Required Course
Credits: 3-0-3 (3 semester hours)
Type of Course: Lecture/ Seminar
Instructors: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Prerequisites: ARCH 4106
Course Overview:From radical upheavals to subtle inversions, the past three decades have been marked by considerable turbulence in architectural thought. The questioning of modernist canons, autonomous formal explorations and varied attempts at relevancy by social or technological means have heated recent architectural discourse. Competing for prominence, each new ‘ism’ has articulated its agenda through ever more sophisticated architectural theories, many of them borrowed from or reliant upon other disciplines. Contemporary critical debate about architecture is inseparable from this heightened attention to theory and quest for a relevant agenda.
Beginning with an introduction to mid-century Modernism, lectures establish a rough chronological history of variants of postmodern theory and practice: Pop Culture, Formalism, Contextualism, Neo-Historicism, Neo-Rationalism, New Urbanism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Critical Regionalism and Phenomenology. Topical lectures in the latter third of the course introduce a range of contemporary issues and cultural conditions that are informing current architectural agendas without being formalized into an 'ism': issues of national, racial, gender and sexual identity, and new environmental and technological agendas - including sustainability and virtual reality. Various faculty from the Architecture Program and the Ph.D. Program within the College of Architecture give guest lectures and further broaden the perspectives introduced.
Learning Objectives: This course is intended to provide students with a framework from which to understand and to engage in current debate in architecture.
Throughout the course, attention is paid to how an architectural agenda is formalized. How do various architects today define an architectural position? How precisely do various spatial, formal, and theoretical strategies reproduce one another? These questions guide the preparation of periodic student debates on a series of questions suggested by the course's content. These debates occur during scheduled parallel sessions, each led by one of the two
Instructors: , during which material and readings from the intervening lectures are discussed.
A midterm exam tests general comprehension of the material covered in the first two-thirds of the course. A short position paper at the end of the semester requires students to reflect on the material presented throughout the semester. They are asked to begin to form a position of their own through these acts of reflection, as well as projection into their futures as students and as professionals.
Course Requirements:
Grading is based upon:
- attendance, preparation and participation in class discussions (10%)
- performance in the debates described above (25%)
- a mid-term exam (40%)
- a short position paper of 5 to 7 pages (25%).