & Castillo, G., The Triumph of Christ, p. 245-68 in A History of Architecture:
Settings and Rituals, Oxford University Press, 1995.
Kostof, S. & Castillo, G., The Reinassance: Ideal and Fad, p. 403-412 in A History of
Architecture: Settings and Rituals, Oxford University Press, 1995.
Laugier, Marc-Anotine. 1985, On the Style in Which to Build Churches, p. 100-120, in An
Essay on Architecture, Hennessey & Ingalls, 1985.
Miller, K., St. Peter's, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2007.
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.
Session 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.
TERM 2:
Session 1: 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.
Benjamin, Walter, 'Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century', in The Work of Art in the
Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media, Harvard University
Press, 2008. Read section 'IV. Louis Phillipe, or the Interior', p. 102-104.
Agamben, Giorgio, 'Preface' and 'The Mystery of Economy, 2.1-2.3' in The Kingdom and the
Glory, Stanford University Press, 2011, xi-xiii and p. 17-25.
Banham, R. 'A Home is not a House', in Art in America, Number 2, April 1965. Drawings
by Franois Dallegret.
Laugier, Marc-Antoine, Introduction, p. General Principles in Architecture, p. 11-32, in An
Essay on Architecture, Hennessey and Ingalls, Inc. 1977.
Vilder, Anthony, Unhomely Homes in The Architectural Uncanny, The MIT Press, 1994, p. 16-44
Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis, Private Buildings, Volume Two, Section Three, p. 170-181 in
Prcis 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.
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.
Session 2: 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 and will discuss new types of
architecture that evolve out of industrial capitalism. It will also attempt to specify the
different by tracing the hostility of architects to the proposal for the Eiffel Tower.
Gandy, M. The Paris Sewers and the Rationalization of Urban Space Transactions of the
Institute of British Geographers 24 (1) (1999), pp. 23-44.
Castells, Manuel, The Network and the Self, in The Rise of the Network Society, Wiley, 1996,
p. 1-25.
Picon, A. The Engineers System in French Architects and Engineers in the Age of
Enlightenment, Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 99-120
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.
Gropius, Taut, Behne, New Ideas on Architecture, in Programs and Manifestoes on 20th
Century Architecture, Conrads, Ulrich (ed), The MIT Press, 1971.
Saint, A., Eiffel and 1889, p. 161-71, in Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry,
Yale University Press, 2007.
Quatremre de Quincy, Type, p. 616-620 in Oppositions Reader, Princeton Architectural
Press, 1998.
Le Corbusier, Eyes Which Do Not See, p. 85-129 in Towards a New Architecture, Dover
Publications, 1986.
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.
Pevsner, Nicholaus, Foreword and Introduction, p. 6-10, Railway Station, p. 225-234,
Warehouse and Office Buildings, p. 213-224, Factories, p. 273-288.
Session 3: 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. 314327, 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. 5589, in International Style, W.W. Norton & Company, 1995 Edition.
Appadurai, Arjun, Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transitional Anthropology,
in Modernity at Large: Culural Dimensions of Globalization, University Press, 1996, p. 48-65.
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. 1542, 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.
Bunschoten, Raoul, Stirring the City, OASE Journal, No. 48, p.72-82, 1998
Session 4: 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?
Frampton, K., Architecture and the State: Ideology and Representation, p. 210-223 in
Modern architecture: A Critical History, Thames & Hudson, 2007.
Debord, Guy, The Culmination of Seperation, in Society of the Spectacle, Rebel Press, p. 617.
Aureli, Pier Vittorio, Toward the Archipelago: Defining the Political and the Formal in
Architecture in The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, The MIT Press, 2011, p. 1-13.
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.
Frampton, K. 2007, Giuseppe Terrangi and the Architecture of Italian Rationalism, p. 203-9,
in Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Thames & Hudson, 2007.
McLeod, M., 1989, Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to
Deconstructivism, p. 23-59, Assemblage (8), 1989.
Session 5: 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.
Choay, Francoise, The Concept of the Historical Monument As Such, p. 84-94, in The
Invention of the Historic Monument, Cambridge University Press, 2001. RA
Carpo, Mario, The Postmodern Cult of Monuments, in Future Anterior Volume IV, Number
2, Winter 2007, pp. 51-57
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.
Riegl, Alois, The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin, p. 621-651 in
Oppositions Reader, Princeton Architectural Press, 1998.
Session 6: 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?
Choay, Francoise, Utopia and the Anthropological Status of Built Space, p. 96-103.
Menkin, William, The Revolt of the Object, in Superstudio: Life without Objects, Skira
(Rizzoli), 2003, p. 52-63.
Eisenman, Peter, 'Representations of the Limit: Writing a 'Not-Architecture' in Re:Working
Eisenman, Academy Editions, 1993, p. 34-37.
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, 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
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.
Session 7: 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
Submission Hand-In: Friday 21st March 2014
HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES THIRD YEAR

Terms 1 and 2
ARCHITECTURAL COUPLING [+]
Course Lecturers: MOLLIE CLAYPOOL / RYAN DILLON
Course Tutor: SYLVIE TAHER
NERMA CRIDGE
KONSTANTINOS KIZIS
ANDREA VOSGUETITCHIAN
Course Structure
The course runs for 3 hours per week on Thursday mornings in Terms 1 and 2. There are four parallel
development.
Seminar
10.00-12.00
Sylvie Taher, Nerma Cridge, Konstantinos Kizis and Andrea
Vosguetitchian
Lecture
12.00-13.00
Mollie Claypool, Ryan Dillon
Attendance
notified.
Marking
Introduction
HTS 3rd year will consider architectural history and theory through a set of diverse comparative
analyses, beginning with the rise of modernism in the late 18th century and moving forward in time
to the late 20th century in a sweep across the centuries, exposing and exploring important
trajectories and connections in architectural design, history, theory and practice. The pairings we will
address range from two architects such as Eisenman and Koolhaas, two groups such as the
Situationist International and Archigram, two buildings such as the Fun Palace and the Pompidou as
well as two projects, two texts and two historians.
In recognising the interdisciplinary nature of the field of architectural history and theory, each
coupling will be supplemented by a key device (the +1) such as theoretical writing, drawings, film,
publications, photography, etc. which link these projects to other disciplines outside of architecture.
These presentations will attempt to reveal the importance of focused research and analysis that lead
to unforeseen connections and relationships within architecture and beyond. The couplings at times
will be premeditated and at other moments will reveal themselves in accidental ways, drawing a line
across a series of short histories within the modern architectural canon.
Each week the students will develop the skill of analysing the coupling through the lens of the key
architectural device through the act of writing, dissecting key architectural terms and learning how
to decipher and utilise in their writing their multiple meanings and uses. Students will be expected to
participate in discussion in class, preparing points of debate to present in each seminar in response
to the lectures and assigned readings. In parallel, the students will develop pieces of writing
throughout the term. These pieces of writing will then be presented within seminars not only as a
point of discussion, but as a means of constructing a series of written architectural investigations
that will constitute a portion of the final submission for each term, bringing theory, writing and the
analysis of architectural projects into a succinct body of work.
TERM 1:
Session 1
Vienna Secession VS Bauhaus + Facade
This lecture will look at the facades, both physical and metaphorical, of the Vienna Secession and the
Bauhaus in an attempt to reveal their achievements and failures. The work and writings of Adolf
Loos will be used as a lynchpin between the Secession artists, such as Gustav Klimt, Otto Wagner, to
Bauhaus members Walter Gropius and Lszl Moholy-Nagy to determine a critical link to how these
two different ideas dealt with the social aspects of an ever-evolving notion of man. With Loos and
Freuds account that man had become a sensual and civlised being, the lecture will expose the many
different masks of both movements.
Primary readings:
+Gravagnuolo, Benedetto, Vienna City of Cloth and Cardboard and The Other, in Adolf Loos:
Theory and Works, Idea Books Edizioni, 1982, p. 52-65.
+ Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents, Chapter II, The Hogarth Press and the Institute of
Psycho-Analysis, p. 11-22.
Secondary readings:
+ Loos, Adolf, Potemkin City, in Spoken Into the Void: Collected Essays 1897-1900, Opposition
Books, p.95-97.
+ Muthesius, Hermann/Henry Van de Velde, Werkbund theses and antitheses, p. 28-31; Gropius,
Walter, Programme of the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, p. 49-53; and Taut, Bruno Down with
Seriousism, p. 57-58, in Conrads, Ulrich, Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture,
The MIT Press, 1971.
+ Pevsner, Nikolaus, Theories of Art from Morris to Gropius, p. 19-39, in Pioneers of Modern
Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius, Penguin Books, 1991.
+ Gropius, Walter, Blueprints for an Architects Training, in Larchitecture daujourdhui 20
(February 1950): 74.
+Schuldenfrei, Robin, The Irreproducibility of the Bauhaus Object, in Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning
Identity, Discourse and Modernism, Routledge, 2009, p. 37-59.
Session 2
Boullee VS Le Corbusier + Void
This lecture opens with the work of Jacques-Franois Blondel and the disintegration of Baroque
composition, examining the influences of the movement in architectural design in the mid-1700s
that began with the work of tienne-Louis Boulle. The sublime created by the notion of the void - or
that represents the difference between object and infinity - shall be the means of examining the
total object. This movement towards a holistic, total view of the built - or in the case of this lecture,
unbuilt - architectural object, was most exemplified in the 20th century by the Modernist architect
Le Corbusier.
Primary readings:
+ Architecture, Essay on Art by tienne-Louis Boulle in Boulles Visionary Architecture by Helen
Rosenau, Harmony Books: New York, 1976.
+ Dark Space in The Architectural Uncanny by Anthony Vidler, MIT Press, 1992, pgs 167-175.
+ Three Reminders to Architects: Mass, Plan, Eyes Which Do Not See, Architecture: Pure
Creation of the Mind in Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier, Dover Publications, 1985.
+ Framing Infinity: Le Corbusier, Ayn Rand and the Idea of Ineffable Space in Warped Space by
Anthony Vidler, MIT Press, 2002, pgs 51-64.
Secondary readings:
+ Architecture or Revolution in Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier, Dover Publications,
1985.+ Excerpt, Jacques-Franois Blondel and the Cours dArchitecture by Robin Middleton,
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians: Vol 18, No. 4, December 1959
+ Excerpt, Three Revolutionary Architects by Emil Kauffman, trans. Wolfgang & Anni Hermann,
Hennessey and Ingalls: Los Angeles, 1977.
Session 3
Mies VS Venturi + Media
Mies van der Rohe argued for purity and pushed the glass box to its limits while Robert Venturi
rallied the post-modernists to embrace an architecture that relished in the art of contradiction and
this lecture, with the media as our tool of choice, will attempt to reveal that both voices were not
always telling us the truth. This lecture will analyse the representational work of Mies van der Rohe,
and his penchant for manipulating his architecture through collage, drawing and photographic image
in comparison to similar deceitful tricks utilised by Venturi who learned from pop art, Roland Barthes
and his architectural master Le Corbusier.
Primary readings:
+Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida, Vintage Classics, 2000, p. 3-26.
+Colomina, Beatriz, Faked Images, Continuous Editing and A Window with a View, in Privacy and
Publicity, The MIT Press, 1994, p. 107-139.
Secondary readings:
+ Mies van der Rohe, Working Theses, p. 74-75; The New Era, p. 123; and Technology and
Architecture, p. 154, in Conrads, Ulrich, Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture,
The MIT Press, 1971.
+Venturi, Robert, Nonstraightforward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto, Complexity and
Contradiction vs. Simplification or Picturesqueness, Ambiguity and Contradictory Levels: The
Phenomenon of Both-And in Architecture (Chapters 1-4), p. 16-33, in Complexity and
Contradiction in Architecture, Museum of Modern Art, 1977.
+ Evans, Robin, Mies van der Rohes Paradoxical Symmetries in Translations from Drawing to
Building and Other Essays, p. 233-277, Architectural Association, 1997.
+ Colquhoun, Alan, Sign and Substance: Reflections on Complexity, Las Vegas, and Oberlin, p. 139151, in Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change, Oppositions
Books, MIT Press, 1981.
+Quetglas, Josep, Fear of Glass: Mies van der Rohes Pavilion in Barcelona, Birkhauser.
Session 4
CIAM/Team 10 VS Alison and Peter Smithson + Propaganda
Through the eyes of J.G. Ballard this lecture will investigate CIAM, the mega-group of architects
formed in 1928 who attempted to establish an architectural world dominance through urbanism and
their disgruntled offspring Team X, led by the Smithsons and Aldo van Eyck, ultimately exposing how
all these idealist visions turned out. This lecture will also show that the architects involved in both
groups were highly-skilled propagandists that started a trend in the profession in which selfpromotion was equal to designing.
Primary readings:
+ Bristol, Katherine G. The Pruitt Igoe-Myth, in American Architectural History: A Contemporary
Reader, Routledge, 2004, p. 163-171.
+ Jencks, Charles, The Death of Modern Architecture, in The Language of Post-Modern Architecture,
Academy Editions, 1977, p. 9-37.
Secondary readings:
+ Le Corbusier, Athens Chater 1887-1965, Penguin Group, 1973.
+ Smithson, Alison (Ed.), Team 10 Primer.
+ Ballard, J.G., High Rise, Harper Perennial, 2006.
+ Smithson, Peter and Alison, The Charged Void: Urbanism, Chapter 1, Team X Doorn Manifesto,
Monacelli Press, 2004.
+ Eisenman, Peter, From Golden Lane to Robin Hood Gardens: or If you Follow the Yellow Brick
Road, It May Not Lead to Golders Green, p. 41-56, in Eisenman Inside Out: Selected Writings 19631988, Yale University, 2004.
+ Banham, Reyner, New Brutalism in Architectural Record, December 1955.
+ Mumford, Eric Paul, CIAM discourse on urbanism, 1928-1960, The MIT Press, 2002.
Session 5
Sigfried Giedion VS Reyner Banham + History
This lecture examines the works of two seminal critics of modern architecture, Sigfried Giedions
Mechanisation Takes Command and Reyner Banhams The Architecture of the Well-Tempered
Environment, two texts which developed a new kind of historiography. This lecture will look at how
two approaches to the category of architectural history has evolved both pre and post the Industrial
Revolution, particularly through each critics approach to technology, production and industry.
Primary readings:
+ Excerpt, Lectures on the Philosophy of History by G.W.F. Hegel, Dover, 1956.
+ Excerpt, Mechanisation Takes Command, a contribution to an anonymous history by Sigfried
Giedion, WW Norton, 1969.
+ Unwarranted apology and The environment of the machine aesthetic in The Architecture of the
Well-Tempered Environment by Reyner Banham, Architectural Press, 1969.
Secondary readings:
+ Excerpt, The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller by Robert W. Marks, Reinhold, 1960.
+ Excerpt, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age by Reyner Banham, Architectural Foundation,
1960.
Session 6
Situationist International VS Archigram + Literature
This lecture begins with the assumption that literature in post-WWII Europe was appropriated by art
and architecture groups primarily located in France as a means of translating literature from a High
Art form to a Low Art form. It examines the groups and writings that inspired the Situationist
International and the way in which writing and publishing enacted the movements fundamental
beliefs involving desire, mobility and the relationship of the individual to the collective in comparison
to the UKs Archigram in the 1960s and 70s.
Primary readings:
+ Theory of the Derive in Theory of the Drive and Other Situationist Writings on the City by Guy
Debord, Actar, 1996.
+ Unitary Urbanism, Constants New Babylon and The Structure of New Babylon in The
Situationist City by Simon Sadler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998.
+ Excerpts from Expendability: Towards Throwaway Architecture, Archigram Magazine Issue No. 3,
1963 and Metropolis, Archigram Magazine Issue No. 5, 1964.
Secondary readings:
+ Advertisements for Architecture by Bernard Tschumi, 1976-1977.
+ The Hyper-Architecture of Desire in Constants New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire by
Mark Wigley, 010 Publishers, 1998.
Session 7
Fun Palace VS Pompidou + Technological Enabling
Cedric Price once said, Technology is the answer, but what was the question? and this lecture will
attempt to reveal the question by looking at flexibility in programme, cybernetics, the role of the
user and most importantly how architecture can enable society for the better. However, MattaClarks cuts against the Pompidou may tell us a different story.
Primary readings:
+ Price Cedric, Cedric Prices Non-Plan Diary, in Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom Participation and
Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism, Architectural Press, 2000, p. 22-31.
+ Franks, Ben, New Right/New Left: An Alternative Experiment in Freedom, in Non-Plan: Essays on
Freedom Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism, Architectural Press, 2000,
p. 23-42.
+ Pamela M. Lee, "On the Holes of History" in Object to be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon MattaClark, p. 162-209, the MIT Press, 2000.
Secondary readings:
+ Davies, Colins, Introduction in High Tech Architecture, p. 6-21, Verlag Gerd Hatjie, 1988.
+ Landau, Royston, A Philosophy of Enabling, in AA Files 8, Architectural Association, 1985, p. 3-7.
+ Banham, R. Barker, P. Hall, P. Price, C. Non-Plan an Experiment in Freedom, in New Society 20,
March 1969, p. 435-443.
+ Matthews, Stanley, Joan Littlewood: From Agit-Prop to the Fun Palace, in From Agit-Prop to Free
Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price, p. 44-63, Black Dog Publishing, 2007.
+ Cedric Price, Cedric Price: Works II, Architectural Association, 1984 republished as Cedric Price: The
Square Book, Wiley-Academy, p. 8-15 London 2003.
TERM 2:
Session 1
Eisenman/Terragni VS Koolhaas/Exodus + Physique (Syntax)
This [lecture] is the work of two architects, looking at Peter Eisenmans PhD work at Cambridge
University on Giuseppe Terragni, eventually published in Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations,
Decompositions and Critiques and Rem Koolhaass AA Diploma project Exodus, Or the Voluntary
Prisoners of Architecture, both of which founded their architects seminal architectural devices and
methods used throughout their careers. It will utilise an argument put forth by Colin Rowe to
comparatively argue for two profoundly political paradigms established by Eisenman and Koolhaas:
that of the anarchist and that of the revisionist.
Primary readings:
+ Terragni and the Idea of a Critical Text in Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions
and Critiques by Peter Eisenman, The Monacelli Press, 2003.
+ Involuntary Prisoners of Architecture in October, Vol. 106 (Autumn, 2003) by Felicity D. Scott, p.
75-101.
+ Introduction by Colin Rowe to Five Architects in Architectural Theory Since 1968 by K. Michael
Hays, Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 75-83.
Secondary readings:
+ Introduction in Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions and Critiques by Peter
Eisenman, The Monacelli Press, 2003.
+ From Object to Relationship 11: Casa Guiliana Frigerio: Giuseppe Terragni Casa Del Fascio by
Peter Eisenman in Perspecta, Vol. 13/14, MIT Press, 1971.
+ Guiseppe Terragni: Subject and Mask by Manfredo Tafuri in Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations,
Decompositions and Critiques by Peter Eisenman, The Monacelli Press, 2003.
+ Introduction by Jeff Kipnis in Written Into the Void: selected writings, 1990-2004 by Peter
Eisenman, Yale University Press, 2007.
+ Exodus, Or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (with commentary by Alejandro Zaero-Polo)
in First Works by Brett Steele and Francisco Gonzlez de Canales, AA Publications, 2009.
+ Pandoras Box: An Essay on Metropolitan Portraits by Demetri Porphyrios in Perspecta, vol. 32,
MIT Press, p. 18-27.
+ OMAs Berlin: The Polemic Island in the City by Fritz Neumeyer and Francesca Rogier in
Assemblage, No. 11, MIT Press, 1990.
+ Les Extremes qui se Touchent by George Baird in a special issue on OMA in Architectural Design
Magazine, 1977, issue no. 5.
Session 2
Delirious NY VS Manhattan Transcripts + Film
The city (New York) is your playground and writing is your weapon. Through research, congestion,
event and murder this lecture will reveal the importance of analysis by looking at the seminal texts
of Tshcumi and Koolhaas and how these retroactive (Rem) and literary (Bernard) manifestoes
launched careers that have had a major influence on how we view architecture today as well as for
tomorrow.
Primary readings:
+ Vidler, Anthony, Metropolitan Montage: The City as Film in Kracauer, Benjamin, and Eisenstein,
in Warped Space: Art Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, The MIT Press, 2000.
+ Tschumi, Bernard, Violence of Architecture and Spaces and Events in Architecture and
Disjunction, MIT Press, 1996, p. 121-152.
+ Eisenstein, Sergei, 'Montage and Architecture', in Selected Works, vol. 2, Towards a Theory of
Montage, ed. Glenny, Micheal & Taylor, Richard, BFI Publishing, 1991.
Secondary readings:
+ Tschumi, Bernard, The Manhattan Transcripts, Academy Editions, 1986.
+ Koolhaas, Rem, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto, Monacelli Press, 1994.
+ Siegfried, Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, Oxford Uni. Press, 1960.
+ Benjamin, Walter, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', in Illuminations:
Essays and Reflections, Ed. by Hannah Arendt, Shocken Books, 1968, p. 217-251.
+ Spiller, Neil, 'Transcripts for a New Dtournment', in Visionary Architecture: Blueprints of the
Modern Imagination, Thames and Hudson, 2006, p. 118-137.
+ Dimenberg, Edward, 'Blurring Genres', in Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller and
Scofidio, Whitney Museum of Art, 2003, p. 67- 80.
+ Sanders, James, 'The City has Become the Great Studio...A conversation with Martin Scorcese', in
Scenes from the City: Filmmaking in New York, 1966-2006, Rizzoli International, 2006, p. 24.-29.
+ Metropolis, Dir. Fritz Lang, Writers. Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang, 1927.
+ Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect (documentary), Dir. Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch,
Available on iTunes
Session 3
Andrea Branzi VS Aldo Rossi + Exhibition
This lecture responds again to Colin Rowe in that it will argue for an alternative solution to Rowes
status of late modernism as one with the physique but not the morale. It will explore how postwar capitalist development influenced two Italian architects - Archizooms Andrea Branzi and the
Neo-Rationalist Aldo Rossi - and argues that architecture must be a separate project from that of the
capitalist state. It will primarily focus on two projects: No-Stop City (Branzi, 1971) and Teatro del
Mondo (Rossi, 1979/80).
Primary readings:
+ Towards a Critique of Architectural Ideology by Manfredo Tafuri (1969), in ed. K. Michael Hays,
Architecture Theory Since 1968, Columbia University, 1998, pgs. 2-35.

Secondary readings:
+ Programming after Programme: Archizooms No-Stop City by Kazys Varnelis in Praxis 8: RE:
Programming, ed. Amanda Reeser Lawrence, Praxis Inc., 2007.
+ Excerpts from The Project of Autonomy: Politics of Architecture Within and Against Capitalism by
Pier Vittorio Aureli, Princeton Architectural Press, 2008.
+ No-Stop City: Residential Park Climatic Universal System by Archizoom Associates in Design
Quarterly, No. 78/79, Conceptual Architecture, Walker Art Centre, 1970.
+ Introduction: Urban Artifacts and a Theory of the City and The Collective Memory in The
Architecture of the City by Aldo Rossi, Oppositions, 1982.
+ Il Teatro del Mondo, animation of the project in 1979 from the Venice Biennale 2010 - located at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REG0eLLJljk
+ That Obscure Object of Desire: Autobiography and Repetition in the Work of Aldo Rossi by Mary
Louise Lobsinger in Grey Room, no. 8, summer 2002 p. 38-61.
+ Beyond Entropy research cluster, The Architectural Association, 2010.
+ Stop City by Dogma (Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara), 2007.
+ Analogue City by Aldo Rossi, 1976.
+ Deux ex Machina/Machina ex Deo: Aldo Rossis Theatre of the World by Daniel Libeskind in
Oppositions 21: a journal for ideas and criticism in architecture, MIT Press, 1980.
Session 4
Rudolf Wittkower vs Colin Rowe + Collage
Mannerism and modern architecture finds itself battled out in this lecture, revisiting the High
Renaissance and Palladio through the drawing analysis and writing of Rudolf Wittkower
(Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism), his student Colin Rowe (Mannerism and Modern
Architecture and The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa) and, in a short mention, Bob Venturi and
Denise-Scott Brown.
Primary readings:
+ Mannerism and Modern Architecture in Architectural Review, May 1950.
+ Palladios Geometry: The Three Villas in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism by
Rudolf Wittkower, p. 67-74.
+ Troubles in Theory: Part One, The State of the Art 1945-2000 by Anthony Vidler in Architectural
Review, September 2011.
+ Troubles in Theory: Part Two, From the Picturesque to Postmodernism by Anthony Vidler in
Architectural Review, January 2012.
Secondary readings:
+ Mathematics of the Ideal Villa by Colin Rowe in Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and other essays
by Colin Rowe, MIT Press, 1982.
+ The Second Half of the Century an editorial manifesto in Architectural Review, January 1947.
+ On Technique and Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari, Allen and Unwin, 1960.
+ Non-straightforward Architecture: a gentle manifesto by Robert Venturi in Complexity and
Contradiction, The Museum of Modern Art, 1966, 1977, 2002.
+ Ambiguity by Robert Venturi in Complexity and Contradiction, The Museum of Modern Art,
1966, 1977, 2002.
+ Contradictory Levels: The Phenomenon of Both-And in Architecture in Complexity and
Contradiction, The Museum of Modern Art, 1966, 1977, 2002.
+ Excerpts from Part II of from Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural
Form by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, MIT Press, 1977, pgs 3-72.
+ Learning from Pop by Denise Scott Brown in Casabella 359-360, December 1971 in ed. K.
Michael Hays, Architecture Theory Since 1968, Columbia University, 1998, pgs.
+ Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-
Brown, Harvard University Press, 2004.

Session 5
Eisenmans Cannaregio VS Tschumis Parc de la Villette + Anti-Landscape
This lecture will investigate how post-modernist architects in the 1970-80s, notably Bernard Tschumi
and Peter Eisenman took the rigid and orthogonal modernist grid as their toy to angle, twist, bend,
conceal and erase lines that can link sites, buildings, history and events to the city.
Primary readings:
+ Rosalind Krauss, 'Grids', in October, Vol. 9 (Summer, 1979), The MIT Press, pp. 50-64.
+ Yve-Alain Bois, 'Surfaces', in Cities of Artificial Excavation, Rizzoli International Publications, 1994,
p. 38-45.
Secondary readings:
+ Eisenman, Peter, 'Post-Functionalism,' in Eisenman: Inside / Out Selected Writings 1963-1988, Yale
University Press, p. 83-87.
+ Eisenman, Peter, 'The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End,' in
Eisenman: Inside / Out Selected Writings 1963-1988, Yale University Press, p. 152-168.
+ Tschumi, Bernard, 'III. Disjunction: Essays Written Between 1984-1991' in Architecture and
Disjunction, The MIT Press, 1994, p. 170-225.
+ Tschumi, Bernard, 'Paris, Parc de la Villette, 1982-1998: Superimpositions / Juxtapositions /
Permutations' in Event Cities 2, The MIT Press, 2000, p. 44-225.
+ Hardingham, Samantha and Rattenbury, Kester, Bernard Tschumi: Parc de la Villette: SuperCrit #4,
Routledge, 2011.
+ Baljon, Lodewijk, Concours International: Parc de la Villette, Paris, 1982-3, in Designing Parks, p.
25-47, Garden Art Press, 1995 [Note: also see the competition Ground Plans sections on p. 240].
+ Mumford, Eric, The Emergence of Mat or Field Buildings p. 48-65, in Case: Le Corbusiers Venice
Hospital and the Mat Building Revival (Ed. Sarkis, Hashim), Prestal Verlag, 2001.
+ Derrida, Jacques and Eisenman, Peter, Chora L Works, Edited by Kipnis, Jeffery and Lesser, Thomas,
Monacelli Press, 1997.
+ Kipnis, Jeffery, 'Introduction: Act Two,' in Written into the Void: Selected Writings 1990-2004, Yale
University Press, 2007. p. vi-xxix.
+ Corner, James, 'Introduction: Recovering Landscapes as a Cultural Practice,' in Recovering
Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Theory, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000, p. 1-25.
Session 6
John Hejduk VS Diller + Scofidio + Hybrid
In this lecture we shall take on the post-Humanist subject - the result of the forged dichotomy of the
practice of architecture and the intellectualising of architecture in the 1980s - as a means through
which John Hejduks architectural project found its voice; in the profane, in corporeality, in the
consumption of everyday life. The hybrid architectural object that resulted in this will be argued to
be one which takes on feminine characteristics. This hybrid object will be explored further in the
early work Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio (Diller + Scofidio).
Primary readings:
+ Excerpts from Vladivostok by John Hejduk, Rizzoli: New York, 1989.
+ A Delay in Glass by Diller, Elizabeth and Ricardo Scofidio in Assemblage, No. 6, MIT Press: 1988,
pgs 65-66.
+ Vagabond Architecture in The Architectural Uncanny by Anthony Vidler, MIT Press, 1992, pgs
207-214.
+ A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway, found at: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/donnaharaway/articles/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto/.
Secondary readings:
+ Cyborg Urbanisation by Matthew Gandy in International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, Vol. 29.1, March 2005, pp. 26-49.

+ Transgendered Media by Guido Incerti and Display Engineers by Aaron Betsky in Diller +
Scofidio (+ Renfro): The Ciliary Function, Skira, 2007.
+ Introduction by Daniel Libeskind in Masks of Medusa by John Hejduk, 1985.
+ Silent Witnesses by John Hejduk in Perspecta, Vol. 19, 1982, pp. 70-80.
+ Excerpt from Soft Sell (1993) by Diller + Scofidio - found here:
http://www.v2.nl/archive/works/soft-sell
+ The Shells of Architectural Thought by Detlef Mertins in Hejduks Chronotope, ed. K. Michael
Hays. Princeton Architectural Press (pub.), Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1996.
+ Excerpts in Flesh: Architectural Probes, by Diller, Elizabeth and Ricardo Scofidio, Princeton
Architectural Press: 1996.
+ Clip from Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang - found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPNaaogT8fs
+ Boredom and Bedroom: The Suppression of the Habitual by Georges Teyssot and Catherine
Seavitt in Assemblage, No. 30, August 1996, pp. 44-61.
Session 7
Architecture and the Conceptions of the Body
This lecture will wrap up the year. Both lecturers will take you through centuries of the body and
architecture colliding, through various media, film, buildings, architects, images and writings.
Submission Hand-In: Monday 31st March 2013
HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES DIPLOMA SCHOOL

The Diploma HTS Courses take place in TERM 1
All courses are listed in alphabetical order by course tutor surname:
CIRCULATION AND MAKING THE WORLD URBAN

ROSS ADAMS
Architectural discourse lacks a language with which to speak about the urban. It lacks a history
through which to illuminate this category. Despite the copious historical narratives produced over
the past 150 years, each obsessed with defining modernism, the urban has never been seriously
considered as a category with any historical and spatial specificity. Instead, it appears as a givena
generalized context of human co-habitation in which architecture takes on its unique significance. If,
within these narratives, there is a history of the urban, it is a history of movement. It is a history of
infrastructure: for every new urbanism invented, the means of its innovation is undoubtedly
infrastructural. There is seemingly endless faith that urbanists continue to place in circulation,
materializing social value in the infinite networks and corridors of human connectivity. As much as
the world has become a domain ordered by circulationas much as the world has become urban
the relation between these two categories has never been sufficiently examined.
By adopting a conceptual-historical approach, this course will articulate a theory of the urban around
the notion of circulation. In doing so, we will cut across the typical art-historical framework in which
architecture, the city and the urban float as neutral categories. Instead we will place these
categories in direct contact with a set of politicized constructs, encountering what have been silent
interlocutors in the formation of the urban all along. As such, each session will explore a specific
concept around which to bring together political theory with architectural and urban history.
Through this expanded history, the course aims to ultimately bring attention to contemporary
problems of architectural design in an urbanized world while exploring ways in which architecture
can reassert itself beyond the effects of the urban.
Session 1: Circulation: Beyond an architectural diagram of organization
What is circulation? When did it enter into the thinking of the city? Introducing the argument of the
seminar, this session will trace the history of a principle of order.
Session 2: Territory: Circulation and the birth of territory
With the birth of the concept of circulation in the seventeenth century, circulation became a
signature of a new form of absolute power embedded in the figure of the territorial state.
Session 3: Nature: from physiocracy to ecological urbanism
While the concept of nature underlies almost all theories of modern urbanism, it also has a long
history bound up with political theory. This session will outline the use of this essentialism as a
rhetorical device for ordering the world, looking specifically at how this notion became an
ideological principle of modernity.
Session 4: Crisis: Between territory and city, the birth of a new episteme
Almost all of the great movements of architectural historyespecially those relating to the city
make recourse to the notion of crisis. But what is crisis? This session will explore a particular
epistemological crisis that developed over the course of two centuries between the territory and the
citya crisis that would lead to and be embedded in the birth of the urban.
Session 4: Network: From abstract geometry to scaleless diagram
The crisis between territory and city would not be overcome by architectural thought, but rather by
a radical new conception of territorial knowledge: if the territory was conceived as an abstract space
filled out with rational geometries of movement, by the nineteenth century a new figure would
appear promising to transform both city and territory.
Session 5: Urbanization: The birth of a new spatial order
Through a close study of Ildefonso Cerds monumental General Theory of Urbanization, this session
looks at the birth of society and the radical transformation of the domestic world it precipitated,
culminating in a new form of power bound up with and embedded in space itself.
Session 6: Nomos: Utopia, future and circulation
Taking a broader view of many of the principles introduced, this session will re-examine the notion
and history of Utopia vis--vis the principle of nomos in order to propose a different understanding
of the term: Far from describing an imaginary place, can Utopia be understood as a real spatial,
political, temporal condition in the world?
Session 7: Architecture: Design without a world
The final session takes a critical look into the facets of the contemporary status of architecture in an
urban world, proposing new ways to think of architecture with political agency.
Bibliography
Botero, G.1.-1., 2012, On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities, 1588, Symcox, G.
ed. University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
Cerd, I., 1999, Cerd: The Five Bases of the General Theory of Urbanization, illustrated ed. Soria y
Puig, A. ed. Translated by B. Miller & M. Fons i Fleming. Electa, Madrid.
Choay, F., 1970, The Modern City: Planning in the 19th Century, 5, illustrated ed. G. Braziller,.
Easterling, K., 2005, Enduring Innocence: Global architecture and its political masquerades,
illustrated ed. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Elden, Stuart, 2008, Eugene Fink and the Question of the World, Parrhesia, No. 5, pp. 48-50.
Elden, Stuart, 2013, The Birth of Territory, University of Chicago Press.
Esposito, R., 2008, Bos: Biopolitics and Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Forty, A., 2004, Words and Buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture, illustrated ed. Thames &
Hudson, London; New York.
Foucault, M., 2003, Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the Collge de France, 1975-1976,
Bertani, M., Fontana, A., & Ewald, F. eds. Translated by Macey. Picador, New York.
Foucault, M., 2009, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collge de France 1977-1978,
Senellart, M., Ewald, F., & Fontana, A. eds. Translated by G. Burchell. Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Galli, C., 2010, Political Spaces and Global War, Sitze, A. ed. Translated by E. Fay. University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Habermas, J., 2010, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society, Translated by T. Burger & F. Lawrence. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.
Hilberseimer, L., 2013, Metropolisarchitecture and Selected Essays, illustrated ed. Anderson, R. ed.
Columbia University,.
Hobbes, T., 1986, Leviathan, reprint ed. Penguin, New York.
Kant, I., 1991, Kant: Political Writings, 2, illustrated, revised ed. Reiss, H.S. ed. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge; New York.
Koselleck, R., 1988, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the pathogenesis of modern society,
reprint, illustrated ed. MIT Press.
Koselleck, R., 2006, Crisis, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67(2), pp. 357-400.
Koselleck, R., 2004, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, illustrated ed. Columbia
University Press, New York.
Kuhn, T.S., 1996, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3, reprint ed. University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, IL.
Latour, B., 1993, We Have Never Been Modern, Translated by C. Porter. Harvard University Press,.
Lowry, S.T., 1974, The Archaeology of the Circulation Concept in Economic Theory, Journal of the
History of Ideas, 35(3), pp. 429-44.
More, T., 2003, Utopia, reissue, revised, reprint ed. Translated by P. Turner. Penguin UK, London ;
New York.
Picon, A., 1992, French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment, illustrated ed.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Reps, J.W., 1965, The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States,
illustrated ed. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Schmitt, C., 2006, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum,
Translated by G.L. Ulmen. Telos Press Publishing, New York.
Schmitt, C., 1997, Land and Sea, unabridged, reprint ed. Plutarch Press, Washington, DC.
Smith, M., 2011, Against Ecological Sovereignty: ethics, biopolitics, and saving the natural world,
illustrated ed. U of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Ross Exo Adams is a writer, architect and educator. His work has been published in various journals
such as Society and Space, Radical Philosophy, Log, Critical Quarterly, Architectural Review, Project
Russia and has been commissioned for book chapters, essays and various other formats. He has
taught at the Architectural Association, the Berlage Institute, Brighton University and at the Bartlett
School of Architecture, UCL, where he is currently a Teaching Fellow in the MArch Urban Design
program. As an architect and urban designer, he has worked in offices such as MVRDV, Foster &
Partners, Arup and Productora-DF. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the London Consortium
where he holds the 2011 LKE Ozolins Studentship awarded by the RIBA.
TRANSLATION AND MANIPULATION BETWEEN IDEA AND FORM

DOREEN BERNATH
A familiar procedure: we bring to design juries projects which we believe to have embodied a set of
concepts. Thus the unpacking from idea to form is deemed direct and under the full mastery of the
designer; the success of the project is dependent on it. This assumption often leads to the
conjugation of a plethora of theoretical notions to particular formalisations: deconstruction to
fragmented form, field energy to net form, algorithm to swarm form, biomorphic to growth form,
and so on. Such assumption permits privileged shortcut between formal concepts and formal forms,
thus the symptomatic identification between architectural theory and design form which remains
persistent.
The course proposes a subversion to the assumption that the process of design is essentially the
mastery of direct formalisation of concepts. Instead, it argues that the passage from idea to form is
that of detour, of lost-and-found through 'translation', and of eccentric conjectures through
'manipulation'. Translation dismantles the monopoly of a singular medium of embodiment, while
manipulation violates the autonomy of objects and neutrality of tabula rasa. The function of theory
in the transaction between idea and form, disrupted by issues of media and cultural systems, has to
readjust beyond the direct formalisation of concept-object. In other words, contemporary theory,
detaching from reference to origins and endpoints, has a new prospect to history, confronting both
contours and detours - a simultaneous task of path-finding and path-creating.
Procedure
Such is the approach we will take to probe futures of theory and of architecture. The procedure
formulates itself upon the model of forensis: a combination of methods found in medical
examination and diagnosis, detective work in criminology, and rhetorical construction of arguments
to present to a public forum. The central question examines of the role of translation and
manipulation as deliberate antithesis to direct formalisation.
Each seminar traces propositions and implications surrounding a specific case of architectural
production as a way to expose elusive gaps and incongruous adjacencies. Historical and theoretical
evidences drawn from different media of expression are gathered based on the case study, their
intents and contents analysed, and their links and effects debated. They form specific conditions
whereby the architectural act acquires meanings and values, in a plural and heterogeneous sense,
are examined critically. The aim is to reveal the incidental nature of architectural embodiment
negotiated between commonsense and specialised knowledge, as well as between technical
limitations and cultural imperatives.
At the beginning of each session, you will be presented with a few pieces of writing found at the
scene of a particular architectural act. These writings may or may not relate to each other directly,
but in some ways intersect each other by means of the architectural act. The initial talk unfolds
these writings, expanding their relationship by means of an assembly of evidences in different forms.
Then you would be asked to begin the work of gathering your own set of related evidences,
witnesses, clues, accounts, records, tools and techniques, from a range of different media.
As one evidence leads to the next, you will identify patterns and divergences, diagnose MOs and
signatures, trace exchanges in different forms, deconstruct assumptions, construct new links and
reasonings, and able to argue the case with conviction. You are casting a net wider than the initial
demonstration in order to construct your own alternative views and arguments.
At the beginning of the next session, you will prepare a draft forensis. This will be delivered via a
collection of evidences, and a summary statement in words. You will present to a mini group your
findings and to record subsequent debates. These 6 weekly exercises of investigation and
hypothesis will form the basis of your eventual coursework essay (guidelines to issued).
Weekly Plots
case 1 fold, fractal, field
recursive / between shape and idea
case 2 icons and ready monuments
anachronic / between image and story
case 3 'pixels to swarm'
algorithmic / between digit and script
case 4 'labyrinth'
virtual / between text and psychology
case 5
stitching / between us and others
'ruin and void'
case 6 'picto-logico and reality-effect'
rendering / between picture and reality
epilogue - constructing forensis
writing / between argument and rhetoric
Evidences
books
Derrida Of Grammatology
Latour We Have Never Been Modern
Deleuze Francis Bacon - Logic of Sensation
Carpo Alphabet and Algorithm
Flusser The Shape of Things
Foucault This is not a Pipe
Badieu Infinity and Set Theory: How to Begin with
Void
Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Kittler Typewriter Film Gramophone
Borges Labyrinths
Pamuk My Name is Red
Kafka The Trial
articles
Teyssot Baroque Topographies
Robin Evans 'Translation from Drawing to Building'
Foucault Heterotopia
Deleuze 'The Fold'
Lynne 'Animate Form'
Aby Warburg 'The Mnemosyne Atlas'
Holmes The Stereoscope and the Stereograph
Damisch Blotting out Architecture
Eisenman Moving arrows, Eros and other Errors - An
Architecture of Absence
Archigram Instant City
Barthes The Reality-Effect
Doreen Bernath was the recipient of LKE Ozolins doctoral scholarship and completed her thesis at
Architectural Association London which was shortlisted for the RIBA Presidents Research Award
2011. After initial BA and MA architectural training at the University of Cambridge, she practiced
professionally in London, Taipei and Shanghai, and in parallel, launched cross-cultural architectural
and academic projects. She taught and participated in research in universities in UK, Germany, Costa
Rica, China and Taiwan. Her research and publications specialises in architectural image-making,
histories and theories of representation, critiques on visual culture, transcultural studies (between
English and Chinese-speaking contexts), and advanced digital architectural theories.
INTERROGATING THE ARCHIVE

EDWARD BOTTOMS
This course will undertake an investigation into the history of architectural education, conducted
through the lens of the AAs own educational models. It will provide students with a unique
opportunity to carry out significant original research using primary materials and un-catalogued
resources from the AAs own historic archives and collections. Students will each be assigned a set of
original drawings or objects - ranging in date from the pre-WW1 Beaux Arts system, through the
student-led manifestoes and revolutions of the late 1930s, the post-war modernist experiments, to
Alvin Boyarskys hot-house unit system of the 1970s-80s. They will then be required to carry out a
programme of research across a wide range of archival records, utilising a variety of methodologies.
The course will culminate in participation in an oral history project and the production of formal
archival descriptions of the drawings and objects studied, drawing out their context and significance.
The oral histories and archival descriptions will subsequently be published online as additions to the
AA Archives Catalogue.
Each session will consist of a lecture / seminar examining a particular period of the AAs history,
followed by a short session or activity related to the production of catalogue entries or the oral
history project.
Session 1
Learning by Association: Early forms of education at the AA
Introduction to the origins of the AA and the educational models employed prior to the
establishment of the Day School in 1901.
Assignment of archival drawings to students.
Preparatory Reading
Sharp, Dennis (ed.). 125th Anniversary Special Commemorative Publication, Architectural Association
Publications, 1973.
Bottoms, Edward. The Royal Architectural Museum in the Light of New Documentary Evidence.
Journal of the History of Collections 19, no. 1 (2007): 115139. [pages 129-139].
Powers, Alan. Edwardian Architectural Education: a Study of Three Schools of Architecture. AA
Files no. 5 (January 1984): 4859.
Saint, Andrew. The Image of the Architect, Yale University Press, 1983. [chapter 3]
Summerson, John. Architectural Association. Pleaides Books, 1947.
Session 2
From Beaux Arts to Student Revolutions
Investigation into the moves away from the Beaux Arts model of teaching, the impact of
Scandinavian modernism and the late 1930s student demands for educational reform.
Introduction to the principles of oral history.
Visit to National Sound Archives; discussion of Architects Lives series.
Scheduling of AA Oral History programme.
Preparatory Reading
The AA Story, 1936-39. FOCUS no. 4 (1939): 79111.
Bottoms, Edward, The Malaren Queen, AA Files 60, (2010); 66-67.
Higgott, Andrew & Jeffrey, Ian. Frank Yerbury: Itinerant Cameraman. Architectural Photographs
1920-35, Architectural Association Publications, 1987. [chapter 1]
Perks, Robert & Thomson, Al. The Oral History Reader, Routledge, 2006.
Session 3
Post War Reconstruction
Examination of AA culture and teaching in the immediate post-war period, as the AA gained its
reputation as the UKs leading modernist school.
Presentation: Library & Archival Sources / Information Landscape, Eleanor Gawne, AA
Librarian.
Screening of Utopia London (dir. Tom Cordell, 2010), followed by discussion.
Preparatory Reading
Bullock, Nicholas. Building the Post-War World: Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Britain,
Routledge, 2002. [chapters 3 & 4]
Gawne, Eleanor. Cataloguing Architectural Drawings. Journal of the Society of Archivists 24, no. 1
(October 2003): 175187.
Gowan, James (ed.). Projects 1946-1972. London: Architectural Association, 1972.
McNab, A. The Architectural Association Since the War. Building 223, no. 6752 (October 20, 1972):
7178.
Price, Lois Olcott, The Fabrication of Architectural Drawings to 1950, Architectural Records
Symposium: Managing and Preserving Design Records, Conservation Center for Art and
Historic Artifacts, Chicago, 2007. Online at:
http://www.ccaha.org/uploads/media_items/the-fabrication-of-architectural-drawings-to1950.original.pdf
Session 4
Reactions: Smithsons, CP, Archigram and Beyond.
Glimpses into the AA of the late 50s and 60s, starting under Michael Patrick and culminating in the
experimental unit system formed by John (Michael) Lloyd.
Presentation: Cataloguing Architectural Drawings, Eleanor Gawne, AA Librarian.
Preparatory Reading
Frampton, Kenneth, The English Crucible, CIAM: Team 10, The English Context, conference, TU Delft,
February 2001. Available online at:
http://www.team10online.org/research/papers/delft1/frampton.pdf
Gowan, James. AA 125: A Decade of AA Architecture. Architectural Association Quarterly 5, no. 1
(March 1973): 439.
Gowan, James (ed.). Projects 1946-1972. London: Architectural Association, 1972.
Sadler, Simon. Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture. MIT Press, 2005.
Open Week
Students to carry out oral history interviews
Session 5
The Merger Game: AA in Crisis
Evaluation of the sources documenting the hard fought battles over the AAs proposed incorporation
into the state system via a merger with Imperial College of Science and Technology.
Presentation on online resources, research methodologies: Simine Marine, AA Library.
Preparatory Reading
AA Council Minutes, 1969-1971, Available online through AA Membership section of AA Website.
Gowan, James, (ed.). A Continuing Experiment: Learning and Teaching at the Architectural
Association. London: Architectural Press, 1975. [chapters 16a, 16b]
Higgott, Andrew. A Chronological Summary of the History of the AA: With Particular Reference to the
ICST/AA Merger Negotiations, unpublished mss., undated. Available AA Archives.
Session 6
Hot House AA
Investigation into aspects of Alvin Boyarskys pedagogical experiments at the AA in the 1970s and
80s.
Preparatory Reading
Architectural Association Projects Review, 1974 1990 [A year of your choice]
Architectural Association Prospectus, 1972-1990 [A year of your choice]
Ghost Dance Times, Nos. 1-27 (1974-5). Available AA Archives.[two nos. of your choice]
AR Reviews: AA. Architectural Review 174, no. 1040 (October 1983).
Sunwoo, Irene. From the Well-Laid Table to the Market Place: The Architectural Association Unit
System. Journal of Architectural Education 65, no. 2 (March 2012): 2441.
Session 7
Student presentations of oral histories and discussion of catalogue entries
Submission Requirement
Alongside active participation in weekly class discussions and readings, the formal requirements for
students are:
Formulate and conduct an oral history interview and to write a short accompanying essay
setting the context of the interview and issues discussed, up to 1500 words.
Produce a formal archival description of a set of architectural drawings to the international
archival standard, ISAD(G).
Select Bibliography
AR Reviews: AA. Architectural Review 174, no. 1040 (October 1983): 2283.
Beaton, Michael, Peter Ely, Po Shun Leong, and Rodney Pickering. America Through AA Student
Eyes. Journal of Architectural Education 19, no. 2 (September 1964): 2830.
Bottoms, Edward. Malaren Queen. AA Files no. 60 (2010): 6667.
. The Royal Architectural Museum in the Light of New Documentary Evidence. Journal of the
History of Collections 19, no. 1 (2007): 115139.
. Independent Site: Experiments in Publishing at the Architectural Association in Zak Kyes,
Working With... Sternberg Press, 2012: 123-168.
. If Crime Doesnt Pay: The Architects Revolutionary Council, AArchitecture, 5 (2008): 14-19.
Crinson, Mark, and Jules Lubbock. Architecture, Art or Profession?: Three Hundred Years of
Architectural Education in Britain. Manchester University Press, 1994.
Cunningham, Colin. A Case of Cultural Schizophrenia: Ruling Tastes and Architectural Training in the
Edwardian Period. Architectural History 44 (2001): 6481.
Davies, Paul, and Schmiedeknecht, Torsten (eds). An Architects Guide to Fame, Architectural Press,
2005
Darling, Elizabeth. Focus: A Little Magazine And Architectural Modernism in 1930s Britain. Journal
of Modern Periodical Studies 3, no. 1 (2012): 3963.
. Re-forming Britain Narratives of Modernity before Reconstruction. Routledge, 2007.
Downing, Henderson. Between Tradition and Oblivion: Notes on Art Net and the AA Film Archive.
AA Files no. 55 (Summer 2007): 3849.
Frampton, Kenneth, The English Crucible, CIAM: Team 10, The English Context, conference, TU
Delft, February 2001. Available online at:
http://www.team10online.org/research/papers/delft1/frampton.pdf
Gawne, Eleanor. Cataloguing Architectural Drawings. Journal of the Society of Archivists 24, no. 1
(October 2003): 175187.
Gowan, James, (ed.). A Continuing Experiment: Learning and Teaching at the Architectural
Association. Architectural Press, 1975.

. AA 125: A Decade of AA Architecture. Architectural Association Quarterly 5, no. 1 (March
1973): 439.
. , (ed.). Projects 1946-1972. Architectural Association, 1972.
Higgott, Andrew. Mediating Modernism Architectural Cultures in Britain. Routledge, 2007.
International Council on Archives Section on Architectural Reords. A Guide to the Archival Care of
Architectural Records: 19th-20th Centuries. ICA, 2000.
ISAD (G) General International Standard Archival Description: Adopted by the Committee on
Descriptive Standards, Stockholm, Sweden, 19-22 September 1999. 2nd ed. ICA, 2000.
Available online at: http://www.icacds.org.uk/eng/ISAD(G).pdf.
Kissel, Eleonore, and Erin Vigneau. Architectural Photoreproductions: A Manual for Identification and
Care. 2nd ed. Oak Knoll Press, 2009.
Latham, I, and Mark Swenerton, (eds.). Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones: The First Fifty Years 19391989. In Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones: Buildings and Projects 1959-2002. London: Right
Angle, 2002.
Lowell, Waverly, and Tawny Ryan Nelb. Architectural Records - Managing Design and Construction
Records. Society of American Archivists, 2006.
Marjanovic, Igor. Alvin Boyarskys Chicago: An Architectural Critic in the City of Strangers. AA Files
no. 60 (n.d.).
McNab, A. The Architectural Association Since the War. Building 223, no. 6752 (October 20, 1972):
7178.
Porter, Vicky, Robin Thornes, and Architectural Drawing Advisory Group. A Guide to the Description
of Architectural Drawings. G.K. Hall & Co., 1994.
Powers, Alan. Edwardian Architectural Education: a Study of Three Schools of Architecture. AA
Files no. 5 (January 1984): 4859.
. Flying Angels and Solid Walls. AA Files no. 64 (2012): 4558.
Price, Lois Olcott. Line, Shade and Shadow: The Fabrication and Preservation of Architectural
Drawings. Oak Knoll Press, 2010.
. The Fabrication of Architectural Drawings to 1950, Architectural Records Symposium:
Managing and Preserving Design Records, Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts,
Chicago, 2007. Online at: http://www.ccaha.org/uploads/media_items/the-fabrication-ofarchitectural-drawings-to-1950.original.pdf.
Robertson, Howard, and Francis Rowland Yerbury. Travels in Modern Architecture 1925-1930.
Architectural Association, 1989.
Sadler, Simon. Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture, MIT Press, 2005.
Saint, Andrew. The Image of the Architect, Yale University Press, 1983.
Spencer-Lonhurst, Paul, (ed.). Robert Atkinson 1883-1952. Architectural Association, 1989.
Stamp, Gavin. Bliss Was It in That Dawn to Be Alive: An Interview with John Brandon-Jones.
Architectural Design 49, no. 10/11 (1979): 96101.
Summerson, John. Architectural Association. Pleaides Books, 1947.
Sunwoo, Irene. From the Well-Laid Table to the Market Place: The Architectural Association Unit
Sytem. Journal of Architectural Education 65, no. 2 (March 2012): 2441.
. The Static Age. AA Files no. 61 (2010): 118129.
Swenerton, Mark. Developing a New Format for Urban Housing: Neave Brown and the Design of
Camdens Fleet Road Estate. The Journal of Architecture 17, no. 6 (2012): 9731007.
. Geared to Producing Ideas, with the Emphasis on Youth: The Creation of the Camden
Borough Architects Department Under Sydney Cook. The Journal of Architecture 16, no. 3
(2011): 425452.
The AA Story, 1936-39. FOCUS no. 4 (1939): 79111.
Tschumi, Bernard, and Joan Ockman. Talking with Bernard Tschumi. Log no. 13/14 (Fall 2008):
159170.
Walker, Lynne. The Entry of Women into the Architectural Profession in Britain. Womens Art
Journal 7, no. 1 (1986): 1318.
Whyte, Iain Boyd. Man-made Future: Planning, Education, and Design in Mid-20th Century Britain.
Routledge, 2007.
Edward Bottoms is the AA Archivist. He received a history degree from Exeter University and a
masters in architectural history from the University of East Anglia. He is has published on a range of
subjects including 18thC portraiture, art collecting, cast museums and the history of architectural
education.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF GIEDION: TECHNOLOGY, THE PROSTHETIC AND THE BODY
MOLLIE CLAYPOOL
The prosthesis is not a mere extension of the human body; it is the constitution of the body 'qua'
human.
- Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time (1998)
The technologies, machines and tools we utilise as human beings whether this is as simplistic as a
hammer or spear or as complex as a super computer or electron microscope, whether we wear
shoes on our feet or have an artificial foot makes us humans prosthetic beings. This course will
look at the prosthetic (tool, technology and machine) and its evolving relationship to labour,
economy, efficiency and how we conceptualise understandings of the body today.
This course assumes that the body is our contemporary analog to architecture, that the body is a
technological construction: of frames, skeletons, skins, scaffolds, systems, organs and organisms in a
spatial relationship enhanced, augmented, manipulated, extended and incorporated by the
prosthetic. This assumption will allow us to investigate, debate and uncover trajectories of the
consequences of a canonical text on the prosthetic that was published in the middle of the 20th
century right after the conclusion of World War II, the art historian Sigfried Giedion's Mechanisation
Takes Command: a contribution to anonymous history. Giedion's book outlined the extent to which
there had been an incorporation of prosthetics into our everyday lives: in the form of mechanisation
and how this has transformed the way we work, play and interact. It was an extensive and laborious
text including materials from advertising leaflets, manufacturers catalogues, patent files and
newspaper clippings. In his appropriation of novel methods of production (whether agricultural,
domestic, organic or hygienic or by the hand), Giedion lay claim to the authorship of an anonymous
history, in which the prosthetic replaces nature, and becomes culture. This was not technofetishism as such, but a claim to modernity which was ideological, as a means of attempting to
rectify the split in modernity between thinking and feeling, resulting in mechanisation taking
command.
What we will try to do in the course is uncover the consequences of this on our understanding of the
body now in the 21st century, where the prosthetic has the capacity to become incorporated; to
become, as Stiegler stated, 'qua' human. Always keeping Giedion in our line of sight back through
history, we will investigate prosthetic beings which have been oppressed, mutilated, subjugated, and
dis-engendered as a result of Giedion's claim to the line that is blurred between technology and
culture.
The seven course seminars will each begin by using the same tactics as Giedion: looking at humble
things, the modest things of daily life which will be presented in relationship to a section of
Giedion's text. Three prosthetic beings will be our main focus during the seminars: the absent body,
the female body and the lost body we will also look at the religious body and the masculine body
which will lend us an alternative reading into the history of our modern life from Giedion onwards,
one which may otherwise lay forlorn.
These will be supplemented through discussion of news articles on the advances of technologies
brought in and presented by the participants of the course on each theme weekly before the lecture
presentation. Both aspects of the lecture and presentation will then be positioned by the class
within a collective matrix of bodies that each student will operate within for their submission for the
term in the form of a portfolio of work of writing in combination with other interdisciplinary
material.
Session 1: The consequences of Giedion: the beginnings
Session 2: Work, mechanisation and the female
Session 3: Automation, loss and limbs
Session 4: Comforts, extension and the computing of our senses
Session 5: Reform, the hysteric body and technology
Session 6: Regeneration, identity and dynamic equilibrium
Session 7: The consequences of Giedion: moving forward
Relevant texts
Armstrong, Tim. Modernism, Technology and the Body: a cultural study. Cambridge University Press,
1998.
Banham, Reyner. The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment. Architectural Press, 1969.
Colomina, Beatriz. Domesticity at War, 2007.
Colomina, Beatriz. Sexuality and Space, 1992.
Giedion, Sigfried. Mechanisation Takes Command, a contribution to an anonymous history. WW
Norton, 1948.
Giedion, Sigfried. Space, Time and Architecture, 1941.
Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, 1994.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Become Posthuman, 1990.
Idhe, Don. Bodies in Technology, 2002.
Lavin, Sylvia. Kissing Architecture, 2011.
Mackenzie, Adrian. Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed. Continuum, 2002.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964.
Otto, Elizabeth, Designing Men, in Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse and
Modernism. Routledge, 2009, p. 183-204.
Smith, Marquard and Joanne Morra, eds. The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a
Biocultural Future, MIT, 2006.
Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Times, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, 2008.
Mollie Claypool writes about, edits books about and teaches architecture. She has held teaching
positions at the AA since 2009 in the Design Research Laboratory and HTS programme. She teaches
an MArch Diploma unit at the Bartlett, and has taught at the University of Reading and University of
Brighton. She has worked with the RCA, AA Publications and Phaidon Press. She studied architecture
at Pratt Institute and received her Masters with Distinction from the AA.
MEDIA AND MEDIUM
MARK COUSINS
Theoretical discussion of architecture and indeed many of the fine arts suffer from basic confusions
about the terms media, medium and form. At the same time there has been a surge of underling
"media" which relate to technology. The course embraces both these planes seeking to clarity what
we mean in a digital epoch by the term medium, discipline and form. The question of Media concern
the technology of communication, their historical emergence has been signaled by the appearance
of writing, then of printing, and finally the digital. There is obviously a vast literature on these topics,
so the course will concentrate on the German discourse theorist Friedrich Kittler. The major
concerns of the lectures will be supplemented with the question of how different communication
media have influenced architecture.
Lectures
1. Introduction
2. Orality and Literacy
3. Plato vs. Homer
4. The Gutenberg Galaxy
5. Engravings and Architectural Representation
6. Printing and Space
7. Architecture in a Digital Regime
8. Drawing and Writing
Bibliography
Mario Carpo, Architecture in the Age of Printing: Orality, Writing, Typography and Printed Images in
the History of Architectural Theory, 2001
Mario Carpo, Frederique Lemerle (ed.), Perspective, Projections and Design: Technologies of
Architectural Representation, 2007
Mario Carpo, The Alphabet and the Algorithm, 2011
Mario Carpo, The Digital Turn in Architecture, 1992-2012
Sarah Danius, The Senses of Modernism: Technology, Perception and Aesthetics, 2002
Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plat, 1990

Eric A. Havelock, The Muse learns to Writes: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the
Present, 1988
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 2001
Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Writing Science), 1999
Friedrich Kittler (ed.), Literature, Media, Information Systems (Critical Voice in Art Theory and
Culture), 1997
Friedrich Kittler, Optical Media, 2009
Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World (New Accents), 1982
Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Kittler and the Media (Theory and Media), 2010
AN ARCHITECTURAL STRAIGHTJACKET
RYAN DILLON
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit...
the arbitrariness of the constraint only serves to obtain precision of execution.
Igor Stravinsky
Every word associated with the term constraint has a negative connotation restriction, limitation,
curb, restraint, damper, hindrance, impediment, obstruction, handicap or inhibition, uneasiness,
embarrassment, restraint, reticence, self-consciousness, awkwardness. This is certainly the case for
MI6 officer Gareth Williams, found dead in a holdall in a Pimilico flat in 2010, who, argued by some,
was playing a perverse (perhaps sexual) game of placing extreme constraints on himself to see if he
could navigate them to safety. Unfortunately, and sadly, Mr. Williams had the one constraint placed
upon him that can lead to ones ultimate demise lack of oxygen.
Or perhaps we can also look at the magician David Blaine who has cheated death by burying himself
alive in a tank of water for seven days in 1999, safely working around the self-constraints he placed
upon himself and coming out with such gratification that he stated as if he were John Lennon, I saw
something very prophetic...a vision of every race, every religion, every age group banding together,
and that made all this worthwhile. This prophecy does not appear without constraints.
In this course our hazardous constraints will not attack the body, but the architectural essay. And we
will challenge this notion that the term constraint is a negative device. The willing participants of this
course will be placed in an architectural straightjacket of sorts, impeded with words, theories,
projects and general social frustrations that are both self- and externally-inflicted. With Georges
Perec as our muse we will attempt to understand that no artist can work from a blank canvas as he
perviously complained out of frustration in starting a new work, (I) needed a spur, a stimulus, a
constraint to get (me) going. By looking at his projects as part of the literary group OuLiPo, such as
La Disparition (A Void) and his tour de force La Vie mode d'emploi (Life: A Users Manual), we will
attempt to unveil their underlying frameworks (showing how constraints are so very different from
parameters) that allowed him to operate, producing stories not from a conception of a plot, but a
project that emerges from a set of rules.
Architectural examples will be introduced starting with the role of the brief and transitioning to
structuring elements that can be seen from antiquity (Pythagoras and Vitruvius) to the Renaissance
(Alberti) and continuing into modernism (Le Corbusier). Once we learn how artists, writers and
architects have utilised rules as a way to generate their work we will get to play games in order to
have fun and break through the straightjacket. Each student will construct their own architectural
palindromes, lipograms and snowballs in a personal codex that will result in a piece of architectural
literature that is not an essay, but a project.
Session 1
An Introduction into the Mysterious World of Constrained Writing
The lecture will introduce students to the literary group OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle),
its founder Raymond Quenau and the members of this clique such as Georges Perec, Jacques
Roubaud, Italo Calvino and Harry Matthews. The discussion will highlight the role of the constraint
within these authors writings and how the rules were developed as both literary and mathematical
devices focusing on palindromes, lipograms, the snowball and many more. The architectural brief
will also be introduced, along with the work of Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman as a way to
understand how constrained writing and architectural design have similar characteristics.
Matthews, Harry, Back to Basics, in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Georges Perec Issue, Vol.
XXIX (Spring 2009), Dalkey Archive Press, 2009, p. 9-10.
Perec, Georges, Commitment or the Crisis of Language, in The Review of Contemporary Fiction,
Georges Perec Issue, Vol. XXIX (Spring 2009), Dalkey Archive Press, 2009, p. 112, 123.
Interview by Enrique Walker, Paul Virilio on Georges Perec, in AA Files, No. 45/46, (Winter 2001),
Architectural Association, 2001, p. 15-18.
Roubaud, Jacques, Introduction: The Oulipo and Combinatorial Art, in Oulipo Compendium, Edited
by Harry Matthews and Alastair Brotchie, Atlast Press London, 2005 revised edition, p. 37-44.
Session 2
A Sense of Structure: the Grid (the OuLiPian version and the modernist dictum), Humanism, the
Golden Ratio and the Free Verse
For years artists, architects and writers have used lines to structure their work. Lines have also been
laid on top of cities and countries for organisation. This session will cover a wide range of different
structuring methods from Pythagoras golden ratio, Roman city grids, Vitruviuss pure man,
Leonardos perspective methods and Albertis churches to the Jeffersonian grid found across
Americas vast landscape, Le Corbusiers modular man, Mondrians lack of development, Francis
Bacons frames and Perecs free verse and isogrammatic poetry (Alphabet, Ulcrations or
Threnodials) By looking at these examples we will try to make sense of Warren F. Motte, Jr
statement that the grid is neither mathematical nor linguistic, (it) is, rather, form in its purest
state...symmetrical space obedient to its own laws.
Motte Jr, Warren F. George Perec on the Grid, in The French Review, Vol. 57, No. 6 (May, 1984), p.
820-832.
Krauss, Rosalind, Grids, in October, Vol. 9 (Summer, 1979), p. 50-64.
Krauss, Rosalind, LeWitt in Process, in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and other Modernist
Myths, MIT Press, 1985, p. 244-258.
Reps, John W. Thomas Jeffersons Checkerboard Towns, in Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians, Vol. 20, No. 3 (October 1961), p. 108-114.
Session 3
Who Generates Constraints?
Using Roland Barthes essay, The Death of the Author as a barometer to evaluate a series of projects
this session will put forth multiple possibilities for the role of the author (architect) as operator,
reader, observer or object. In some cases the constraint is derived solely from the author the selfinflicted constraint, as seen in Perecs La Disparition (A Void) or the work of artist Sophie Calle. Other
times the constraint is enforced by an outside party onto the artist the external constraint, as
visible in a client generated architectural brief or by building regulations and zoning laws that
impede the architect. And in a reversal of fortunes sometimes the impediment reverses action and
falls back into the lap of the client the reciprocal constraint, designed into Eisenmans House VI and
Tadao Andos Row House Sumiyoshi. This session will introduce the variety of different ways
constraints are constructed and who enforces them.
Barthes, Roland, Death of the Author, originally in Aspen, No. 5-6, 1967.
Gratton, Johnnie, On the Subject of the Project, in The Art of the Project: Projects and Experiments
in Modern French Culture, Berghahn Books, 2005, p. 123-139.
Eisenman, Peter, House VI, in Peter Eisenmans House VI: The Clients Response, by Suzanne Frank,
Whitney Library of Design, 1994, p. 20-25.
Frank, Suzanne, The Clients Response, in Peter Eisenmans House VI: The Clients Response,
Whitney Library of Design, 1994, p. 48-73.
Auster, Paul and Calle, Sophie, Leviathan with Sophie Calles Notes, in Sophie Calle: Double Game,
Violette Editions, 2007, p. 60-67.
Session 4
Fieldwork and the Project
With the advent of the easel and the camera the space where art is made extended beyond the
walls of the studio and into the external world. Our environment and surroundings become the
studio as we interact and document the world around us. Looking at Jean-Jacques Rousseaus
Reveries of a Solitary Walker and the Paris street life photographs of Eugne Atget will provide the
historical underpinnings of the more current projects the session will cover such as the work of
Francis Bon, Sophie Calle and Nikki S. Lee as well the films of Agnes Varda. Relying on essays from
The Art of the Project: Projects and Experiments in Modern and French Culture we will delve into
Perecs world of the infra-ordinary and how this drove his ambitious and abandoned adventure
Lieux (Spaces), and influenced La Vie mode d'emploi (Life: A Users Manual).
Perec, Georges, Approaches to What? in Species of Spaces, Penguin Classics, 2008, p. 209-211.
Perec, Georges, Excerpt from Lieux in AA Files, No. 45/46, (Winter 2001), Architectural Association,
2001, p. 34-41. Note: there are more translated excerpts from Lieux in this AA Files
Sheringham, Michael, The Project and the Everyday: Francois Bons Experiments in
Attention, in The Art of the Project: Projects and Experiments in Modern French Culture, Berghahn
Books, 2005, p. 188-203.
ffrench, Patrick, Michel Foucault: Life as a Work of Art, in The Art of the Project: Projects and
Experiments in Modern French Culture, Berghahn Books, 2005, p. 204-217.
Session 5
Life and Death (Eros and Thanatos): When the Constraint Becomes Suffocating
In an attempt to understand the precarious line between a set of rules that can suffocate a project
(and artist) to the point of failure rather then resulting in success the session will be the first part of
a two-part analysis of Chapter 68 in La Vie mode d'emploi (Life: A Users Manual), explaining the
constraints and how the complex novel works. This will be supplemented with a description of the
suffocating constraints in both Perecs Lieux (Spaces) project and the lifelong pursuit of Roman
Opalkas 1965 / 1 series, which brings to the discussion Freuds concept of the life drive (Eros)
and death drive (Thanatos). Finally, the lecture will introduce the importance of the puzzle to the
work of Perec and his analysis of how one reads the game similar to that of Gestalt theory.
Perec, Georges, Chapter 68, On the Stairs 9 in Life A Users Manual, Vintage, 2008,p. 327-328.
Rabate, Dominique, Programming and Play: Life Drive and Death Drive in the Work of Georges
Perec, Roman Opalka and Jean-Benoit Puech in The Art of the Project: Projects and Experiments in
Modern French Culture, Berghahn Books, 2005, p. 81-95.
Levy, Sydney, Emergence in George Perec, in Yale French Studies, No. 105, Pereckonings: Reading
Georges Perec (2004), p. 36-55.
Leak Andrew, Paris: Created and Destroyed, in AA Files, No. 45/46, (Winter 2001), Architectural
Association, 2001, p. 26-31. Note: the missing pages are images, not text.
Session 6
Games: the Cruciverbalist and the Mannerists with a Little Pop Artist Thrown In
This week we play games. When authors like Calvino, Perec and Abish werent writing you could
probably find them playing their favourite games such as GO, chess and trying to complete
crossword puzzles. American artist Man Ray fell into this clique and began to implement chess
pieces into his artwork. By looking into these games we will begin to understand the critical
importance for a mischievous streak that allows the artist to find ways to navigate in and around
constraints leaving enough flexibility for the project to result in something unforeseen. This will be
demonstrated in the second part of the Chapter 68 analysis on La Vie mode d'emploi (Life: A Users
Manual) and to understand clinamen. We will also return to lessons of Week 2 and the rigid
structures of Alberti, but this time through the eyes of Rudolph Wittokwer to understand that
perhaps the Renaissance architect played games too. Finally, Robert Venturi will help point out the
beautiful imperfections of architects when faced with difficult and constraining choices in
Complexity and Contradiction.
Perec, Georges, 81 Easy-Cook Recipes for Beginners published in 1980.
Perec, George, Two Hundred and Forty-three Postcards in Real Colour for Italo Calvino, in Species
of Spaces, Penguin Classics, 2008, p. 222-239.
Grossman, Wendy, Man Rays Endgame and Other Modernist Gambits, in The Art of the Project:
Projects and Experiments in Modern French Culture, Berghahn Books, 2005, p. 31-50.
Session 7
Writing Machines
Italo Calvino states that literature is a constant series of attempts to make one word stay put after
another by following a certain definite rules, that were derived from other writers and have always
been up until now...writing machines. This session will analyse both Calvino and Perecs excitement
for the computer in writing, the Turing machine and Nicholas Negropontes Architecture Machine
and Calvinos text Numbers in the Dark, the first computer-aided story. Not only will we interrogate
the roles of artists, architects and writers in relation to their work, but we will also attempt to
understand how to use computational devices within projects. Through this investigation we will
begin to unpack the difference between constraints and parameters in architectural design.
Calvin, Italo, Translated by Creagh, Patrick, Cybernetics and Ghosts, in The Uses of Literature,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, New York, p. 3-27.
Paulson, William, Computers, Minds, and Texts: Preliminary Reflections in New Literary History,
Vol. 20, No. 2, Technology, Models and Literary Study, (Winter 1989), p. 291-303.
Usher, Jonathan, Calvino and the Computer as Writer/Reader, in The Modern Language Review,
Vol. 90, No. 1 (January 1995), p. 41-55.
Levy, Sydney, Emergence in Georges Perec, in Yale French Studies, No 105, Pereckonings: Reading
Georges Perec (2004), p. 36-65.
Submission:
Based on Raymond Queneaus Exercises In Style, the retelling of the same story 99 times each in a
different style (from dream, tactile, visual and cockney to comedy, passive, dog latin and haiku, etc),
the first part of the submission is to adhere to the following constraints:
Select three buildings in London: one pre-1800, one 1800-1900, one 1900 to present day.
The buildings can be well known such as the Lloyds Building and Tate Modern or as personal
as the flat you live in and the pub you go to with friends
Select three styles from Queneaus Exercises in Style and write 333 words of analysis on
each of the three buildings for a total of 999 words.
These writings are to be completed while visiting the building, and handwritten
The analysis cannot use the following: the building name or the architects name(s)
The format is a triptych, each section consisting of a single analysis. Order of projects, paper
size, stock, colour to be determined by author.
Each building analysis is to be complemented with two photographic images, one interior
and one exterior of the building. (Note: if you cannot enter the building then two different
exterior images are acceptable).
Sophie Calles LHotel project will be used as a model for format and reviewed in the first
session of class
This first part of the submission will be due at the midpoint of the term and a review in class of the
project will take place.
The second part of the submission is a 2001-word written project. After the first submission, where
the constraints were given to you, it is now your turn to construct the constraints for the project.
This experiment can include fieldwork-based exercises, music, film, photography, or any other
mediums integrated with the written portion. Many projects that will be covered within the seminar
sessions will provide students with a host of alternatives to use as models for the submission.
Students are encouraged to be experimental with the project, to think outside the box of a typical
academic paper. Projects from the previous year will be shown as examples during the term.
RETHINKING ARCHITECTURE THROUGH MEDICINE: AN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF HEALTH
EVA EYLERS
Developments in medical thinking have a long history of familiar exchanges with architecture and
the planning of the city. Changing ideas and ideals of health and disease have often had immediate
impact on the built environment and on the ways in which the city was conceived. Greek and Roman
city planning and specific building types such as the Roman thermal springs or later the monastery
are but a few examples.
During the 19th century the collaboration between Medicine and Architecture turned into a driving
force for innovation. With the rise of specialized medical institutions (from the asylum to specialized
hospitals and sanatoria) the relationship between the disciplines developed into a veritable alliance.
This course aims to look at a number of these institutions and, through their close examination,
revisit modernist concepts and terms, which were formed in the alliance between design and
medical thinking.
We will take advantage of the rich history of London and will visit both one of the oldest surviving
operating theatres in Southwark and Lubetkins iconic Finsbury Health Centre in Clerkenwell. These
case studies are valuable documents of the past but they still hold potential for todays architecture
and our understanding of the city.
Session 1: The city and the medical institution
Htel- Dieu, Paris; St Thomas hospital, London
The first session will introduce key questions of the course such as Foucaults concept of biopolitics.
The conditions of inclusion and exclusion and their architectural and urban manifestations will be
furthermore of particular interest to this seminar. Discussing medieval concepts of quarantine will
allow us to frame the broader question of the shifting definition of health and disease: Where is the
borderline between health and disease and how does this borderline manifest spatially? What was
considered acceptable in the city environment and what was not?
The modern institution came to be a space of common interest: at the same time a servicing space,
at least temporarily ridding or purifying the city and its population of dangerous elements but also a
therapeutic environment, a refuge, for the individual.
Case studies
The Ship of Fools, Rhineland
Htel- Dieu, Paris
St Thomas hospital, London
Key references
Barret-Kriegel, Blandine: Lhpital comme quipement , in: Mardaga, Pierre (Ed.): Les machines
gurir (aux origines de lhopital moderne), Architecture + Archives, Bruxelles, Lige, 1979 (pp19-30)
Canguilhem, Georges: The Normal and the Pathological, Introduction by Michel Foucault, Zone
Books, New York, 1991
Foucault, Michel: The birth of social medicine, in: Rabino, Paul and Rose, Nikolas (ed.): The
essential Foucault, Selections from essential works of Foucault, 1954 1984, The New Press, New
York, 2003
Foucault, Michel: History of Madness, Jean Khalfa (Ed.), Translated by Jonathan Murphy and Jean
Khalfa, First published 2006 by Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon (First published in France, Folie et
Draison: Histoire de la folie lage classique, 1961
Gutting, Gary: Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989 (pp 45-52; pp 69-87; pp 118-120)
MAP Manual of Architectural Possibilities 002 QUARANTINE by David Garcia StudioTeyssot, Georges:
Norm and Type. Variations on a theme, in: Picon, Antoine and Ponte, Alessandra (eds.):
Architecture and the sciences, Princeton Papers on Architecture
Wallenstein, Sven-Olov: Bio-Politics and the Emergence of Modern Architecture, the Buell Center /
FORuM Project and Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2009
Session 2: Spaces of medical education
Site Visit: The Old Operating Theatre and Gordon Museum, Southwark
One of the oldest surviving operating theatres in Europe (formally part of the old St Thomass
hospital) and the Gordon Museum of Pathology (Guys Hospital) are practically neighbours in
Southwark. The buildings reflect two important moments in the development of medical education.
We will visit both and discuss the relationship between Guys and the old St Thomass hospital and
their function for the borough.
Case Studies
The Old Operating Theatre & Herb Garret (1822), 9A St Thomass Street, Southwark
Gordon Museum (1905), Guys Hospital, St Thomass Street, London SE1 9RT
Hunterian Museum (1837); Royal College of Surgeons, 35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields London WC2A 3PE
Session 3: Planning the Nation: the Heilsttten Movement in Germany
From the first tuberculosis sanatorium in the mountains of Grbersdorf to the universal home
sanatorium
With the 19th Century conviction that cities were true breeding grounds for disease in general and
tuberculosis in particular came also the theory that there were places of health outside the city. The
medical theory of the immune place, developed by Hermann Brehmer, would serve as the impetus
for the development and justification of the sanatorium, which, as the place of health was to be
situated in natural surroundings, ideally in the dry air of an unspoilt mountain region.
The first sanatorium entirely dedicated to the treatment of tuberculosis patients, Grbersdorf in
Silesia, prompted a great number of successors, and by the end of the 19th century a veritable
Heilsttten-movement had taken place in Germany. However, the treatment did not prove as
successful as had been initially hoped for and during the 1899 Conference on TB in Berlin
alternatives in the fight against the disease were considered.
This seminar will discuss one such alternative approach, the home sanatorium proposed by the
military surgeon Dr. von Unterberger, an attempt to bring the place of health back into the city, and
therefore ignore the demand for a particular site and its climate, the precondition of the original
sanatorium cure. The renunciation of site specificity led the sanatorium idea itself ad absurdum but
provided new opportunities for the strategic governing of the Nation.
Case Studies
Dr. Brehmers sanatorium Grbersdorf (1854),
Beelitz Volksheilsttten, Berlin, (1898 1930),
the Haus Sanatorium (1899)
Key references
Foucault, Michel: "Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias", in: Leach, Neil (Ed.): Rethinking
Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, Routledge, New York, 1997 (pp.330-336)
Gerhard, William Paul: Recent examples of hospital construction in Europe : a description of the
Hospital and Sanatorium Beelitz, near Berlin : careful attention given to details : effects of the
Workingmen's Insurance Act in Germany, St. Louis, Modern Hospital Pub. Co., 1914
Koch, Robert: The current state of the struggle against tuberculosis, Nobel Prize lecture from 1905,
Amsterdam, 1967
(Dr.) Pannwitz (Kongressleitung): "Bericht ber den Kongress zur Bekmpfung der Tuberkulose als
Volkskrankheit", Deutsches Central-Komitee zur Errichtung von Heilsttten fr Lungenkranke, Berlin
1899
Session 4: The health movement and domestic architecture
Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra and the Lovell houses
Originating from Vienna, both Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra immigrated to the United
States and merged their European background (Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner) with the teachings of
Frank Lloyd Wright. The session will discuss the triangular relationship between Schindler, Neutra
and their eccentric client, Dr Philip Lovell. Dr Lovell had distinct ideas about a healthy lifestyle and
buildings were understood as a tool which would not only accommodate but actively drive this
lifestyle. We will compare the Lovell Beach House (1923- 26) with the Health House (1927 29). They
were designed within only six years by two architects who had much in common and yet approached
their task in clearly different ways.
Case Studies
R. Schindler: Lovell Beach House (1923-26)
R. Neutra: Lovell Health House (1927-29)
Key references
Blundell Jones, Peter: The hospital as building type; in: The Architectural Review, London, March
2002, (p.42, 43)
Colomina, Beatriz: The medical Body ; in: Davidson, Cynthia (ed.): Anybody, The MIT Press,
Cambridge MA, 1997
March, Lionel and Judith Sheine (eds).: R.M. Schindler: Composition and Construction, Academy
Editions, London, 1993.
Lamprecht. Barbara: Richard Neutra: Survival through Design, Taschen, Kln, 2004.
Lavin, Sylvia: Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture, MIT
Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007.
David Leatherbarrow: Uncommon Ground: Architecture, Technology and Topography, MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA and London, 2000.
Session 5: Nationalism and the International Style
Alvar Aaltos sanatorium in Paimio
In 1929 Alvar Aalto won the competition for a large tuberculosis sanatorium in the south-west of
Finland. The project answered to the programme with a clear separation of functions and became
one of the icons of modernism, featuring in countless histories of modern architecture. The seminar
will explore how, at the same time claimed for medical, architectural and political propaganda the
building was used as a projection space for the respective agendas and how the use of the
International Style became instrumental in the fabrication of the young Finnish Nation.
Case Studies
Paimio Sanatorium, Alvar Aalto (1928-33)
Zonnestraal Sanatorium, Johannes Duiker (1925-28)
Key references
Aalto, Alvar, M. M. Sukkinen, Ilmo Kalkas, (Eds.): Varsinais-Suomen Tuberkuloosiparantola,
Kirjapaino Polytypos, Turku, 1933 [?]
Aalto, Alvar: From Doorstep to Livingroom (1926); in: Gran Schildt: Alvar Aalto in his own words,
Otava Publishing Company, LTD. Helsinki, 1997
Blundell Jones, Peter: The hospital as building type; in: The Architectural Review, London, March
2002, (p.42, 43)
Buzzati, Dino: SEVEN FLOORS Sette Piani, first published in Italian 1953, Translation by Joan Taber
Colomina, Beatriz: The medical Body ; in: Davidson, Cynthia (ed.): Anybody, The MIT Press,
Cambridge MA, 1997
Eylers, E.: National Identity through the International Style: Alvar Aaltos Paimio Sanatorium and its
Role for Finland; In: R. Quek, D. Deane, S. Butler (Eds.), Nationalism and Architecture, Ashgate
Publishing, 2012 (pp. 199-211)
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell and Philip Johnson: The International Style, with a foreword by Philip
Johnson, New York, London, 1995
Nerdinger, Winfried (ed.): Alvar Aalto, Towards a Human Modernism, Prestel Verlag, Munich, 1999
Norri, Marja-Riitta Norri (ed.): ALVAR AALTO IN SEVEN BUILDINGS Interpretations of an Architects
Work, Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, 1998
Overy, Paul: Light, Air and Openness, Modern Architecture between the Wars, Thames & Hudson
Ltd, London, 2007 (pp 49 67)
Pelkonen, Eeva-Liisa: Alvar Aalto, Architecture, Modernity, and Geopolitics, Yale University Press,
New Haven and London, 2009
Session 6: The healthy cell in the city
Site Visit: The Finsbury Health Centre, London
Looking at the reciprocal relationship between sanatorium and city, at how the programmatic
typology of the sanatorium influenced the discourse on the city, but also at the ways through which
the TB sanatorium would affect the citys built reality, we will discuss the instrumental role of the socalled dispensary. A medical institution that, through its affiliation with either a hospital or a
tuberculosis sanatorium, would widen the scope of the mother institution, the dispensary will be
established as a healthy cell, believed capable to restructure its surroundings.
Both the Finsbury and the Pioneer Health Centre in London were remarkable attempts to rethink the
role of architecture in the shaping of a future society. We will visit the Finsbury Health Centre in
Clerkenwell to discuss the buildings position within the Finsbury plan and its particular
relationship with the surrounding borough, its ambitions towards the wider urban environment.
Case Studies
Dispensario Antitubercolare, Alessandria, Italy, Ignazio Gardella, (1934 38)
Finsbury Health Centre, B. Lubetkin (1938)
Pioneer health centre, Owen Williams, Peckham (1935)
Key References
Allan, John: Berthold Lubetkin: Architecture and the Tradition of Progress, RIBA Publications,
London, 1992
Coe, Peter and Reading, Malcolm: Lubetkin & Tecton, An architectural study, Triangle Architectural
Publishing, London, 1992Van Eesteren, Cornelis: The idea of the functional city, A lecture with slides,
Rotterdam, 1928Eylers, E.: Ideology through Symmetry: The Dispensario Antitubercolare,
Alessandria, Italy; In: Emanuel de Sousa and Kirk Wooller (Eds.): Propositions: Ideology in
Transparency,. London, UK: The Architectural Association PhD Programme Publications, 2011, (pp
82-91)Kozlovsky, Roy: Urban Play Intimate Space and Postwar Subjectivity; in: Intimate Metropolis,
Eds. Di Palma, Vittoria, Diana Periton and Marina Lathouri, Routledge, Oxon, New York, 2009 (pp
195-217)Le Corbusier: The Radiant City, Faber and Faber Limited, London, 1967 (1933)
Overy, Paul: Light, Air and Openness, Modern Architecture between the Wars, Thames & Hudson
Ltd, London, 2007 (pp 49 67)
Pearse, Innes H. and Crocker, Lucy H.: The Peckham Experiment: A Study in the Living Structure of
Society, George Allan and Unwin, for the Sir Halley Stewart Trust, London, 1943
Documentary:
Cordell, Tom: Utopia London, dvd, 2010
Session 7: The legacy of John Snow

Dr John Snow (1813 1858) investigated the 1854 Cholera epidemic in Soho and through his studies
of the patterns of the disease discounted the then prevalent Miasma theory, which believed in a
transmission of diseases by foul air. The spatial analysis which resulted in Snows Cholera map of
Soho linked the epidemic to the London water supply. This supported the development of a modern
sewerage system in the following decades.
The last session will investigate Snow's legacy in introducing a pilot project in Gujarat State in
western India: through sharing her work experience and research results, Dr Priti Parikh will
demonstrate the causal relationship between infrastructural and social problems. At the end of the
session we will discuss the requirements for the written assignment.
Eva Eylers is an architect and currently teaches at the School of Art and Design History, Kingston
University as well as at the Bartlett, UCL. Educated at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg
(Diploma), and at the Architectural Association, London (M.A. / Ph.D., funded by the German
Academic Exchange Service, DAAD), Eva completed the doctoral thesis Health and Hygiene in
modern urban planning the Sanatorium and its role for the Modernist Movement in 2011. Eva has
taught at the AA, at the University of Brighton and at the University of Applied Sciences in Trier.
NARRATIVES FROM THE SOUTH
FRANCISCO GONZLEZ DE CANALES
Is the Northern model of social and economic development and its canon of cultural representation
the only possible one in the advancement of modern democratic societies? The history and theories
of modern architecture constructed their own narratives based on a fix set of Northern paradigms to
be extended to all modernizing peripheral regions. However, the increasing importance of
countries of emergent economies from the South today is not only leading towards a new global
geopolitical status quo, but also to reassessing alternative cultural narratives which question the
prevalence of Northern models and their scrutinizing tools and concepts. Analysing some figures of
Latin-American art and architecture such as Tarsila do Amaral, Oswald de Andrade, Wilfredo Lam,
Pablo Neruda, Diego Rivera, Lina Bo Bardi, Alberto Cruz, Juan OGorman, Ricardo Porro or Joao
Vilanova Artigas, this course discusses how alternative notions of modernity emerge along the 20th
century as independent from the traditional Northern models, and their value in today discourses.
Session 1: MODERNITY
Entering or leaving the modern?
Readings:
Hilde Heynen: Architecture Facing Modernity, in Architecture and Modernity, Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press, 2001, p.8-24
Anthony Giddens: The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity, 1990, p.162-6 and 1974-76
Further Readings:
Ulrich Beck: From Industrial Society to the Risk Society: Questions of Survival, Social Structure and
Ecological Enlightenment, in Theory, Culture & Society 9, February 1992, p. 97-123
Walter Benjamin: Theses on the Philosophy of History in Hannah Arendt, ed.: Illuminations. New
York: Schocken Books, 1969, p.253-264 (Also in: http://seansturm.
files.wordpress.com/2012/06/benjamin-theses-on-the-philosophy-of-history.pdf)
Sarah W. Goldhagen: Something to talk about: Modernism, Discourse, Style in Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 64, n. 2, jun. 2005, p. 144-167. (Also in:
http://www.sarahwilliamsgoldhagen.com/articles/something_to_talk_about.pdf)
Jrgen Habermas: Modernity An incomplete project, in Hal Foster ed.: The Anti-Aesthetic, New
York: The New Press, 1998, p.1-16
Jorge Francisco Liernur: Latin America: The space of the other in Richard Kohshalek and Elizabeth
Smith eds.: At the end of the century: One hundered years of Architecture. Los Angeles: Harry N.
Abrams, 2000
Rodrigo Perez Arce y Fernando Perez Oyarzun: Valparaiso School: Open City Group. Basel :
Birkhauser, 2003
Further references in Spanish and Portuguese:
Jorge Francisco Liernur: Escritos de Arquitectura del Siglo XX en Amrica Latina. Sevilla: Tanais 2002
Cristin Fernandez Cox: Modernidad apropiada, in Modernidad y Postmodernidad en Amrica
Latina. Bogot: Escala, 1991, p.11-22
Enrique Browne: Otra arquitectura en Amrica latina. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1988
Session 2: AVANT-GARDE
Fat Latin-American Artists: Antropofagia, Muralismo and other sui generis avant-gardes
Readings:
Peter Brger: The Avant-Garde as the Self-Criticism of the Art in Bourgeois Society and The New,
in Theory of the Avant-Garde. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1984, p.20-7; 59-65
Oswald de Andrade, Cannibalist Manifesto (1928), in Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 19, No.
38, Jul.- Dec., 1991), pp. 35-47 (also in: http://www.cornercollege.com/udb/cproK3mKYQAndrade_Cannibalistic_Manifesto.pdf)
Further Readings:
Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of Avant-Gardes in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other
Modernist Myths. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1985, p. 151-170
Mari Carmen Ramrez and Hector Olea: Inverted Utopias. Avant-Garde Art in Latin America, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2004
Fernando J. Rosenberg: The Avant- Garde and Geopolitics in Latin-America. Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2006
Raymon Williams: The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists. London and New York:
Verso, 1989, p. 29-35
Adrian Gorelik: Das vanguardas a Braslia: cultura urbana e arquitetura na Amrica Latina Belo
Horizonte: UFMG, 2005
Jorge Schwartz: Las Vanguardias Latinoamericanas. Textos programticos y crticos. Madrid:
Ctedra, 1991
Eduardo Subirats: Una ltima visin del Paraiso. Mexico: FCE, 2004
Session 3: DEVELOPMENT
The making and unmaking of the underdeveloped world
Readings:
Amartya Sen: Development as Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, p.38-53
Arturo Escobar: Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. New
York: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp.3-20; 54-101
Further Readings:
Bonsiepe, Gui: Design and Crisis. Barcelona: campgrafic, 2011
Valerie Fraser: Building the New World. Studies in the Modern Architecture of Latin America 1930-60.
London: Verso, 2000
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera: What if Latin-America ruled the world. London: Bloomsbury publishing, 2010
Eric Mundford and Hashim Sarkis: Josep Lluis Sert the architect of urban design, 1953-1969. New
Haven: Yale University Press; Cambridge: Harvard University Graduate School, 2008
Raul Prebisch: Change and development: Latin America's great task. New York: Praeger, 1971
Wolfgang Sachs, ed.: The Development Dictionary. A guide to Knowledge as Power. London & New
York: Zed Books, 1999
Jos Mara Arguedas: Formacin de una cultura nacional indoamericana, Mxico: Siglo XXI, 2005
Darcy Ribeiro: As Amricas e a Civilizaao, processo de formao e causas do desenvolvimento
desigual dos povos americanos. Rio de Janeiro: Civilizao Brasileira, 1970
Eduardo Subirats: Viaje al Fin del Paraiso. Buenos Aires: Losada, 2005
Session 4: UTOPIA
The Invention of Paradise and other Western Myths
Readings:
Edmundo OGorman: The invention of America: an inquiry into the historical nature of the New
World and the meaning of its history. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972 (chapter 1, but also
recommended chapters 2 and 3)
Michel Foucault: Of Other Spaces, in Diacritics, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 1986, p. 22-27 (also in:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=03007162%28198621%2916%3A1%3C22
%3AOOS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F)
Further References:
Alejo Carpentier: The Kingdom of this Word. New York: Knopf, 1957
Martin Heidegger: The Age of World Picture, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other
Essays. New York: Harper and Row, 1977, p.115-54
John Loomis: Revolution of Forms: Cubas forgotten Art Schools. New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1998
Angel Rama: The lettered city. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996
Graciela Silvestri and Adrian Gorelik: The Past as the Future: A Reactive Utopia in Buenos Aires in
Ana del Sarto et al. eds. The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader. Duke University Press, 2004
Peter Sloterdijk: Sphren II (Makrosphrologie) Globen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1999
Francisco de Vitoria: De Potestate Civil (On Civil Power), 1528 (see in:
http://www.stanselminstitute.org/files/Vitoria%20On%20Civil%20Power.pdf)
Rudolf Wittkower: Baroque art: the Jesuit contribution. New York: Fordham University Press, 1972
Fernndez, Roberto: El Laboratorio Americano. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1998
Eduardo Subirats: Memoria y Exilio. Buenos Aires: Losada, 2003
Session 5: SUBJECT
The ecstasy of the anti-hero and the carnality of the intellectual experience
Readings:
Georges Bataille: Transgression, in The Accursed Share, Zone Books, 1991, p.89-110
Salvador Dali: The Rotten Donkey (L ne pourri, 1930), in Haim Filkenstein, ed., The Collected Essays
of Salvador Dali, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p.223-5 (see in
http://www.grandstreet.com/gsissues/gs60/gs60d.html)
Federico Garca Lorca: Theory and play of the Duende: and, Imagination, inspiration, evasion. Dallas:
Kanathos, 1981 (the latter also in: http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/
artliterature/irrestiblebeauty.htm)
Further Readings:
Giorgio Agamben: The Open: Man and Animal. Stanford: Stanford University, 2004
Georges Bataille: Tears of Eros. San Francisco: City Lights, 1989
E.T.A. Hoffman: The Sandman, 1816 (see in: http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~rlbeebe/ sandman.pdf)
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, in
Dialectic of Elightenment, 1944 (see in:http://www.marxists.org/
reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm)
Elaine Scarry: The Body in Pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985
Peter Sloterdijk: Spheres I - Bubbles. Los Angeles: Semiotex(e), 2011
Mario de Andrade: Macunaima, o heri sem nenhum carter. Sao Paulo: Secretaria da Cultura,
Cincia e Tecnologia, 1978
Jos Angel Valente: Variaciones Sobre el Pjaro y la red. Barcelona: Tusquets, 1999
Juan Jos Lahuerta: El fenmeno del xtasis. Madrid: Siruela, 2004
Session 6: NATURE
The Ultimate Myth
Readings:
Bruno Latour: Politics of Nature, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004, p.25-52
Francisco Gonzlez de Canales: Experiments with Life Itself. Barcelona and New York: Actar, 2012,
p.20-35
Further Readings:
Georges Bataille: The Accursed Share. Volumes II and III, New York: Zone Books, 1991
John Dewey: Experience and Nature. Nueva York: Dover Publications Inc., 1958
Claude Levi-Strauss: The Way of Masks. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982
Michel Serres: The Natural Contract, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995
Raymond Williams, Ideas on Nature, in Culture and Materialism, pp.67-85
(also in http://books.google.com/books?id=WQ_WrqstsUC&pg=PP11&lpg=PP11&dq=Raymond+Williams,+%E2%80%9CIdeas+of+Nature%E2%80%9D+i
n+%22Culture+and+Materialism%22,+1980&source=bl&ots=I3-gCdgSB-&sig=WwViGz-p3X_RAiPftMUWqzjje0&hl=es&ei=Ywm8SYvpBDDjAe7lsmNCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA67,M1)
Further References in Spanish and Portuguese:
Rafael Lopez Rangel: Diego Rivera y la Arquitectura, Mjico: Consejo Nacional de Fomento
Educativo, 1986
Maurizio Lopez Valds, ed.: OGorman. Mexico DF.: Grupo Financiero Bital, 1999
Session 7: PLURALITY
Transculturation and the Commons
Hannah Arendt: The Public and the Private Realm, in The Human Condition, Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1998, pp.22-78
Fernando Ortiz: Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995, p.396
Further Readings:
Arjun Appadurai: Modernity at large. Cultural dimensions of Globalization. London: University of
Minnesota Press, 1996
Hannah Arendt: Introduction into politics, in The Promise of Politics, Schoken Books: New York
2005, p. 93-200.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri: Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009
Felipe Hernandez: On the notion of Architectural hybridization in Latin America, in The Journal of
Architecture, vol.7, Spring 2002, p.77-86
Instituto Lina Bo e P M Bardi: Vilanova Artigas. Sao Paulo: Instituto Lina Bo e P M Bardi/Fundacao
Vilanova Artigas, 1997
Jacques Ranciere: Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Continuum, 2010, p.27-44
Paul Ricoeur: Universal Civilization and National Cultures in History and Truth, Northwestern
University Press, 1965, p.271-84
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Giorgio Agamben: The Open: Man and Animal. Stanford: Stanford University, 2004
Arjun Appadurai: Modernity at large. Cultural dimensions of Globalization. London: University of
Minnesota Press, 1996
Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998
Georges Bataille: Tears of Eros. San Francisco: City Lights, 1989
Georges Bataille: The Accursed Share (volumes I, II and III), New York: Zone Books, 1991
Walter Benjamin: Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 1969
Gui Bonsiepe: Design and Crisis. Barcelona: campgrafic, 2011
Carlos Brillembourg (ed.): Latin American Architecture 1929-1960. Contemporary Reflections, Nueva
York: The Monacelli Press, 2004
Peter Brger: Theory of the Avant-Garde. Manchester: UMPress, 1984
Pilar Caldern and Marc Folch: Neruda-Rodrguez Arias. Houses for a Poet, Barcelona: Collegi
dAquitectes de Catalunya, 2004
Salvador Dal and Haim Filkenstein, eds., The Collected Essays of Salvador Dali, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998
Arturo Escobar: Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. New
York: Princeton University Press, 1995
Valerie Fraser: Building the New World. Studies in the Modern Architecture of Latin America 1930-60.
London: Verso, 2000
Anthony Giddens: The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity, 1990
Francisco Gonzlez de Canales: Experiments with Life Itself. Barcelona and New York: Actar, 2012
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera: What if Latin-America ruled the world. London: Bloomsbury publishing, 2010
David Harvey: The Postmodern Condition, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989
Martin Heidegger: The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper and
Row, 1977
Felipe Hernandez, Mark Millington and Iain Borden, eds.: Transculturation. Cities, Spaces and
Architectures in Latin-America. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2005
Hilde Heynen: Architecture and Modernity, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001
Instituto Lina Bo e P M Bardi: Vilanova Artigas. Sao Paulo: Instituto Lina Bo e P M Bardi/Fundacao
Vilanova Artigas, 1997
Rosalind E. Krauss: The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 1985
Bruno Latour: Politics of Nature, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004
Claude Levi-Strauss: The Way of Masks. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982
Jean-Franois Lejeune, ed.: Cruelty & Utopia. Cities and Landscapes of Latin America, Nueva York:
Princeton University Press, 2005
Jorge Francisco Liernur: Latin America: The space of the other in Richard Kohshalek and Elizabeth
Smith eds.: At the end of the century: One hundered years of Architecture. Los Angeles: Harry N.
Abrams, 2000
John Loomis: Revolution of Forms: Cubas forgotten Art Schools. New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1998
Federico Garca Lorca: Theory and play of the Duende: and, Imagination, inspiration, evasion. Dallas:
Kanathos, 1981
Eric Mundford and Hashim Sarkis: Josep Lluis Sert the architect of urban design, 1953-1969. New
Haven: Yale University Press; Cambridge : Harvard University Graduate School, 2008
Edmundo OGorman: The invention of America: an inquiry into the historical nature of the New
World and the meaning of its history. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972
Fernando Ortiz: Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995
Rodrigo Perez Arce y Fernando Perez Oyarzun: Valparaiso School: Open City Group. Basel :
Birkhauser, 2003
Angel Rama: The lettered city. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996
Mari Carmen Ramrez and Hector Olea: Inverted Utopias. Avant-Garde Art in Latin America, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2004
Paul Ricoeur: History and Truth, Northwestern University Press, 1965
Fernando J. Rosenberg: The Avant- Garde and Geopolitics in Latin-America. Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2006
Ana del Sarto et al. eds. The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader. Duke University Press, 2004
Elaine Scarry: The Body in Pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985
Michel Serres: The Natural Contract, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995
Jacques Ranciere: Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Continuum, 2010
Wolfgang Sachs, ed.: The Development Dictionary. A guide to Knowledge as Power. London & New
York: Zed Books, 1999
Amartya Sen: Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999
Peter Sloterdijk: Sphren II (Makrosphrologie) Globen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1999
Peter Sloterdijk: Spheres I - Bubbles. Los Angeles: Semiotex(e), 2011
Raymon Williams: The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists. London and New York:
Verso, 1989
Rudolf Wittkower: Baroque art: the Jesuit contribution. New York: Fordham University Press, 1972
Submission requirements:
- Class attendance
- Participation in discussions
- Readings
- 12 pages final paper around a relevant topic to be submitted on 13th December 2013
Francisco Gonzalez de Canales studied architecture at ETSA Seville, ETSA Barcelona and Harvard
University, and worked for Foster+Partners and Rafael Moneo. He is co-director of award-winning
office Canales & Lombardero. He has previously lectured in England, Mexico, Spain and the USA. He
has recently published the book Experiments with Life Itself (Actar 2011) based on his PhD research
on the radical domestic self-experimentations of the 1940s and 1950.
VANISHING POINT
ALISON MOFFETT
Whether thought of as an invention or discovery, linear perspective certainly marked a great shift in
the way space was viewed and represented. A quintessential component of the Renaissance,
perspective can be seen as embodying the eras new logic and measurability, the importance of
beauty and science. With a viewpoint that is subjective, no longer a gods-eye view, the Renaissance
world is depicted from a position which could be anyones. Alongside this, the built world became
not just buildings, but architecture, designed by the newly formed profession of architect. Art,
architecture, science, and life are indistinguishable from one another, and bridging them all is the
ever-present structure of linear perspective: a vantage point by which to view the time.
Dismissed by the avant-garde of the 20th century, often for the very reasons it was initially valued,
perspective dropped out of favor until the simulation of 3-Dimensional space was picked up once
again by the possibilities within the computer. In many cases, this is a logical progression. However,
there still remain particular attributes connected with the immediacy and the construct of 2Dimensional perspectival drawing which will hold it apart. Through a combination of readings,
discussions, and practical drawn assignments, this seminar will examine what it is to understand
linear perspective. Through the lens of Filippo Brunelleschis Baptistery experiment, perspective
becomes the connecting force between drawing, technology, and architecture. In this way, we will
reassess the dialectic between drawing and building, architectures relationship with art, and how
this knowledge can be applied to the creative works of today.
Session 1:
Introduction The atmosphere of the Renaissance Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti
Readings:
Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr. The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (1975)
Session 2:
The Grid Imposing measurability and order, Albertis Veil.
Readings:
Leon Battista Alberti. On Painting (1991)
Mario Carpo. Perspective, Projections and Design (2008)
Session 3:
Projection Mapmaking, exploration and Utopia.
Readings:
Friedrich Kittler, Optical Media (2009)
Session 4:
The Eye/the Hole Authorship and the visual cone
Readings:
Lorens Holm, Reading Through the Mirror: Brunelleschi, Lacan, Le Corbusier, The Invention of
Perspective and the Post-Freudian Eye/I, Assemblage. (2010)
Pamela M. Lee, Object to be Destroyed: the work of Gordon Matta-Clark (2001)
Session 5:
Doubling Redefining the subject and object.
Readings:
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (1970)
Session 6:
The Mirror: breaking illusion
Readings:
Ann Reynolds, Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere (2003)
Session 7:
Computer space: Perspective reapplied, the apparatus and depth
Readings:
Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (2003)
Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1986)
Other readings:
Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form
Hubert Damisch, A Theory of /Cloud/
Robert W Gill, Basic Perspective and Creative Perspective
Submission:
The final submission for the seminar will be a visual project to be developed with the tutor the
equivalent of a 3,000 word essay. However, the submission of an essay, or combination, will be
accepted on a case-by-case basis.
Alison Moffett is a practicing artist originally from Tennessee. Since moving to London, she obtained
an MFA from the Slade School of Fine art in 2004 and an MA in History and Critical Thinking from the
AA in 2011. She is fascinated by the melancholy of architecture and how the constant interplay
between hope and disappointment can be brought to life within the drawn world. She is
represented by Gallery Schleicher/Lange in Berlin.

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HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES FIRST YEAR

Introduction to the course

Submission Hand-In: Friday 13th December 2013

HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES SECOND YEAR

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

Submission Hand-In: Friday 21st March 2014

HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES THIRD YEAR

Architecture Theory Since 1968, Columbia University, 1998, pgs. 2-35.

Brown, Harvard University Press, 2004.

Research, Vol. 29.1, March 2005, pp. 26-49.

HISTORY AND THEORY STUDIES DIPLOMA SCHOOL

CIRCULATION AND MAKING THE WORLD URBAN

TRANSLATION AND MANIPULATION BETWEEN IDEA AND FORM

recursive / between shape and idea

case 2 icons and ready monuments

anachronic / between image and story

case 3 'pixels to swarm'

algorithmic / between digit and script

virtual / between text and psychology

stitching / between us and others

'ruin and void'

case 6 'picto-logico and reality-effect'

rendering / between picture and reality

epilogue - constructing forensis

writing / between argument and rhetoric

INTERROGATING THE ARCHIVE

Association. Architectural Press, 1975.

Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plat, 1990

Session 7: The legacy of John Snow

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