AH547 THEORIES OF HISTORY II

Course Objectives

This semester the theme of the course will be  "Architect's Journey."  In the past,  after familiarizing ourselves with historical and theoretical literature on travel we were going on a journey to ultimately express our observations and experiences in a major exhibition. This semester we will take up the challenge our current condition presents.  The course will be conducted as a research seminar for each of us to inquire  into the seemingly meager possibility of "moving" and "building" in precarious environmental conditions. 
Traveling to distant lands,  unknown  cities,  ancient  sites,  and singular architectures have always been  part of the training and profession of the architect.  Accordingly,  we will focus on the emergence, establishment, and representation of travel in relation to architecture in the first part of the semester.  In the second part,  each of us will research the possibilities and means of (virtual) journeying to a destination of her/his own choice with the ultimate aim of displaying the outcomes in the  exhibition that we will collectively put together.

Course Content

The last couple of decades witnessed a proliferation of methodologies for the analysis of visual and spatial phenomena. The Common point of these new strategies-coming from fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, philosophy and feminism among others – is concentration on singular cases and denigration of any systematic approach aiming to develop general explicative frameworks. In this seminar we will try to develop ways of analyzing visual and spatial practices through close-readings of different texts including canonical works of art and architectural history and recent products of interdisciplinary approaches.

Course Learning Outcomes