This blog is the discussion site for a calarts class taught by Ken Ehrlich. Each week I will post discussion questions related to the readings. Please respond within the comment section of the post as a way to keep the blog relatively coherent organizationally.
UnBuilt and FarOut:
ReplyDeleteExperimental Architecture since 1945
Instructor: Ken Ehrlich
ken@kenehrlich.net
Wednesdays 4 – 6
F200
Course blog: http://unbuilt-far-out.blogspot.com/
This class will look at a broad range of design groups and experiments in architecture since 1945. We will consider unbuilt, rigorously designed architecture and pay particular attention to practitioners who sought to expand architectural practice beyond a purely functional or visual form. This course traces the evolution of architectural representation from drawing to film, performance and media and ultimately to three-dimensional modeling and digital representation. Particular focus will be given to groups that were intent on experimenting with ideas of community, authorship, and urbanism and those that consider a social role for the architect or designer.
This class is specifically designed to introduce students to basic architectural concepts and vocabulary as well as understand the transition in architecture from Modernism through Post-modernism and beyond. We will also investigate of historical and contemporary design collaboratives as well as critically evaluate architectural and urban planning projects. Each week we will look at the work of an architect or designer and reflect on the methods and strategies employed to generate models, designs, writings and interventions. Students will be expected to lead discussions on class readings and complete a final research project.
Week one: Introduction to architectural practice as intervention, critiques of Modernism, and the emergence of globalization.
Week two: Convention in the context of architecture.
reading: “Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form” by Michael Hays in Perspecta
Case Study: Mies Van der Rohe
Week three: Authorship and the architect as collaborator
reading: “Toward a theory of normative architecture” by Joan Ockman in Architecture of the Everyday.
Case Study: Constant Nieuwenhuys
Week four: The architect as collaborator, continued.
Case Study: Walter Gropius and The Architecture collaborative
reading: “The Architects Collaborative 1945-1965” by Walter Gropius (selections)
Week five: Re-imagining the City, Architect as planner vs. Architect as critic.
Case Study: Superstudio
reading: "Only Architecture Will Be Our Lives" by Lang and Menking in Superstudio: Life Without Objects.
Week six: An Anarchist Architecture?
Case Study: Anarchitecture
reading: “Towards Anarchitecture: Gordon Matta-Clark and LeCorbusier.” By James Attlee
Week seven: Architecture as science fiction and the aesthetics of Pop
Case Study: Archigram
reading: selections from Archigram (Princeton University Press, 1999)
Week eight: Nomadism and Media
Case Study: The Ant Farm
reading: “Introduction”, “Sex, drugs, rock and roll, cars, dolphins, and architecture” & “Searching for Energy” in Ant Farm 1968–1978 by Constance Lewallen and Steve Seid
Week nine: Cuidad Abierta: An experiment in Chilé
Case Study: Open City Group
reading: “The Valpariso School” by Fernando Perez Oyarzun and “So far yet so near” by Rodrigo Perez de Arce in Valparaiso School: Open City Group By Raúl Rispa
Week ten: Architecture and entertainment
Case Study: Diller + Scofidio
reading: Blur: The Making of Nothing by Diller + Scofidio (selections)
Week eleven: Architect as theorist: the Rem Koolhass effect and the marketing of image
Case study: OMA
reading: "Junk Space" by Rem Koolhass in Content
Week twelve: The marketing of theory
Case study: COOP Himmelb(l)au
reading: Covering+ Exposing: the Architecture of COOP Himmelb(L)au (selections)
Week thirteen: Lifestyle and design interventionism in Denmark
Case study: N55 and Superflex
Student presentations.
Week fourteen: Student presentations.