METROPOLIS

Columbia Univerity GSAPP

Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design
Summer 2012 Thursdays 2:00-6:00 113 Avery Hall
Enrique Walker
COURSE DESCRIPTION

The modern metropoliscauldron of social transformation, technological innovation, and

aesthetic experimentationis inseparable from the equally modern notion of an international
avant-garde. However, in the course of their myriad encounters through the twentieth century,
both categoriesthe metropolis and the avant-gardeshave become virtually unrecognizable. In
their place have emerged new configurations, new challenges, and new possibilities. This course
examines the arguments architecture has formulated forand throughthe city after metropolis.
This is the global city, the financial capital of advanced capitalism. But it is also the city after the
citythe result of massive urbanizations stemming from regional and global migrations, as well as
massive dispersals that trace back to the decades immediately following the Second World War.
The course will scrutinize in detail architectural objects and the debates surrounding them,
positioning these objects within the cities they imagine. In each case, we will trace multiple,
genealogical affiliationsthe alliances it forges, the subjects it conjures, the pasts it constructs, the
futures it projects, the others it excludesand find a decisive realignment of the ways in which
architecture and urbanism operate, as well as multiple opportunities to re-imagine the city
architectures recurring dreamyet again today.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Each student is expected to complete three essays (1,000 words each) on subjects agreed upon
with their section leaders, to attend each lecture and seminar, to complete the assigned readings
in time, as well as to participate in class discussion.
COURSE SCHEDULE

05/31: Session 00: Introduction

06/07: Session 01: Paris
Session 02: New York (1)
06/14: Session 03: Berlin
06/28: Session 04: London
07/05: Session 05: New York (2)
07/12: Session 06: New York (3)
07/19: Session 07: Los Angeles
07/26: Session 08: Tokyo
08/02: Session 09: New York (4)
Session 10: Randstad

SESSION 01: PARIS

Gilles Ivain, Formulary for a New Urbanism, in Situationist International Anthology, edited by Ken
Knabb (Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), 1-4.
Guy Debord, Theory of the Drive, in Situationist International Anthology, edited by Ken Knabb
(Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), 50-54.
Constant Nieuwenhuys, Another City for Another Life, in Mark Wigley, Constants New Babylon:
The Hyper-Architecture of Desire (Rotterdam: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, and
010 Publishers, 1998), 115-116.
Constant Nieuwenhuys, Unitary Urbanism, in Mark Wigley, Constants New Babylon: The HyperArchitecture of Desire (Rotterdam: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, and 010
Publishers, 1998), 131-135.
Bernard Tschumi, The Environmental Trigger, in A Continuing Experiment: Learning and
Teaching at the Architectural Association, edited by James Gowan (London: Architectural
Association, 1975), 89-99.
RECOMMENDED:

Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City, in Henri Lefebvre: Writing on Cities, edited by Eleonore
Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996).

SESSION 02: NEW YORK (1)

Bernard Tschumi, The Pleasure of Architecture, in Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994), 81-96.
Bernard Tschumi, Violence of Architecture, in Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994), 121-138.
Bernard Tschumi, Index of Architecture: Themes from The Manhattan Transcripts, in Bernard
Tschumi, Questions of Space: Lectures on Architecture (London: Architectural Association, 1990),
97-109.
Bernard Tschumi, Spaces and Events, in Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994), 139-149.
Stan Allen, From Object to Field: Field Conditions in Architecture and Urbanism, in Stan Allen,
Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation (Oxford: Routledge, 2009), 216-241.
RECOMMENDED:

Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts (London: Academy Editions, and New York: St.
Martins Press, 1981).

SESSION 03: BERLIN

Alison and Peter Smithson, Cluster City: A New Shape for the Community, in Ordinariness and
Light: Urban Theories 1952-1960 and their Application in a Building Project 1963-1970 (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1970), 128-134.
Shadrach Woods, Web, Le Carr Bleu 3 (1962).
Aldo van Eyck, Steps toward a Configurative Discipline, in Aldo van Eyck: Collected Articles and
Other Writings 1947-1998, edited by Vincent Ligtelijn and Francis Strauven (Amsterdam: SUN,
2008), 327-343.
Alison and Peter Smithson, The As Found and the Found, in The Independent Group: Postwar
Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty, edited by David Robbins (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
1990), 201-202.
Oswald Mathias Ungers, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff, and Artur Ovaska, Cities
within the City: Proposal by the Sommer Akademie for Berlin, Lotus 19 (1978): 82-97.
RECOMMENDED:

Shadrach Woods, The Man in the Street: A Polemic on Urbanism (Harmondsworth and Baltimore,
MD: Penguin Books, 1975).

SESSION 04: LONDON

Peter Cook, Editorial from Archigram 3, in Archigram, edited by Peter Cook, (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 16.
Peter Cook, Zoom and Real Architecture: Editorial from Archigram 4, in Archigram, edited by
Peter Cook, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 27-29.
Cedric Price, Life-Conditioning, in Cedric Price, The Square Book (Chichester: Wiley-Academy,
2003), 19-20.
Cedric Price, ECHOES: Environment Controlled Human Operational Enclosed Spaces, in
Cedric Price, The Square Book (Chichester: Wiley-Academy, 2003), 55.
Reyner Banham, 1960: Stocktaking, in A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham, edited by Mary
Banham et al. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 49-63.
RECOMMENDED:

Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
1980).

SESSION 05: NEW YORK (2)

Peter Eisenman, Notes on Conceptual Architecture: Toward a Definition, in Peter Eisenman,
Inside Out: Selected Writings, 1963-1988 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 10-27.
Peter Eisenman, Cardboard Architecture: House I and House II, in Peter Eisenman, Inside Out:
Selected Writings, 1963-1988 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 28-39.
Peter Eisenman, The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End, in
Peter Eisenman, Inside Out: Selected Writings, 1963-1988 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2004), 152-168.
Peter Eisenman, Misreading Peter Eisenman, in Peter Eisenman, Inside Out: Selected Writings,
1963-1988 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 208-225.
Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, in Re-Reading Perspecta: The First
Fifty Years of the Yale Architectural Journal, edited by Robert A. M. Stern, Peggy Deamer and Alan
Plattus (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004), 161-168.
RECOMMENDED:

Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries (New York: Universe, 1999).

SESSION 06: NEW YORK (3)

Archizoom Associati, No-Stop City: Residential Car Park, Universal Climatic System, in Andrea
Branzi, No-Stop City, Archizoom Associati (Orlans: HYX, 2006), 176-179.
Archizoom Associati, Utopia of Quality, Utopia of Quantity, in Andrea Branzi, No-Stop City,
Archizoom Associati (Orlans: HYX, 2006), 180-182.
Superstudio, Evasion Design and Invention Design, in Peter Lang and William Menking,
Superstudio: Life Without Objects (Milan: Skira, 2003), 116-117.
Superstudio, Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas, in Peter Lang and William Menking,
Superstudio: Life Without Objects (Milan: Skira, 2003), 150-161.
Aldo Rossi, Architecture for Museums, in Aldo Rossi: Selected Writings and Projects, edited by
John ORegan et al. (London: Architectural Design, and Dublin: Gandon Editions, 1983), 15-25.
RECOMMENDED:

Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1982).

SESSION 07: LOS ANGELES

Denise Scott Brown, On Pop Art, Permissiveness and Planning, Journal of the American Institute
of Planners 35 (May 1969): 184-186.
Denise Scott Brown, Learning from Pop, in Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, A View
from the Campidoglio: Selected Essays 1953-1984 (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 26-33.
Robert Venturi, A Definition of Architecture as Shelter with Decoration on It, and Another Plea
for a Symbolism of the Ordinary in Architecture, in Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, A
View from the Campidoglio: Selected Essays 1953-1984 (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 62-67.
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Las Vegas After its Classic Age, in Robert Venturi,
Iconography and Electronics Upon a Generic Architecture: A View from the Drafting Room
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996), 123-128.
Reyner Banham, Four Pieces on Los Angeles (Encounter with Sunset Boulevard, Roadscape
with Rusting Rails, Beverly Hills, Too, Is a Ghetto, The Art of Doing Your Thing,) The Listener
80 (1968), 235-236, 267-268, 296-298, 330-331.
RECOMMENDED:

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour: Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten
Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1977).

SESSION 08: TOKYO

Fumihiko Maki, Investigations in Collective Form, in Fumihiko Maki: Nurturing Dreams, Collected
essays on Architecture and the City, edited by Mark Mulligan (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
2008), 44-56.
Arata Isozaki, Process Planning Theory, in Arata Isozaki, edited by Ken Tadashi Oshima (London
and New York: Phaidon, 2009), 22-27.
Kisho Kurokawa, Capsule Declaration, in Kisho Kurokawa, Metabolism in Architecture (London:
Studio Vista, 1977), 75-85.
Kisho Kurokawa, Meta-Architecture, in Kisho Kurokawa, Metabolism in Architecture (London:
Studio Vista, 1977), 86-91.
Toyo Ito, Architecture in a Simulated City, in Toyo Ito: Works, Projects, Writings, edited by
Andrea Maffei (Milano: Electa Architecture, 2002), 334-336.
RECOMMENDED:

Momoyo Kaijima, Junzo Kuroda and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Made in Tokyo (Tokyo: Kajima Institute
Publishing Co., 2001).

SESSION 09: NEW YORK (4)

Rem Koolhaas, Life in the Metropolis or The Culture of Congestion, in Architecture Theory
since 1968, edited by K. Michael Hays (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 322-330.
Rem Koolhaas, Bigness, or the Problem of Large, in Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S, M, L, XL
(New York: The Monacelli Press, 1995), 494-516.
Rem Koolhaas, The Generic City, in Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S, M, L, XL (New York: The
Monacelli Press, 1995), 1238-1264.
Rem Koolhaas, Junkspace, in The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, edited by Chuihua
Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong (Cologne: Taschen, and Cambridge,
MA: Harvard Design School, 2001), 408-421.
Toyo Ito, Diagram Architecture, El Croquis 77 (1996): 14-24.
RECOMMENDED:

Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York: The
Monacelli Press, 1994).

SESSION 10: RANDSTAD

Rem Koolhaas, Imagining Nothingness, in Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S, M, L, XL (New York:
The Monacelli Press, 1995), 199-202.
Willem Jan Neutelings, De Ringcultuur, in Willem Jan Neutelings, Architect (Rotterdam: Maaskant
Foundation and 010 Publishers, 1991), 34-39.
Winy Maas, Datascapes, in FARMAX: Excursions on Density, edited by Winy Maas and Jacob van
Rijs with Richard Koek (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1998), 98-103.
Stefano Boeri, Eclectic Atlases, in USE: Uncertain States of Europe, edited by Multiplicity (Milano:
Skira, 2003), 428-445.
Stan Allen, The Thick 2-D: Mat-Building in the Contemporary City, in Stan Allen, Practice:
Architecture, Technique and Representation (Oxford: Routledge, 2009), 192-215.
RECOMMENDED:

Rem Koolhaas, Harvard Project on the City, Stefano Boeri, Multiplicity, Sanford Kwinter, Nadia
Tazi, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Mutations (Barcelona: Actar, and Bordeaux: Arc-en-rve centre
d'architecture, 2000).