Elective Course
Credits: 3-0-3 (3 semester hours)
Type of Course: Lecture
Instructors: George Johnston
Prerequisites: None
Course Overview
In recent years, architectural discourse has embraced the rhetoric of the "everyday." Everyday architecture, everyday urbanism, everyday practice, and everyday life, are just some of the applications of this ubiquitous qualifier. Where did this term originate, and out of what disciplinary contexts? What did it mean then and what do architects mean now when they invoke the quality of the everyday? How can thoughtful interrogation of today’s everyday contribute to the formulation of critically resistant strategies for the production of architecture? Looking to the work of mostly European cultural theorists who, beginning in the early 20th century, attempted to register the numbing experience of modernity, this course opens up the relationship between approaches to social description and programs of political action. In addition, the course situates the particular usages of the everyday within architectural discourse in the United States, including a range of related conceptions lodged in studies of vernacular architecture and cultural landscape. Finally, the course considers how this set of ideas might inform tactics of architectural design -or non-design- in the critical transformation of the everyday. The course is conducted in a discussion format based upon common reading assignments and will include forays into the streets of Paris.
Learning Objectives
(See above)
Course Requirements
- Active participation in class discussions
- Three short (3-4 page) reading response papers
- One more substantial research paper/collage project (10-15 pages for undergraduate -students and15-20 pages for graduate students) due at the end of the term
Papers/projects documenting conditions of everyday use and habitation, through graphic or other means, are especially encouraged. A proposal will be due at mid-term.
Bibliography:
Groth and Bressi, Understanding Ordinary Landscapes
Harris and Berke, Architecture of the Everyday; Highmore, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: and Introduction and The Everyday Life Reader.