ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

GRADUATE SCHOOL

HISTORY AND CRITICAL THINKING IN ARCHITECTURE

M.A. DEGREE PROGRAMME

PROGRAMME GUIDE 2015-2016

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CONTENTS

MA Programme Specification 3
Introduction 5
Aims, Objectives and Learning Outcomes 8
Programme Structure 10
Course Hours and Credits 11
Teaching and Learning Strategies 13
Resources 14
Assessment 15
Courses 18
Timetables 19
Course Syllabi 20
Assigned Reading Material / Libraries 48
Bookshops 50

Teaching Staff 51

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1. PROGRAMME SPECIFICATION

Name of programme History and Critical Thinking in Architecture

Academic year 2015/16

Initiated 1994/95 Established MA Histories and Theories programme

2010/11 Programme renamed MA History and Critical Thinking in
Architecture

Present qualification M.A.

Length of programme 12 months

Mode of study Full-time

Entrance requirements Diploma in architecture or

Equivalent first degree

Teaching Staff Marina Lathouri (Programme Director)

[email protected]

Mark Cousins
John Palmesino
Douglas Spencer

Visiting Tutors Tim Benton

Tina di Carlo
Fabrizio Gallanti
Anthony Vidler

GS Administrative Staff Clement Chung [email protected]

The Architectural Association is approved by The Open University as an appropriate organisation to

offer higher education programmes leading to Open University Validated Awards.

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Courses and activities

Assessed courses and activities:

 5 Seminar/Lecture courses, Terms 1 & 2

 Invited Guest Seminar Series, Term 2

 1 Research Seminar, Term 3

 Thesis, Terms 3 & 4

Additional un-assessed seminars and activities:

 Lecture Series with Visiting Tutor, Term 1

 Seminar Series with Visiting Tutor, Terms 1&2
 One-Week Workshop with Visiting Tutor, Term 2
 One-Week Seminar with Visiting Tutor, Term 3

 Evening Lectures, Terms 1, 2 & 3

 Conferences

 Field Trip

Course requirements and assessments

 Completion of 180 credit units over 45 weeks of 40 hours each (1,800 hours of studies)

 Completion of 6 lecture/seminar courses, and completion of course work for each course
(papers of 2,500 - 4,000 words, 2 copies - 1 hard and 1digital - of each to be submitted)

 Completion of research seminar & preparatory papers

 Final Dissertation (12-15,000 words) to be submitted in duplicate at the end of term 4 (16
September 2016) equivalent of 72 credits (40% of total credits)

 All coursework to be double marked and the overall assessment of students’ work to be done by
an examining board of all staff and the External Examiner.

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1.1 INTRODUCTION

The MA History and Critical Thinking is a unique post-graduate platform for engagement with
contemporary architectural knowledge and city cultures through critical enquiry into history – its
modes of writing, conceptual assumptions and methodologies.

Over the past 20 years, the 12-month programme has been continually developed and revised,
positioning itself within current arguments, debates and practices. The boundaries of what might be
regarded as a legitimate object of study are being constantly interrogated and expanded. Rather than
dealing with history, architecture and the city exclusively through buildings and methodological
classifications, the course attempts to transform those into a resource through which processes,
spatial artefacts and built forms could be analysed and better understood.

The programme’s ambition is fourfold: to examine histories of architecture and the ways in which
they were conceived and conceived; to comprehend the history of the discipline primarily through
the written text and the ways in which social, political and cultural aspirations become effective
arguments in the production of particular accounts of architectural and urban modernity; to interpret
the contemporary from a historical, critical and cross-disciplinary point of view; to investigate
technologies of architectural and urban analysis in the context of changing cultural and geo-political
formations in order to produce knowledge that relates to practices and public cultures in architecture.

Writing is essential, both as a tool and practice. Different modes of writing - thesis, essays, reviews,
commentaries and interviews are explored to articulate the various aspects of study. Seminars with
distinguished practitioners from different backgrounds – historians, critics, writers, designers and
curators bring into the course a diversity of perspectives and skills.

The organization of the course around a number of lectures, seminars, workshops, writing sessions
and open debates offers students a range of approaches to expanding and reinterpreting disciplinary
knowledge in a broad historical, political and cultural arena. Collaborations with AA Design Units,
participation in juries and architectural trips and visits enable students to engage with design
speculation as well as particular projects.

Term 1 lectures and seminars focus on the writing of history and the ways in which various
constructs of the past relate to architectural and visual practices. The notion of modernity is
interrogated through a critical re-reading of histories of modernism and the emergence of the
modern field of aesthetics.

Term 2 is concerned with the historical processes of the discipline’s formation in relation to
contemporary architectural and urban thinking, offering the students a range of approaches to
interpret and expand disciplinary knowledge in an historical, cultural and political arena.

The organisation of the year centres on a core of six lecture and seminar courses, Readings of Modernity
(Marina Lathouri), Aesthetics and Architectural History (Mark Cousins), Le Corbusier (1920-1935): Style, the
Zeitgeist and nature (Tim Benton), Architecture Knowledge and Writing (Marina Lathouri), The Subject of
Architecture (Douglas Spencer), The Post-Eurocentric City (John Palmesino) and HCT Debates: Dis-
locutions/Architecture Politics (Marina Lathouri / John Palmesino / Douglas Spencer).

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A seminar series Drawing Matter (Tina di Carlo) in Terms 1 and 2, one-week writing workshop Design
by Words (Fabrizio Gallanti / Marina Lathouri) in Term 2, and one-week theory seminar Architecture in
Words: Seminars on Writing the Visual from Plato to Damisch (Anthony Vidler) in Term 3 will supplement
the regular courses.

At the end of Term 2, students will be expected to propose a thesis topic and produce a brief
example of their own descriptive prose.

The thesis is the most significant component of the students’ work. The choice of topic, the
organisation of research and the development of the central argument are discussed during Term 3
within the Thesis Research Seminar, which may be supplemented by individual tutorials. Central to the
development of the thesis, however, is the collective seminar where students learn about the nature
of a dissertation from the shared experience of the group. At the end of term, the thesis outline and
argument is individually presented to a jury of invited critics.

In order to foster an external and collective pursuit of architectural issues two trips are organised: a
shorter one to Paris at the end of Term 1 to resume the discussions on modernity, modernism and
Le Corbusier, and the annual trip in Term 3 to study specific aspects of a city or an architect’s work
also in relation to the final thesis investigations. In combination with the architectural visits, intense
seminar sessions enable students to discuss aspects of their thesis on a daily basis and solidify their
topic, field and argument. Recent destinations have included Bologna, Ljubljana, Trieste, Marseille,
La Tourette, Porto, Como, Seville, Genoa and Basel.

Term 4 is devoted to the individual work needed to finalize the 15,000-word thesis to be submitted
in September. A final presentation of the thesis after the submission in September to internal and
external critics as well as the new students is to provide a formal conclusion and celebration of the
work of the year and an inspiring introduction to the newcomers.

A common concern of the different courses is the relations of theoretical debates to specific projects
and practices – visual, spatial, architectural, in order to develop a critical view of the arguments put
into the design and the knowledge produced through its mechanisms and effects. To this aim, joint
events with Diploma Units, participation in design reviews and architectural visits are regularly
organised. Ventures have included joint events with Graduate design courses and regular
collaborations with Diploma Units 4 and 10 which brought HCT and design students together to
discuss current debates in architecture as well as the units’ investigations. The HCT students also act
as critics in design juries and comment on current design production in AA publications (AA News-
Letter, AA Project Reviews).

The course’s staff members come from a variety of backgrounds. They are involved in a wide range
of academic, professional and research activities at the AA and elsewhere. Their combined teaching
experience, research, publications and professional activities are a core asset of the programme,
enabling the programme to compete successfully in an international context with other world-class
programmes. It draws upon that international context to provide the MA students with visiting
lecturers and seminars that provide, both at the level of the school and of the programme, a
continuous input of innovative and challenging material. Recent visiting lecturers include Stan Allen,
Ali Ansari, Shumon Basar, Mario Carpo, David Crowley, David Cunningham, Cynthia Davidson,
Keller Easterling, Adrian Forty, David Knight, Massimiliano Molona, Louis Moreno, Siri Nergaard,
Benjamin Noys, Sam Jacob, Francesco Jodice, Manuel Orazi, Alessandra Ponte, Michelangelo
Sabatino, Michael Sheringham, Anthony Vidler and Sarah Whiting.

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The course recruits a wide range of students. Not all of them are trained architects, and some come
from the humanities and social sciences, having developed a particular interest in issues of space,
architectural and urban debates.

The question of professional training underlies all of the courses and activities. Students might be
using the programme as a necessary step towards doctoral research, as a way to reorient their
professional development from the practice of architecture into other fields such as museum and
gallery work, journalism, or other architecture- and art-related fields, or become involved in teaching
in the field of architectural history, theory and criticism. Every year a small number of graduates
depending on academic excellence and ability act as seminar tutors for the History and Theory
Studies in the Undergraduate School. This provides HCT graduates with teaching experience in the
vibrant environment of the AA.

At last, the HCT programme also provides research facilities and supervision with the assistance of
specialist advisers to research degree candidates (MPhil and PhD) registered under the AA’s joint
PhD programme, a cross-disciplinary initiative supported by all the Graduate programmes.

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1.2 AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

Two are the primary objectives of the History and Critical Thinking in Architecture programme. The
one is to contribute to a deep understanding, both in theoretical and historical terms, of
contemporary architecture knowledge and culture – its arguments, debates and practices. The second
objective is to help the students experiment and engage with methods and tools of analysis, forms of
research and modes of writing. The academic year is therefore organised around seminars, lectures,
debates, events and writing assignments. The programme aims to provide students with skills that are
architecturally interpretative, historically and politically situated, and culturally relational.

A/ Knowledge and Understanding

On successful completion of the MA in History & Critical Thinking students should be able to:

A1 demonstrate knowledge of modern and contemporary architecture in its built form, but also
its projects, arguments and debates;
A2 demonstrate critical understanding of the discourses on modernism, modernity and the
contemporary; how these discourses have been constructed and variously interpreted;
A3 demonstrate knowledge of other intellectual discourses and cultural arenas that have had a
major impact upon architectural theories and practices;
A4 demonstrate critical capacity to analyse and describe buildings, systems of architectural
representation and cities;
A5 read and analyse texts in order to assess their relation to architecture, design and the city;
A6 relate cultural objectives to forms of architectural practice and design speculation, to connect
built – architectural and urban - form with a wider cultural and political context;

B/ Subject Specific Skills and Attributes

On successful completion of the MA in History & Critical Thinking students should be able to:

B1 read critically in order to evaluate complex arguments and theories as well as their relation to
design practices;
B2 present conclusions and interpretations about that reading in an informative and well-
organized oral presentation;
B3 undertake independent research with minimum guidance;
B4 write a well-structured essay that shows evidence of independent research, makes an
argument clearly and effectively, presents original ideas and conclusions, and uses standard
style for referencing;

C/ Transferable Skills and Attributes

On successful completion of the MA in History & Critical Thinking students should be able to:

C1 use their analytical skills to contribute to the formulation of critical thinking

C2 undertake research activities and engage in their dissemination through writing, teaching,
editing and publishing

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Curriculum Map

This table indicates which study units are responsible for delivering (shaded) and assessing
(X) particular learning outcomes

A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 B1 B2 B3 B4 C1 C2

Aesthetics and
Architectural
History – Term 1 X X X X X

Readings of
Modernity
– Term 1 X X X X X X X X X

Architecture
Knowledge and
Writing – Term 2 X X X X X X X X X

The Subject of
Architecture
– Term 2 X X X X X X X X X

Post-Eurocentric
City - Term 2
X X X X X X

Dis-locutions:
Architecture
Politics – Term 2 X X X X X

Research Seminar
Final Dissertation
– Terms 3&4 X X X X X X X X X X X X

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1.3 PROGRAMME STRUCTURE

The programme combines lectures and seminars together with special events, such as workshops,
debates, evening lectures, conferences, architectural visits and field trips. The core of the M.A.
consists in the lecture and seminar courses, which are specifically designed to provide the students
with a deep understanding of the overall field of the programme. However, students may audit
courses in the other programmes of the Graduate School or the Diploma School History and Theory
Studies with the director’s agreement and if the selected course is to assist the student’s study of a
particular topic and contribute to the student’s field of interest.

Students’ work is supervised through a combination of intensive writing seminars with presentations
in class, regular individual tutorials as well as the thesis seminar. All function to develop the students’
analytical skills and expression and to assist them with the identification of their research topics for
assessed work in the form of a paper.

The thesis is the largest and most significant component of students’ work within the overall MA
structure. The choice of topic, the organisation of research and the development of the central
argument are all organised within the Thesis Research Seminar, which takes place in Term 3. This may
be supplemented by individual tutorials, but central to the development of the thesis is the collective
seminar. From the point of view of the individual student, this has the advantage of receiving not
only the comments and suggestions of an individual tutor, but those of the student’s peers in a
collective setting. From the point of view of the other students, the seminar provides a means not
only of developing their own thesis, but also of experiencing the development, difficulties, and
solutions of all the other students. In this way, students are provided with an invaluable tool in
learning about the nature of a dissertation from the shared experiences of the group.

At the end of Term 3 the thesis outline is individually presented to a jury of invited guests. In Term 4
the students are asked to develop their thesis independently.

The duration of the MA Programme encompasses a twelve month calendar year, beginning at the
end of September and ending with the submission and presentation of the thesis in the following
September. The year is divided into 4 terms of 10-12 weeks each, in which a total of 1800 learning
hours are distributed over 45 weeks, resulting in an average of 40 hours per week. Most of the course
teaching takes place in the first two terms, 6 courses are to be taken over Terms 1 and 2 each
weighted with 18 credits. This coursework accounts for 108 out of the 180 credits given, while the
Thesis Research Seminar in Term 3 and the thesis for 72 credits.

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 1.4 COURSE HOURS AND CREDITS

WEEK IN COURSE CREDITS BREAKDOWN OF HOURS % AWARD

TERM DESCRIPTION

TERM 1
Lectures/Seminars
1-10 Tutorials
Readings
18 Research & Essay 10%
of Modernity

Lathouri
Lectures
1-10 Aesthetics and Tutorials
Architectural History 18 Research & Essay 10%

Cousins

SUB 36 360 20%

TOTAL
To be
completed

TERM 2

2-10 Architecture Knowledge Lectures/Seminars

18 Tutorials 10%
and Writing
Research & Short Essays
Lathouri

Lectures/Seminars
The Subject of
2-10 18 Tutorials 10%
Architecture
Research & Essay
Spencer
The Post-Eurocentric Lectures/Seminars
2-10 City 18 Tutorials 10%
Research & Essay
Palmesino
Dis-locutions: Lectures/Seminars
2-10 Architecture Politics 18 10%
Interview
Lathouri / Palmesino /
Spencer

SUB 72 720 40%

TOTAL
To be
completed

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TERM 3

Thesis Research Seminars

1-10 Seminar 18 Tutorials 10%
Research & Writing
Lathouri + Presentations
HCT Staff

Field Trip 0

SUB
TOTAL 18 180 10%

TERM 4
Thesis:
1-10 Thesis 54 Tutorials 30%
Research &
Writing

SUB 54 540 30%

TOTAL

180 1800 100%

TOTAL

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1.5 TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES

The courses are designed to equip students with the essential knowledge and analytical and critical
tools they will need when they embark upon the dissertation in the Terms 3 and 4. These courses
provide lectures and seminars where students are required to make individual presentations and to
engage in discussion. On the basis of previous experience, we have learned that these courses must
make definite and individual demands of the students and this is reflected in the teaching practice, in
the tasks required, and in the assessment procedures. Students are expected to cover the required
reading given by the course outlines as a minimum. Each presentation and written work must relate
to a course topic and the scope must be agreed with the course tutor.

Towards the end of Term 2, students will be nearing the point when all the course materials will have
been presented to them, and this will be the appropriate moment for them to begin to discuss--both
in a seminar and in individual tutorials--a possible range of issues, which they might choose from to
formulate their thesis topic. Every effort is made to respond to the individual student’s interest. But
it is also the task of tutors to help the student to transform her or his topic into a project that falls
within the broad objectives of the course. On occasion, this will result in a student having to change
her or his mind about the topic of the thesis, but as long as adequate time is left to deal with this
possibility, this experience of finding a topic which can successfully be treated in a recognisably
architectural fashion, rather than according to the discourse of some other discipline, can be itself
valuable for the student.

The progress of the students over the year will be formally monitored through the assessment of
their presentations and written work, as described in the section on assessment. Students will have
regular tutorials with tutors. One permanent item on the agenda of a tutorial is a discussion of the
student perception of the course and the student perception of her/his own progress. This is also an
issue where the informal and community character of the AA as a whole, and the expectation of
participation in events throughout the school, inevitably produces a strong sense of how a student is
adapting to the MA as a whole. In addition to this informal but invaluable background, student
feedback is formally sought at the end of each term. Many of the changes in the structure, content
and organisation of the course have been adopted as a response to student’s requests and critical
reflections.

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2. RESOURCES

Students have access to all of the AA school’s facilities. Introductions are given at the beginning of
the year. This is an arena where, in order to understand what is offered to students on the MA
programme, one has to view the school as a whole. The major limitation on what is offered to
students is the limitation imposed by their timetable and by their need to concentrate on their own
work. Time permitting, many of the School’s activities are open to them – lectures, workshops,
performances, juries, public discussions, etc. We actively encourage students to join fully in the life of
the community, balancing this only with their need to plan and timetable their own work. But this
dimension of the life of the student is very important and part of their experience of the year.

Libraries: All new AA students are introduced to the School’s Main Library on AA Introduction
week. In terms of library resources for their coursework, the AA library holds the material indicated
in course bibliographies in a special reserved section of the library shelving. Library staff ensures that
items in the Programme’s reading lists are available in the library and can be viewed on the library’s
web site pages at www.aaschool.ac.uk/library. The library also stores reference copies of earlier MA,
MPhil and PhD dissertations. In addition to the books carried on open shelving and available on
loan, the library holds a full range of architectural periodicals and magazines as well as a range of
reference books. Students can make on-line searches of catalogues of other institutions.

The AA has the inestimable advantage of being within walking distance of the British Library. All
MA students are required to register at the British Library. It becomes of particular value when our
students begin their research for their thesis. The library at RIBA is itself within walking distance, and
taken together with its print collection constitutes a major resource, as do the print departments of
the British Museum and the resources offered by the London Museum. It is possible, for a small fee,
for students to become full borrowing members, of Senate House Library and the private
subscription library, the London Library. Students, depending upon the areas they are specialising in,
have been much helped by the libraries of SOAS and of the Warburg Institute.

Computing: The AA Computer Department offers introduction, assistance and access to both
Macintosh and Windows machines. Students will be provided with an e-mail account and access to
the Internet. Facilities for scanning and printing are also available.

Photo Library and Digital Photo Studio: The AA possesses a unique and very extensive photo
collection, which students not only can, but also must be encouraged to use. It sets the way in which
students learn to make productive use of architectural images in the presentation of their work. In
addition students are able to make full use of the photographic studio. These two facilities combined
with the computing facilities have and will continue to rapidly transform the student relation to
images in their own presentations and in their thesis.

Workspace: For seminars, meetings, group tutorials or group work, a room will be booked for two
full days a week.

AA Workshop: The School has excellent in house workshop facilities for wood and metal
constructions, a model workshop and the digital prototyping lab. The large residential workshops at
Hooke Park in Dorset offer additional opportunities to produce experimental structures. Students
wishing to use the AA workshops must follow a detailed introductory training session on the first
week of the academic year.

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3. ASSESSMENT

Master’s students are continuously assessed on the basis of presentations, written submissions and
the final dissertation. All assessments are individual. It should be underlined that the course requires
attendance at lectures, seminars and other events offered by the programme. Non-attendance at
courses is dealt initially by requiring an explanation from the student and any sign of systematic
absenteeism is referred to the Director of the Programme. Absence for reasons of illness, family
crisis etc. must be communicated to the Graduate Office.

Written submissions and the composition of the dissertation is not only assessed in the manner
described below, but is monitored pedagogically in tutorials with the teaching staff and through the
teacher’s review and peer review in class presentations. Following any assessment, students will be
given written feedback, which considers the qualities mentioned below (see assessment criteria) in
relation to the learning objectives of the individual courses, and verbal advice. Borderline students
may be advised to resubmit the work requirement and given specific advice as to how to improve the
work.

All written submissions (to be submitted in 2 copies) are double marked, primarily by the course’s
tutor and a member of the programme’s teaching staff. The programme’s External Examiner whose
role includes insuring fair marking and the maintenance of appropriate academic standards also
reviews student assessment. In the case of the dissertation, the External Examiner reviews a
representative sample of dissertations (for example - 2 from the high range, 2 from the middle, 2
from the low) that have been submitted by students in the year they are examined as well as any
resubmitted dissertations. The External Examiner also reviews a representative sample of written
submissions, together with their marks and assessment reports.

The External Examiner will be given adequate time (at least three weeks) in which to review the
material before the meeting of the programme’s final examination board. That board is composed of
the External Examiner and regular members of the teaching staff, assisted by the Graduate School’s
administrative co-ordinator. To the board falls the responsibility for the validation of the marks of
submitted work and of the dissertation. It decides upon how to recommend pass, failure or
distinction for each student. The board and its External Examiner report its decisions to the AA
Graduate Management Committee. This in turn reports to The Open University. Notification of
results is transmitted to students by the Registrar’s Office acting through the Graduate School co-
ordinator.

Assessment criteria:

 An attempt to bring a critical and innovative perspective to the problem at hand

 Evidence of a clear understanding in the formulation and analysis of the problem addressed by
the written submission
 A recognition of the context of the problem and issues raised by the topic
 The application of critical faculties and the capacity to represent the views of various authors
 The construction of a clear argument which establishes and develops the students point of view
in respect to the problem
 A capacity to apply knowledge gained within the context of the MA to the issue in question
 An appropriate acknowledgement and referencing of sources of information
 Clarity of technical presentation, including illustrations, plans etc.

The marking of course work is on a scale of 0-100% with a pass mark of 49% and grading as shown
on the next page.

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GRADUATE SCHOOL MARKING SCALE

PERCENTAGE GRADE CLASSIFICATION

70% and above A Distinction

65%-69% B+ High Pass

60%-64% B Good Pass

C+ Satisfactory Pass
57%-59%

54%-56% C Adequate pass

50%-53% D Low Pass

49% and below F Fail

16
The marks given by each of the two internal assessors are averaged to give the overall mark for each
course submission. Where the result of the assessment calculation creates a mark of 0.5% or greater,
this will be rounded up to the next full percentage point. Where the calculation creates a mark below
0.5% this will be rounded down to the next full percentage point. A course work average mark is
then calculated based on the credit rating of each submitted item relating to the assessed tasks of
Terms 1 and 2. Two internal assessors mark the dissertation also separately. To qualify for the MA,
students must reach the 50% threshold on both the course work average, and on the dissertation
average mark. An overall final mark is then calculated as the weighted average of course work and
dissertation. Any large difference (of 10 or more points) in the marking of the two assessors is raised
for discussion at the Examination Board meeting.

Marks are important in the following way:

 The MA degree is awarded a distinction when the overall final mark is 70% or higher. Other
grading is registered in the Graduate School’s database and is available on transcripts but do not
appear on certificates.
 Students who fail to attain a pass mark on one or more items of course work will be asked to
resubmit. Resubmissions will be subjected to grade capping at 50%. Students failing to pass will
be disqualified.
 Failure to submit an item of course work is not admissible even if the combined mark of the
remaining items were to exceed 50%.
 In cases where there are no accepted mitigating circumstances and where coursework is
submitted late, marks will be deduced. Any element of assessed work submitted up to seven days
after the deadline will be marked and 10 marks (on a scale of 100) will be deducted for that
element, for each calendar day of lateness incurred. Any piece of work submitted 7 or more days
after the deadline will not be assessed and assigned a mark of 0, unless the student submits
personal circumstances and these are accepted by the Director of the programme.
 Students who have passed their course work but fail to attain an average of 50% for their
dissertation will normally be given a limited period of time in which to submit a revised
dissertation. This will be assessed by two assessors and reviewed by the External Examiner and
Examination Board of the immediately following academic year. Resubmission is allowed once
only. Resubmitted dissertations are assessed with no limit on the marking. Resubmission assessed
as ‘Fail’ by the Examination board will lead to disqualification from the degree.

Final assessment of students’ work is made by a Board of Examiners, which includes the Programme
Staff and an approved External Examiner. The Programme proposes the External Examiner first to
the GMC for confirmation, and then, final approval is sought from The Open University in
accordance with their procedures. The External Examiner is briefed by the Programme Staff in
advance, and sent copies of the Programme Brief, together with the Aims of the Programme and the
intended learning outcomes of Seminars and Lecture Series. The External Examiner is often present
at the Jury Presentation of the thesis. Following the meeting of the Examining Board, the External
Examiner is required to submit a Written Report to the GMC in accordance with The Open
University procedures. When all the above procedures have been satisfactorily undertaken, the GMC
will request The Open University to issue the awards.

17
4. COURSES

TERM 1

Readings of Modernity Marina Lathouri

Aesthetics and Architectural History Mark Cousins

Le Corbusier (1920-1935): Style, the Zeitgeist and nature Tim Benton

Drawing Matter (Seminar series) Tina di Carlo

TERM 2

Architecture Knowledge and Writing Marina Lathouri

The Subject of Architecture Douglas Spencer

The Post-Eurocentric City John Palmesino

Dis-locutions, Architecture Politics (Open Debates) Lathouri/ Palmesino/ Spencer

Drawing Matter (Seminar series) Tina di Carlo

Design by Words (Writing workshop) Lathouri / Fabrizio Gallanti

TERM 3

Thesis Research Seminar Marina Lathouri/HCT Staff

Architecture in words: writing the visual from Plato to Anthony Vidler

Damisch (Seminar Series)

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 5. TIMETABLES

WEEKLY SCHEDULE: TERM 1 (2015 - 2016)

MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

10:00- Readings of Le Corbusier (1920-
1:00 Modernity 1935): Style, the
Zeitgeist and nature
Marina Lathouri
Tim Benton

2:00-
4:00 Aesthetics and
History

Mark Cousins

WEEKLY SCHEDULE: TERM 2 (2015 - 2016)

MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

10:00-
1:00 The Subject of Architecture
Architecture Knowledge and
Writing
Douglas Spencer
Marina Lathouri
1:00- HCT Debates
3:30
Dis-locutions:
Architecture Politics

Marina Lathouri /
John Palmesino /
Douglas Spencer

2:00- The
5:00 Post-Eurocentric
city

John Palmesino

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6. COURSE SYLLABI

TERM 1

The lectures, seminars, writing workshop and public talks in Term 1 have the following objectives: to
help students reflect upon and challenge practices of historiography; to develop a deep understanding
of the ideological, political and aesthetic issues inherent to the notion of modernity; to interrogate
conceptual assumptions that dominated modern architectural histories and the modern field of
aesthetics; to start exploring writing as a practice to think and articulate ideas and arguments.

READINGS OF MODERNITY
Marina Lathouri

Credit Weighting: 18 credits, 10%

Course description & aim:

Through a detailed examination of modes of architectural writing - manifesto, historical narrative,

canon, typological analysis, critical essay and theoretical speculation, this seminar series examines the
role key texts played during the first half of the twentieth century in the construction and subsequent
critique of the early histories of modern architecture and the city. The course interrogates an
identifiably vocabulary and discourse that was carefully crafted and propagated but came to be
dismantled in the years immediately prior to 1968.

The ways in which social and political aspirations became effective arguments in the production of
particular accounts of architectural and urban modernity and the interaction of these accounts with
visual and material practices will be of particular interest to our discussions. The texts register and
articulate formal and functional considerations, economic and ideological constraints, material
technologies and cultural products. Through their very discrete languages, they create a particular
reality of their own, which projects a way of seeing and thinking the building and the city and evokes
aesthetic norms and distinct topographies.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the course students are expected to be able to do the following:

 Demonstrate a critical understanding of the various, and often conflicting, ways in which the
history of modernism came to be constructed in the period between the 1920s and 1968.
 Link these developments in historiography to wider social and political currents.
 Read critically in order to evaluate complex arguments and theories.
 Present conclusions and interpretations about that reading in an informative and well-organized
oral presentation.
 Write a well-structured essay that shows evidence of independent research, makes an argument
clearly and effectively, presents original ideas and conclusions, and uses standard style for
referencing.

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Assessment criteria:

Assessment is based on a 4000-word essay on a subject related to the issues covered in the course,
which is evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:

 Evidence of research and close reading of appropriate sources.

 The capacity to represent the information contained in those sources and the views of various
authors.
 The application of critical faculties to the presentation of these works or texts as evidenced by a
critical and analytical assessment of varied and possibly conflicting arguments or points of view.
 A clear and definite structure of argument, which establishes and elaborates the student’s own
ideas, opinions, and conclusions.
 Recognition of the larger context of the problem and wider issues raised by the topic.
 Clear formulation of the question addressed in the written submission.
 Appropriate acknowledgement and referencing of sources of information.
 Clarity of formal presentation, including illustrations, graphic or visual materials.

Timetable:

Oct 7 Modernity, modern and modernism

In the first session, terms, concepts and historiographical categories, which are
used by architects and critics to characterise historical processes and practices, are
introduced and discussed in the context of the various arguments.

Oct 14 Manifesto
Antonio Sant’ Elia, Manifesto of Futurist Architecture
Le Corbusier, Towards an Architecture

Oct 21 Historical narratives

Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete
Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition
Emil Kaufmann, Architecture in the Age of Reason

Oct 28 Architectural canon

Henry Russell-Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style
Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design

Nov 11 The plenitude of form

Colin Rowe, The Mathematics of the ideal Villa
Colin Rowe and Slutzky, Transparency, Phenomenal and Literal

Nov 18 ‘A Critic Writes’: from design to theory

Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age
Concrete Atlantis
Scenes in America deserta

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Nov 25 Signs and Types
Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
Aldo Rossi, Architecture of the City

Dec 02 Theory and Criticism

Manfredo Tafuri, Theories and History of Architecture

Bibliography

Architectural Design. AD Profile: 35. On the methodology of architectural history, vol.51, no.6/7, 1981

Banham, Reyner. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1980
Concrete Atlantis: US Industrial building and European modern architecture 1900-1925. The
MIT Press, 1986
Scenes in America deserta. Thames and Hudson, 1982
A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1996

Behne, Adolf. Modern functional Building, Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the
Humanities, 1996

Behne, Adolf. “Art, Kraft, Technology.” In Figures of Architecture and Thought: German Architecture
Culture, 1881-1920 by Francesco Dal Co. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1990

Conrads, Ulrich. Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994

Giedion, Sigfried. Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete. The Getty Center, 1995
Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition. (1941) 5th ed. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1982
The Eternal Present. Oxford University Press, 1962-64

Hays K. Michael, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject: The Architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig
Hilberseimer. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1995.

Hays, K. Michael, “Reproduction and Negation: the Cognitive Project of the Avant-Garde,” In
Architectureproduction. Edited by Beatriz Colomina. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press,
1988.

Heyden, Hilde. Architecture and Modernity: A Critique. The MIT Press, 1999

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell and Johnson, Philip. The International Style. (1932) New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 1995

The International Style: Exhibition 15 and the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Rizzoli and Columbia
Books of Architecture, 1992

Kaufmann, Emil. Architecture in the Age of Reason, Harvard University Press, 1955

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Kaufmann Emil, “Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Inaugurator of a New Architectural System,” in: Journal of
the American Society of Architectural Historians, no.3, July 1943, p.13

Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture. New York: Dover, 1986

Precisions on the present state of architecture and city planning. MIT Press, 1991
Le poeme de l’angle droit. Bilingual Edition, 2012

Pevsner, Nikolaus. Pioneers of Modern Design from William Morris to Walter Gropius. Penguin Books, 1960

Pevsner Nikolaus, Pevsner on art and architecture: the radio lectures, Methuen Publishing, 2002

Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City. The MIT Press, 1982

Rowe, C. The Mathematics of the ideal Villa and Other Essays, The MIT Press, 1976
Rowe, C. and Slutzky. R. Transparency, Phenomenal and Literal. Birkhauser Publications, Basel 1997

Tafuri, Manfredo. Theories and History of Architecture. New York: Harper and Row, 1979
Architecture and Utopia. MIT Press, 1976

Tournikiotis, Panayotis. The Historiography of Modern Architecture. The MIT Press, 1999

Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art,
1966. 2nd, revised edition, 1977

Vidler, Anthony. Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism. The MIT Press, 2008

Supplementary literature

Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity, Polity 2000

Beck, Ulrich, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage Publications 1992

Benton, Tim, Modernist Home, London: V+A Publications, 2006

Bürger, Peter, Theory of the Avant-Garde. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Cacciari, Massimo. Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture. Yale University
Press, 1993

Colquhoun, Alan. Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 1980-1987. MIT Press, 1989

Forty, Adrian. Words and Buildings: a vocabulary of Modern Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000

Harvey, David. The Conditions of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991

Hays K. Michael, “Diagramming the New World, or Hannes Meyer’s “Scientization” of

Architecture,” In The Architecture of Science. Edited by Peter Galison and Emily Thompson.
Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1999.

Jameson, Frederic, A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present, London: Verso 2002

Mertins, Detlef. Modernity Unbound. London: AA Publications, 2011

23
Touraine Alain, Critique of Modernity, Blackwell 1995
Aesthetics and Architectural History
Mark Cousins

Credit Weighting: 18 credits, 10%

Course description & aim:

This course provides an account of the intellectual bases of architectural theories within a modern
field of aesthetics, a discourse, which arises in the C18th. It follows this with an analysis of how this
aesthetics sits uncomfortably in relation to the development of architectural and art history in the
C19th. It explains how this tension anticipates theoretical problems of modernism.

Architectural education and discussion is dominated by the problem of design. Aesthetics is

frequently dismissed as a philosophical irrelevance to the nature of design. Aesthetics is
misunderstood as an attempt to impose norms of beauty, etc. In fact, since Kant aesthetics has been
attempting in different ways to address the question of the subjective response to art and
architecture. The course will cover the issues involved in this transformation in modernity.
The course starts by placing this issue in the context of philosophies of art in Antiquity and in the
Renaissance. It follows the rise in the transformation of taste in the eighteenth century and its
culmination of a subjective aesthetics in Kant’s Critique of Judgement. It follows the fate of Kant’s work
through Hegel, to Clement Greenberg, and pays particular attention to the construction of
architectural history as a discipline. It concludes with contemporary work on the nature of the art and
architectural object in the work of Derrida’s The Truth in Painting and in the work of Jean Luc Nancy.

The course concludes by questioning some of the categories, which art criticism has long adopted
and which now may be coming to a close because of the rise of the digital. This includes the
distinction between original and copy. It will consider in some detail the case of the digital
fabrication of Veronese’s Wedding at Cana at San Giorgio in Venice.

The course will be delivered by a weekly lecture and seminar. Students are expected to find an essay
topic as soon as possible and to develop it in personal tutorials. By the end of the term, students are
expected to have an outline of the essay, which should then be turned into an essay to be completed
by the beginning of the second term.

Learning Outcomes:

 to be clear about the status, nature and limits of aesthetics in general

 to be able to relate aesthetics to the issue of form
 to understand the issues of the effects of a work of art as distinct from its meaning

Assessment criteria:

Assessment is based on a 4000-word essay on a subject related to the issues examined in the course,
which is evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:

24
 evidence of a clear understanding in the formulation and analysis of the problem addressed by
the written submission
 the construction of a clear argument which establishes and develops the students point of view
in respect to the problem
 the application of critical faculties and the capacity to represent the views of other authors
 a clear and definite structure of argument
 an appropriate acknowledgement and referencing of sources of information
 a recognition of the context of the problem and issues raised by the topic
 an attempt to bring creativity or innovation to the work

Timetable:

Oct 7 Antiquity and the Renaissance

An introduction to Greek, Roman and Early Christian thoughts concerning beauty
and its relation to the Fine Arts, especially Architecture.

Oct 14 Taste and the C18th

With the Enlightenment, theories of architecture take a subjective turn. This
change is charted through the rise of the category of taste, especially the work of
Edmund Burke.

Oct 21 Kant and Aesthetics

The inauguration of modernity is marked in this field by the work of Kant and his
development of a distinctively modern aesthetics in the Critique of Judgement.

Oct 28 The Sublime

The definition of Aesthetics as a type of subjective response opens up the
possibility of extending a range of aesthetic values beyond that of beauty. This
lecture presents Kant’s influential account of the Sublime.

Nov 11 Hegel
Although Hegel recognised the significance of Kant’s Critique, he opposed it by
appealing to a historical logic of Art. The lecture traces the tension between them,
which, in the C19th, becomes central to arguments in the emergence of art and
architectural history.

Nov 18 Wölfflin and Architectural History

An introduction to the work of the architectural historian Heinrich Wölfflin
concentrating upon his dissertation which attempts to extend Kant’s notion of the
subject of aesthetics to a relation between architecture and the body

Nov 25 Greenberg’s Modernism

An analysis of Greenberg’s text in New Laocoon which combines a Kantian
approach to the historical problem of the change in forms. It is also an influential
text in the idea of the artistic avant-garde and the direction it should take.

Dec 02 Original and Copy

An analysis of Walter Benjamin’s argument concerning the original and its aura.

25
 This leads to a general consideration of the role of media and concludes with the
implications of the digital as in the fabrication of Veronese’s Wedding at Cana.

Dec 09 Essays Discussion / Tutorials

Bibliography

Alberti: On the Art of Building

G. Bataille: ‘The Formless’ in Visions of Excess

E. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

T. de Duve: Kant after Duchamp

J. Derrida. The Truth in Painting

C. Greenberg : Collected Essays Vol.1

G.W.F Hegel: Lectures on the Fine Arts

V. Hugo: Notre-Dame de Paris

D. Hollier : Against Architecture

I. Kant: Critique of Judgment

R.E. Krauss & Y-A. Bois: Formless: A User’s Guide

H.F. Malgrave & E. Ikonomou: Empathy, Form and Space

R. Wittkower: Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism

H. Wölfflin. The Renaissance and Baroque

In addition to the above literature, students may need some introductory guide to some the topics
and authors. I would not usually recommend a reference book, but the library has a copy of the
multi-volume Cambridge Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, its entries are usually reliable and clear, and contain
guides to further reading. They can help someone who is new to a field to gain an initial sense of the
issues. But I should stress that it only serves as an introductory map of important issues. It must not
substitute for further reading or serve as a basis for written work.

26
Style, the Zeitgeist and Nature
Tim Benton

Course description & aim:

This course asks you to think about some of the taboos of modern architectural history and criticism.
Modern architects of the ‘heroic’ period (1921-1939) refused to consider that they were creating a
style. Their productions, instead, were rational solutions to social, technical and aesthetic problems.
But they did create a number of recognisable styles, recognised by the ‘International Style’ exhibition
at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York in 1932. The origins, transmission and decline of styles
was a central issue for the early art historians and it is time to go over this ground again.
From the Arts and Crafts period onwards, recourse to nature was seen as a means of avoiding
stylistic imitation. Le Corbusier, trained in the Arts and Crafts philosophy and practice, increasingly
turned to nature for inspiration during the 1920s and 1930s.

The modus operandi of the seminar will be that students will be asked to prepare for each class with
short readings and case studies, which I will allocate. Part of each session will be devoted to debating
these texts and case studies. The end product will be a presentation, which students will make, in the
course of which one will consider a taboo or contradiction in Modernist thinking and attempt to
both explain and criticise it.

For the first session, students are expected to have looked again at an edition of Vers une architecture
(in the original French or one of the English translations) and also at the first two chapters of my
book on Le Corbusier’s lectures.

Timetable: Oct 15 / Oct 29 / Nov 12 / Nov 26

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Seminar 1 The ‘Zeitgeist’ argument (Eyes that do not see)
In the Hegelian idealist tradition, there is a ‘spirit of the age’, which drives creative
thinkers and makers in certain directions. An argument used constantly in defence
of modern architecture in the 1920s was that the world had been transformed by
an industrial revolution, which had radically altered people’s relationship to each
other, to the workplace and to the city. This ‘machinist era’ demanded a completely
new approach to architecture. Le Corbusier and Ozenfant illustrated this theory in
their articles in L’Esprit Nouveau magazine and in the book Vers une architecture,
1923. Many other German, Dutch and Russian architects deployed a similar
argument. In this session, we will review these arguments, consider their
contradictions and look at some of the ambiguous results produced.

Reading
Le Corbusier, J.-L. Cohen and J. Goodman (2007). Toward an architecture. Los
Angeles, Calif., Getty Research Institute, including the introduction by Jean-Louis
Cohen.(or an edition of Towards a new architecture, 1928)
Benton, T. and Le Corbusier (2009). The rhetoric of modernism: Le Corbusier as a lecturer.
Basel, Switzerland, Boston: Birkhäuser.

Seminar 2 Architecture without style: From Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier’s L'Art
décoratif d'aujourd'hui to the 5 Points
The counter argument to searching for the roots of a new style in modern
conditions was constructed by Adolf Loos in a series of articles. He argued that
whenever artists, designers or architects tried to create a new style, they created
monstrosities. Only the professional craftsman works in the style of today, because
he or she adapts imperceptibly to material and spiritual conditions to make things,
which are appropriate. A number of other writers consequently became interested
in ‘anonymous design’, which was taken up by Siegfried Giedion. Le Corbusier was
influenced by these arguments in the 1920s, and especially in the run-up to the
Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925. His book L’Art
décoratif d’aujourd’hui is a textbook argument against any attempt to create a style.
Giedion’s influential book Bauen in Frankreich attempted to articulate a new way of
looking at space and structure which could also sidestep the issue of style but
which in turn rested on the theory of the Zeitgeist.

Reading
Adolf Loos, ‘Architecture’ and other essays, in Loos, A., A. Opel and D. Opel
(2002). On architecture. Riverside, Calif., Ariadne Press.
Or, in Benton, T., C. Benton, D. Sharp and Open University. (1975). Form and
function : a source book for the History of architecture and design 1890-1939. London,
Crosby Lockwood Staples.
Le Corbusier (1987). The decorative art of today. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
Giedion, S. (1995). Building in France, building in iron, building in ferroconcrete / Sigfried
Giedion; introduction by Sokratis Georgiadis ; translation by J. Duncan Berry.

28
Seminar 3 ‘If I had to teach you architecture’: teaching architecture without styles
Nonetheless, by 1927, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret had created a style, which
they codified under the ‘Five points for a New Architecture’. Two years later, they
had ditched the five points, abandoning the language of the Purist villa – pilotis,
long window, free plan, free façade and roof garden - for a new set of ideas. Le
Corbusier’s lecture series in South America, published in the book Précisions (1930),
drew together his thinking on architecture to date. Influenced by his increasing
interest in vernacular building he suggested how architecture might be taught. This
session focuses on the sources of a possible astylar modern architecture in
vernacular architecture.

Reading:
Le Corbusier. 1991. Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning : With
an American Prologue, a Brazilian Corollary Followed by the Temperature of Paris and the
Atmosphere of Moscow. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. CORBU CORBU. Original
edition, Précisions sur un état present de l'architecture et de l'Urbanisme. xiii, 266 . pp.
Benton, Tim. 2009. The Rhetoric of Modernism : Le Corbusier as a Lecturer. Boston, MA:
Birkhaeuser., chapter 4 on the South American lectures.

Seminar 4 Nature and nature

The basis of Le Corbusier’s belief system from 1929 onwards rested on the
attempt to fuse two conceptions of nature: ‘the laws of nature’, expressed in
invariable principles of geometry and proportion and the response to natural form.
In this session we look at Le Corbusier’s paintings and his rediscovery of natural
materials in the 1930s. His important but misunderstood book La Ville Radieuse
(The Radiant City), 1935 gives us an insight into the uncontrollable tensions within
which Le Corbusier attempted to forge a new urbanism.

Reading
Le Corbusier (1967). The radiant city; elements of a doctrine of urbanism to be used as the
basis of our machine-age civilization. New York, Orion Press.

29
Drawing Matter
Tina di Carlo

Course description & aim:

This course will be using drawing as a pedagogical tool and specifically focus on the collection and
exhibition of architecture to reveal a historiography and a critical approach and method.

Meeting three times in the autumn, and three times in the spring the course will thread through the
MA programme to expose students to the critical thinking of architecture through the history and
connoisseurship of objects.

Drawings will be considered as things not only to look through but to look at in which they convey
information, ideas and attitudes about architecture. A private collection will be invoked as part of the
pedagogy and current exhibitions in and around London will comprise part of the curriculum.
Readings around drawing will be stressed, and often paired with contemporary writing from 1968
forward in architecture. The first part of the course will be dedicated to a broad overview of drawings
from 1952-88. The second part of the course will look at three in-depth and roughly concurrent
examples of drawing in practice. The course will conclude with an exhibition alongside printed
works.

Term 1: Oct 22 / Nov 19 / Dec 03

Seminar 1 Drawing and Language

It could be argued that between 1952–88, architecture went through a series of reinventions, of
language, of building, and of discourse. It was also a time that the boundaries of architecture were
questioned in and through drawing. This seminar will investigate a number of seminal projects during
this time, in which the idea of drawing was also crucial to the architectural reinvention and
challenging of the canon. Key words attached to drawings will investigate how different modernities
and modernisms would be produced by, and produce, architecture. Those considered will include:
Paul Rudolph, Constant, Ugo La Pietra, Haus Rucker, Zund Up and Andrea Branzi, Alvaro Siza,
Superstudio, Hans Hollein and Walter Pichler.

Readings: Forty, Adrian. Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture,

London: Thames & Hudson, 2014, in particular “Language and Drawing,”
28-41. “Context,”132-135 “Flexibility,”142-48 “Form,”149-72
Blau, Eve and Edward Kaufmann, eds. Architecture and its Image, Montreal: Canadian
Cenre for Architecture, 1989, particular, “Forward,” 9, “Introduction” 13-15, Robin
Evans, “Architectural Projection,” 19-35

Constant “The Great Game to Come” in Joan Ockman Architecture Culture

1943-68: A Documentary Anthology, Columbia Books of Architecture:
Rizzoli, 437-441
Archizoom “No Stop City” in K. Michael Hays, Architecture Theory Since
1968. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 56-59

30
Optional: Riley, Terence. The Changing of the Avant-Garde. New York: The Museum
of Modern Art, 2002
Riley, Terence and Matilda McQuaid. Envisioning Architecture. New York:
The Museum of Modern Art, 2004
N. Bingham, 100 Years of Architectural Drawings, 1900-2000, London 2013

Visit 1 Drawing as Translation

Far from being only representational drawings convey a material history and bring with them their
own histories. In architecture they occupy an indeterminate status, situated between the material
articulation of an idea and the built construct. This field trip will act as a complimentary study to the
first seminar, looking at drawings first hand to consider the primacy of drawing and the medium as
translation; as that which assembles; as a structure of thought; and the material articulation of an idea.
In addition to a field trip to a private collection, there will also be an optional visit to Drawing in Silver
and Gold: From Leonardo to Jasper Johns.

Readings Robin Evans “Translations from Drawing to Building,” AA Files 12, pp. 3-18
Mark Wigley “The Translation of Architecture, the Production of Babel,” in K. Michael Hays,
Architecture Theory Since 1968, Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1998, 660-675.
Lorraine Daston, ed. “The Blaschka Glass Flowers,” in Things that Talk. New York: Zone Books,
2004.

Conversation 1
with Lea-Catherine Szacka Exhibiting the Postmodern: Between drawing
and building

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during what could be considered the apex of the so-called
postmodern period, exhibitions of architecture proliferated and took on a different role in regards to
the discipline. This conversation with Léa-Catherine Szacka will consider the pivotal role that the
exhibition came to play in the canonization of postmodernism, alongside what could be considered
an extended view of drawing, into the scenography of the exhibition itself. Focus for this seminar will
be the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale, as well as other events that, immediately before or in the
aftermath of the now famous exhibition, reconsidered the relation between drawings and buildings.

Readings: Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, I. The Precession of Simulacra,

1981
Beatriz Colomina, “Introduction” in Architectureproduction, New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 1988.

31
Term 2: Feb 04 / Feb 25 / March 10

Seminar 2 Drawing and Writing: Text and Notation

During 1952-88 the reinvention of architecture was tied to a new language of architecture, often
articulated by a new language of drawing itself viewed now as text and a series of notations. Using
comparative case studies this seminar will investigate the way in which drawing became a tool for
investigation to produce new worlds grounded in the imaginary, the topos of the urban fabric and
landscape, and the event. Case studies include: Bernard Tschumi and Superstudio, in particular the
sketchbooks of Adolfo Natalini.

Readings: Peter Eisenman “Representations of the Limit: Writing a ‘Not-Architecture.”

In Daniel Libeskind, Chamberworks: Architectural Meditations on Themes
from Heraclitus, AA Folio 1, 1983
Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts, in Architecture Theory Since
1968, K. Michael Hays, ed. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1998,
408-411
Superstudio “Invention Design and Evasion Design” in Joan Ockman, ed.
Architecture Culture 1943-68: A Documentary Anthology, New York,
Columbia Books of Architecture: Rizzoli, 437-441

Optional: Jacques Derrida, “Point de Folie Maintenant l’architecture” in AA Files 12.

Bernard Tschumi Architecture Notation-Concept. Paris: Editions du Centre
Pompidou, 2014

Visit 2 Drawing Types

“As a continuum drawing asserts its separation from other forms of art, architecture and design at
one end of the linear spectrum and coalesces with them at the other.” Within architecture, whether
designated as perspectival, orthogonal and projective on the one hand, from an immediate sketch to
the presentation drawing, to the building and construction documents at the other, drawings exist a
site for the production of architecture. This field trip will consider drawings as they exist outside
these confines within the realms of painting and sculpture, with a relevant studio visit to be
announced.

Readings: Deanna Petherbridge, “Introduction,” p. 2-3, 7-8 “The Origins of Drawing

and the Primacy of Line” The Primacy of Drawing, 16-25; the Persistent Cult
of the Sketch, 26-45, Finished, Autonomous and Presentation Drawings 50- 52
John Berger, “Drawing on Paper,” in Berger on Drawing, Cork: Occasional Press, 2005,
43-51, 77 “Distance and Drawings,” 106-117

32
Conversation 2
with Manuel Montenegro Reading Drawings: The Sketchbooks of
Alvaro Siza

The Malagueira project (1977 - …), masterpiece of Álvaro Siza (b. 1933), is the perfect representation
both of the endless potential and of the incompleteness of the project that was inherited from the
Revolution and the potential of drawing. A careful intervention over an extraordinary landscape, a
stone’s throw from the historical center of Évora, Malagueira articulated and bound together a
diverse array of pre-existent structures, from the residue of its agricultural past to the surrounding
illegal settlements, aiming to build a new territory for a new country. The relationship of city and
landscape was reconsidered through forging an interaction between a collective spine of community
space and infrastructure - the aqueduct - and a sea of housing with a common root but multiple
expressions, framing a set of proposed public buildings and services that still exist only as promises.
A key reference for the culture of contemporary architecture worldwide, Malagueira stands as a
symbol of how, through community housing, we can build better cities.

This conversation with Manuel Montenegro will focus on a close reading of the sketchbooks of
Alvaro Siza to reveal the primacy of drawing within Siza’s work and the Malaguiera project.

Readings: To be assigned.

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, I. The Precession of Simulacra, 1981

Berger, John, Berger on Drawing, Cork: Occasional Press, 2005
Bingham, N., 100 Years of Architectural Drawings, 1900-2000, London 2013
Blau, Eve and Edward Kaufmann, eds. Architecture and its Image, Montreal: Canadian Cenre for
Architecture, 1989.
Colomina, Beatriz, ed. Architectureproduction, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988
Daston, Lorraine, Things that Talk. New York: Zone Books, 2004
Derrida, Jacques, “Point de Folie: Maintenant l’architecture” AA Files 12
Eisenman, Peter. “Representations of the Limit: Writing a ‘Not-Architecture.” In Daniel Libeskind,
Chamberworks: Architectural Meditations on Themes from Heraclitus.
Evans, Robin, “Translations from Drawing to Building,” AA Files 12, pp. 3-18
Evans, Robin, The Projective Cast, Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1995.
Forty, Adrian. Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, London: Thames & Hudson,
2014
Hays, K. Michael. Architecture Theory Since 1968, Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1998.
Ockman, Joan. Architecture Culture 1943-68: A Documentary Anthology, Columbia Books of Architecture:
Rizzoli, 437-441
Petherbridge, Deanna. The Primacy of Drawing, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010
Riley, Terence, The Changing of the Avant-Garde. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002
Riley, Terence and Matilda McQuaid, Envisioning Architecture. New York: The Museum of Modern
Art, 2004
Superstudio “Invention Design and Evasion Design” in Joan Ockman, ed. Architecture Culture 1943-
68: A Documentary Anthology, Columbia Books of Architecture: Rizzoli, 437-441
Tschumi, Bernard. The Manhattan Transcripts
Wigley, Mark. “The Translation of Architecture, the Production of Babel,” in K. Michael Hays,
Architecture Theory Since 1968, Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1998, 660-675.

33
TERM 2

The courses, debates, workshop and events of Term 2 provide a framework for critical enquiry into
the history of the discipline in relation to contemporary arguments about architecture and the city,
evolving modes of design and emerging forms of architectural research and practice. The aim is two-
fold: to frame the question of the contemporary from a historical, theoretical and cross-disciplinary
point of view; to expand disciplinary knowledge in a broad cultural and political arena and investigate
modes of engagement with changing territorial, social and political formations.

Architecture Knowledge and Writing

Marina Lathouri

Credit Weighting: 18 credits, 10%

Course description & Aim:

From the late Quatroccento treatise to recent theoretical articulations, it is through writing that
architecture is fashioned and propagated as a distinct form of knowledge and set of professional
practices. The economy of the literary object elicits an intricate relation to the economy of the built
object – its modes of production, its aesthetic norms, its didactic and historical value, its uses and
effects and produces a disciplinary (historical and political) space which cannot be found anywhere in
the singular statement, built, graphic or written. The lectures, reading seminars and writing
assignments of the course aim to explore these processes and ‘languages’ by means of which
architecture can be thought and understood as culturally coded expression of knowledge with its own
epistemological assumptions and powerful traditions.

The course consists in two parts. The first part, a lecture series and seminars, starts by looking at the
early architectural writings, the ways in which they identify and describe the various components that
are part of the ‘production’ of the object of architecture and the figure of the architect. It follows the
transformations of this knowledge paying particular attention to the search for origins, universal
language and autonomy in the C18th, the concepts of history and space alongside the establishment
of the first schools of architecture in the C19th and the introduction of architectural historiography
as distinct field of study. The series provides the students with the historical terms necessary to move
towards an understanding of contemporary architecture cultures, the technologies and the multiple
formats within which these are produced and communicated.

The aim of the second part is to investigate modes of architectural writing through short assignments
during the term. The assignments will study different forms of discourse to relate architectural
arguments to a broader constellation of meanings and processes.

Learning Outcomes:
 To understand the criticality of the issue of writing in architecture
 To be clear about the status, nature and limits of theory and history in architectural practice
 To understand different forms of study and discourse
 To be able to relate architectural arguments and projects to a broader intellectual arena and
public culture

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Assessment criteria:
Assessment is based on the participation in the seminars and the writing assignments. These will be
evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:
 The capacity to read and analyse a text
 The construction of a clearly defined and structured argument which establishes and develops
the student’s view of a specific problem
 The capacity to produce short and critical studies

Timetable

Jan 14 Writing Architecture: The Formation of a Discipline

From the Renaissance treatise to the philosophical essay to the dictionnaire and the
manual, the particular economy of writing has been to the process of formation
of the distinct disciplinary and professional territory of architecture but it is also a
practice of making by its own right.

This session examines the beginning of a historical process, as Giorgio Vasari

described it, exemplified by the increased pace of publishing and circulation of
new ideas in the Quatroccento and the impact that writing had upon the
experience of art. In particular, through Leon Battista Alberti’s writings which,
through the diffusion by means of writing of classical notions of aesthetic theory,
became instrumental in the development of the historiography of art. The
aesthetic and intellectual theories of Alberti and the role of his publications will
be considered in the political and economic context of the Renaissance city.

Jan 21 Writing History: Tradition and Modernity

This session looks at how the concept of history was joined since the
Renaissance to interpretations of the past and visions for the future. It traces this
in relation to the reading of antiquity in Late Renaissance, the search for general
principles and a universal language of form in the 18th century and the notions of
progress and modernity.

At last, by reflecting on the concept of the ‘point of view’ in the discipline of

history, the seminar discusses how the material of history has always been
determined and arranged by questions, which arise in the present. In these terms,
histories often tend to inaugurate modernity and produce a discourse to work in
unison with innovative practices.

Jan 28 Brunelleschi, Alberti and the Invention of Modern Architectural

Authorship
(Lecture / Seminar with Mario Carpo)
From Brunelleschi’s “design by leadership” to Alberti’s “design by notation”.
Alberti, central and parallel projections: some geometrical problems.

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Feb 18 Writing the City
With the Enlightenment and the emergence of modern subjectivity, approaches
toward history and the production of forms take a different turn. Beginning with
an introduction to Kant’s notion of critique, this session concentrates on this
particular form of discourse in relation to the ‘modern fact’ in historical studies,
the ‘making of a social body’ and the conception of the city as open system and
territory. The ways in which the city becomes primarily through critical discourse
a political tool, in the sense that its planning is analysed as demonstration of
shifting forms of political authority and jurisdiction rather than in terms of ideal
representations of a social order, will be extensively discussed.

March 03 Writing the Object

Under conditions of hybrid cultures and vacillating national and social
boundaries, can the object of architecture be forged through a universal language
or a teleological postulate of an ultimate fusion of all cultural horizons?
Considering that it is no longer possible to set the boundaries of the cultures in
question, the mode of their exchange is in fact constitutive of their identity, can
the practices of architecture be understood as processes and forms of
negotiation?

March 17 Writing Seminar

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Bibliography

Adorno T.W., “The Essay as Form,” trans. Bob Hullot-Kentor and Frederic Will, New German
Critique 32 (Spring–Summer 1984)
Agacinski Sylviane, “Shares of Invention,” in: Columbia Documents of Architecture and Theory, Volume 1,
1992
Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, MIT Press, 1988
Architectural Review series, “Architecture after 1960,” no. 755 – 760, January – June 1960
Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage Publications 1992
Benjamin, Walter, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on
Media, Cambridge, Mass., London, 2008
Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations, edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt, New York,
Schocken Books, 1969
Bermann Sandra and Wood Michael, Nation, language and the ethics of translation, Princeton University
Press, 2005
Carpo, Mario, Architecture in the Age of Printing, MIT Press 2001
Carpo, Mario, Alphabet and the algorithm, The MIT Press, 2011
Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis, Precis of the lectures on architecture, with Graphic portion of the lectures on
architecture, Getty Research Institute, 2000
Terry Eagleton, The Function of Criticism. London: Verso, 1984
Forty, Adrian, Words and Buildings, Thames & Hudson, 2000
Gursevich, Miriam, “The Architecture of Criticism: a question of autonomy,” in: Drawing / Building /
Text, Princeton Architectural Press, 1991
Hays, K. Michael (ed), Architecture Theory since 1968, Cambridge, MA and London, England: MIT
Press, 2000
Jarzombek, Mark, On Leon Battista Alberti: His Literary and Aesthetic Theories, MIT Press 1989
Kaufmann Emil, “Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Inaugurator of a New Architectural System,” in: Journal of
the American Society of Architectural Historians, no.3, July 1943, p.13
Koselleck, Reinhart, Critique and Crisis, The MIT Press, 1988
Laugier, Marc Antoine, Essay on Architecture, translated by Wolfgang and Anni Hermann, Los Angeles:
Hennessey and Ingalls, 1977
Le Goff, Jacques, History and Memory, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992
Mallgrave, Harry-Francis, Empathy, form and space: problems in German aesthetics 1873-1893, Getty
Research Institute, 1994
Pope, Alexander, An Essay on Criticism. 1711
Rabinow, Paul, Ed, The Foucault Reader, New York: Pantheon Books, 1984
Raman, Pattabi G. and Coyne, Richard, ‘The Production of Architectural Criticism’, in: Architecture
Theory Review, The University of Sydney, vol. 5, No 1, 2000, pp. 83-103
Ranciere, Jacques. Politics of aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, London: Continuum Publishing,
2008.
Ranciere, Jacques. Figures of History, Cambridge: Polity, 2014.
Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, Princeton: Princeton
University Press 2006
Tafuri, Manfredo. Theories and History of Architecture, translated by Giorgio Verrecchia, New York:
Harper and Row, 1979
Tafuri, Manfredo. Interpreting Renaissance: princes, cities, architects. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2006.
Vidler, Anthony, Writing of the walls: architectural theory in the late Enlightenment, Princeton Architectural
Press, 1986
Wigley, Mark, “Prosthetic Theory: The Disciplining of Architecture”, in: Assemblage, No.15, August
1991

37
The Subject of Architecture
Douglas Spencer

Credit Weighting: 18 credits, 10%

Course description & aim:

The Subject of the Environment

Theories and practices of architecture have, especially since the 1960s, engaged at length with
questions of the relations between the self and its environments. The subjects of architecture have
been conceived as operatives in cybernetic systems, cognitive mapmakers, deconstructive readers,
and post-critical participants in the network of flows. This course addresses such constructions of the
architectural subject through the analysis of a range of related themes, texts, and projects.
Considering a range of key texts and projects in a series of seminars, this module addresses these
constructions of the architectural subject through the analysis of themes such as cybernetics,
semiotics, the non-plan, managerialism and the emergence of neoliberalism within architectural
culture. This course will be concerned not only with the relationship between the subject and its
architectural environments, but also with developing the theoretical instruments through which this
relation can be critically analysed.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the seminar series students are expected to be able to do the following:

 Demonstrate a critical understanding of the forms of approach taken by contemporary

architecture and their formal articulation within discourse media and the built environment.
 Understand and contextualise these approaches and articulations in relation to wider
developments and debates within fields such as those of culture, urbanism, governance,
subjectivity and economics.
 Read critically in order to evaluate complex arguments and theories.
 Undertake independent research with minimum guidance.
 Write a well-structured essay that shows evidence of independent research, makes an argument
clearly and effectively, presents original ideas and conclusions, and uses standard style for
referencing.

Assessment criteria:

Assessment is based on a 2,500-word essay on a subject related to the issues covered in the course,
which is evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:

 The capacity to theoretically understand and critically analyse formal and technical issues in
architecture and the relationships between buildings, their surroundings and the larger cultural
and political context.
 The evidence of research and a close reading of appropriate sources.
 The application of critical faculties to the presentation of these works and texts as evidenced by
an analytical assessment of varied and possibly conflicting arguments or points of view.
 A clear and definite structure of argument which establishes and elaborates the student’s own
ideas, opinions, and conclusions.
 Recognition of the larger context of the problem and wider issues raised by the topic.

38
 Clear formulation of the question addressed in the written submission.
 Appropriate acknowledgement and referencing of sources of information.
 Clarity of formal presentation, including illustrations, graphic or visual materials.

Timetable:

Jan 12 The Production of Subjectivity: Neoliberalism and Environmental Control

Introducing the idea of subjectivity, its ‘production’, and the ‘care of the self’ in
the late writing of Michel Foucault. Addressing his analysis of neoliberalism as a
form of ‘environmental control’. Considering neoliberal models of subjectivity.
Readings: Michel Foucault, Jason Read, Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval

Jan 19 Habitats, Happenings and Communes

How the discourse of the ‘environment’ emerged from avant-garde and
countercultural practices in America, the architectural resonance of these
practices, and the broader turn towards concerns with habitation and milieu
elsewhere.
Readings: Allan Kaprow, Fred Turner, Yuriko Furuhata
Projects: Drop City, Expo ’70, The New Domestic Landscape, Xerox PARC

Jan 26 Desert Scenes: Banham and Baudrillard

Exploring questions of mobility, cybernetics and ‘the environment’ through the
conflicting perspectives of Reyner Banham and Jean Baudrillard. Addressing the
idea of nomadic and technologically equipped architectures as enabling new
relations between the subject and the environment in the 1960s and 70s.

Readings: Reyner Banham, Jean Baudrillard

Projects: Reyner Banham: Standard of living package and Unhouse

Feb 2 Postmodernism and the postmodern subject

How philosophies of the postmodern were translated into architectural theory
and practice, and how ideas about a postmodern and hyperrealist ‘spacing’ of the
subject were addressed in the writings of Jameson and Baudrillard.

Readings: Charles Jencks, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard

Projects: Bonaventura Hotel, Disneyland, Phillip Johnson: AT&T Building

Feb 16 Deconstruction and Deconstructivism

A consideration of the ways in which philosophies of deconstruction were
translated into the architecture of figures such as Eisenman and Tschumi, and the
implications of this for the subject’s ‘reading’ of the contemporary architectural
environment.

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 Readings: Mark Wigley, Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi

Projects: Bernard Tschumi: Parc de la Villette, Peter Eisenman: Wexner Center for
the Arts

Feb 23 Post-critical subjects

Examining how the ideas of the ‘post-critical’ and the ‘projective’ emerged in
architecture, the significance of these in relation to the subject’s perception of the
built environment, and contemporary accounts of affect and ‘elegance’ in
architecture.
Readings: Patrik Schumacher, Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting,

Mar 1 The Ecological Imperative

How ecological and environmental imperatives have impacted upon the
discourse and practice of architecture. The ways in which these have produced
not only new models of architectural design, but also new models of the subject
that inhabits it.
Readings: Ross Adams, Douglas Spencer

Mar 8 Draft Essay Presentations

Students present their initial ideas for the essay for this course.

Mar 15 Tutorials

Bibliography

Primary sources
Adams, Ross Exo, ‘Longing for a Greener Present’ in Radical Philosophy 163,
September/October, 2010
Banham, Reyner., The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment, Second Edition, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1984
Banham, Reyner, Scenes in America Deserta, London: Thames & Hudson, 1982
Baudrillard, J./The French Group, ‘The Environmental Witch-Hunt’ in R. Banham, ed., The Aspen
Papers: Twenty Years of Design Theory from the International Design Conference in Aspen, New York: Praeger,
1974, p. 208–210
Baudrillard, J., America, trans. G, Dyer, London and New York: Verso, 1988.
Dardot, Pierre and Laval, Christian, The New Way of the World: On Neo-liberal Society, trans. G. Elliot,
London and New York: Verso, 2013
Eisenman, Peter, ‘Unfolding Events: Frankfurt Rebstockpark and the Possibility of a New
Urbanism,’ in Re:Working Eisenman, London: Academy Editions, 1993, pp. 59-61
Foucault, Michel, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College De France,1978-79, ed. Michel Senellart,
trans. G. Burchell, Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008
Foucault, M., The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1982–83, ed. Michel
Senellart, trans. G. Burchell, Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
Furuhata, Yuriko, ‘Multimedia Environments and Security Operations: Expo ’70 as a Laboratory of
Governance’, Grey Room 54, (Winter 2014), pp. 56-79
Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University

40
Press, 1991
Jencks, C., The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, Fourth Edition, New York: Rizzoli, 1984.
Kaprow, Allan, The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida's Haunt, Berkeley, LA and London, University
of California Press, 2003
Moussavi, Farshid, The Function of Form, Barcelona and New York: Actar/Harvard University
Graduate School of Design, 2009.
Read, Jason, ‘The Production of Subjectivity: From Transindividuality To The Commons’, New
Formations, No. 70 (Winter 2011), pp. 113-131 a
Schumacher, Patrik, ‘Arguing for Elegance’, in Elegance, AD, January/February 2007, Edited by
Helen Castle, guest-edited by Ali Rahim & Hina Jamelle, pp. 29-37
Somol, Robert and Whiting, Sarah, ‘Notes Around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of
Modernism’, Perspecta, Vol. 33, Mining Autonomy, 2002
Spencer, Douglas, ‘Nature is the Dummy: Circulations of the Metabolic’, New Geographies 6:
Ungrounding Metabolism, 2014
Tschumi, Bernard, Architecture and Disjunction, Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1996
Turner, F., The Democratic Surround: Multimedia & American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic
Sixties, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Wigley, Mark, Deconstructivist Architecture, Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1995

Supplementary literature

Hays, K. Michael (ed), Architecture Theory since 1968, Cambridge, MA and London, England: MIT
Press, 2000
Kipnis, Jeffrey, ‘On the Wild Side’, in Farshid Moussavi, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, and Sanford Kwinter,
eds, Phylogenesis: FOA's Ark, Barcelona: Actar, 2004
Martin, Reinhold, The Organisational Complex: Architecture, Media and Corporate Space, MIT, Cambridge,
MA, 2003
Lemke, Thomas, ‘The Birth of Bio-Politics – Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the Collège de France on
Neo-Liberal Governmentality’, in: Economy & Society, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2000
Martin, Reinhold, Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism Again, University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis and London, 2010.
Mirowski, Philip., Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown,
London: Verso, 2013.
Mirowski, P. and Plehwe, D., eds. The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought
Collective, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2009
Nesbitt, Kate, Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995,
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996
Spencer, Douglas, ‘Replicant Urbanism: The Architecture of Hadid’s Central Building at BMW
Leipzig,’ in The Journal of Architecture, vol.15, no.2, April 2010
Spencer, Douglas, ‘Architectural Deleuzism: Neoliberal Space, Control and the ‘Univer-city’’ in
Radical Philosophy 168, 2011
Spuybroek, Lars, The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of Design, Rotterdam: NAi
Publishers/V2, 2011
Zaera-Polo, Alejandro, ‘The Politics of the Envelope’, Volume #17, Fall 2008

41
The Post-Eurocentric City
John Palmesino

Credit Weighting:
18 credits, 10%

Course description and aim:

Anti-political, a-political, post- semi- quasi-western: thinking the city in the shadow of the acropolis
today entails thinking through the notions and consequences of independence, of being alert to
thinking a postcolonial and contemporary anxiety, re-evaluating the courage to think what creativity
is today and what kind of knowledge production architecture is expressing in its own right.
The course explores the transformations of contemporary polities and their spaces of operation
through the presentation of critical languages on urbanisation processes, cosmopolitanisation, post-
colonial geography, mobilities, cultural theory and creative practices.
At a time of vast re-organisation of territorial structures and expansion of the urban couple with
reformulations of modes of design and production of architecture, the course aims at articulating the
theoretical conjunctions of a series of lines of development of the contemporary city.
The course will analyse the links between the transformations in international and sub-state polities
with the construction processes of the inhabited space in a number of selected locales. It investigates
the subtle and nuanced modes of streamlining architectural and urban differences in the
contemporary human territories, of unleashing oceanic processes of institutional change and re-
organising both discourses on modernity, sovereignty and the material structures of human
environments.
It will investigate a series of spatial products linked to these transformations and articulate notions of
the postcolony, extraterritoriality and world-systems away from the traditional model of
expansionism and diffusionism of the European city. The course will enquire into the consequences
of these changes for the notions and practices of the project at a time of dirty cosmopolitanisation.

Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the seminar series students are expected to be able to do the following:
• independent critical inquiries into the transformation of material spaces of operation of
contemporary polities.
• Demonstrate a critical thought on the relation between modernisation, globalisation and urban
construction and transformation processes
• Demonstrate capacity to relate architectural and urban development studies to contemporary
cultural studies
• Link these developments in architectural culture to wider social, economic, political and cultural
discourses and practices.
• Read critically in order to evaluate complex policies, spatial practices and transformation processes.
• Present conclusions and interpretations about that reading in an informative and well-organised
oral presentation.
• Undertake independent research with minimum guidance.
• Write a well-structured research report that shows evidence of independent research, makes an
argument clearly and effectively, presents original ideas and conclusions, and uses standard style for
referencing.

42
Assessment criteria:
Assessment is based on a 2,500-word illustrated research report on a specific territorial or urban
transformation, which is evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:
• The evidence of research and a close reading of appropriate sources, with particular attention to
different modes of institutional, technical, policy, and expert writing, as well as investigative
journalism writing.
• The capacity to represent the information contained in those sources and the views of various
authors.
• The application of critical faculties to the presentation of these works or texts as evidenced by a
critical and analytical assessment of varied and possibly conflicting arguments or points of view.
• A clear and definite structure of argument, which establishes and elaborates the student’s own
ideas, opinions, and conclusions.
• Recognition of the larger context of the problem and wider issues raised by the topic.
• Clear formulation of the question addressed in the written submission.
• Appropriate acknowledgement and referencing of sources of information.
• Clarity of formal presentation, including illustrations, graphic or visual materials.
• A capacity to apply knowledge gained within the context of the M.A. as a whole to the issue at
hand.
• An attempt to bring creativity or innovation to the work.

Timetable:

Jan 12 Polity, Space, Territory

Changing polities and changing spaces: the seminar explores contemporary
notions of territoriality, in its shifting relations to the city, politics, economy. The
course will try to undo the dichotomy of the local and the global through the
presentation of critical languages on urbanisation processes, post-colonial
geography, mobilities, cultural theory and creative practices. We will look at
territories as a modality of inquiry of the relations between individuals, groups,
institutions, economies, nations, cultures. Spatial practices and territories are a
way into the understanding of the structures that these relations give way to:
power, legislations, languages, knowledge systems, and spatial organisations.
Territories as investigations into the shifting material configurations of our
societies, together with their difficult interconnections to their territories and
geographies as charts of these sometimes stable relations, as bodies of knowledge
of transient spatialities.

Jan 19 Transformations
The seminar will evaluate different ways of changing (and not) and their complex
relation to notions of progress and modernity, in relation to the remodelling of
the groups that promote them, hinder them, oppose or just take part in them.
Equally, it will aim to shine a critical light on the different approaches to these
changes that open up new models of agency, de-localisation, creative re-
appropriation of resources, and on the new subjectivities they produce.

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Jan 26 Outside
A central feature of the researches on the inhabited landscapes is the constant re-
conceptualisation of the definition of place. The proceeding from local
constructions and their accidents, particularities and flaws towards a general
notion of place, entails as well a constant rethinking of the modalities of charting
those specificities, of mapping different bodies of knowledge.

Independence
Feb 2 Cohabitation, with all its conveniences and accompanied by all its struggles, has
for centuries been the main purpose of the construction of cities. The very act of
construction yet implies separation, the set up of differences and demarcations, it
implies making differences visible, not allowing others in. Enclosures are not
neutral in nature; they are geared towards the control of and maintain the
structures of the relations and activities they shelter.

Feb 16 Charting Differences

The seminar is focused on regions that are twofold, both under the pressure of
globalisation and wrought by specific threats. Places that maintain a spin, that are
connected to international energy flows, while they persist in evolving their
individual inscribed patterns of change. The investigations we will discuss are
based on the assumption that contemporary cities do not develop towards a
common vanishing point becoming generic: rather, they consolidate, transform
or adapt their specific traits.

Feb 23 The Post-Colony

To what extent thinking of a post-Eurocentric city entails relying on binaries and
oppositions to the notion of the city as shaped by political forces and fields?
How to think transformations in contemporary architecture through the
unbound, through the non-centred, the dis-aligned and the a-political? The
seminar enquires how the post-colony is a thinking model, rather than a set and
stable configuration.

March 1 War
The last decade has seen the establishment, dismantlement and dissolution of the
‘new world order’ coexist with the innumerous post-colonial, gender, religious,
economical, military, anti-globalists and terrorist confrontations. These changes
mark also the material re-organisation of the landscape and territory as well as
their institutional framework.

Uncertain states of Europe

March 8
The contemporary European space is not a cohesive body, it is shaped by
accumulation, negotiations, additions, superpositions and stratifications. How to
think of Europe through a non-eurocentric notion of citizenship? Can political
thought undo its continental spatial metaphors and investigate the self-
organisation processes that wrought contemporary space?

March 15 Tutorials

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Bibliography

Keller Easterling, Enduring Innocence, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 2007

Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture, London and New York: Routledge 2000
Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press
2001
Sarat Maharaj, ‘Xenoepistemics’, in Documenta 11 Platform 5, Ostfildern: Hatje Kantz, 2002
Aiwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship, Durham and London: Duke University Press 1999
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, University of Missesota Press
1996
Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2005
Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Empire
Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended. Lectures at the Collège de France
Okwui Enwezor et al. (eds.) ‘Democracy Unrealized’, Documenta 11 Platforms, Ostfildern: Hatje
Cantz 2002
Okwui Enwezor et al. (eds.) ‘Under Siege: Four African Cities–Freetown’, Johannesburg, Kinshasa,
Lagos. Documenta 11 Platform 4, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz 2002
Okwui Enwezor et al. (eds.) ‘Creolité and Creolization’, Documenta 11 Platforms, Ostfildern: Hatje
Cantz 2002
Sarah Nuttall and Achille Mbembe (eds.), Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, Durham and London:
Duke University Press 2008
Stefano Boeri, Multiplicity, Sanford Kwinter, Rem Koolhaas, et al., Mutations, Barcelona: Actar 2000
Multiplicity, USE Uncertain states of Europe, Milan: Skira 2003
Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2000
Scott Lash, James Urry, Economies of Signs and Space
Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds.), Making Things Public, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
2007
Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, Princeton: Princeton
University Press 2006
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge 1994
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Polity 2000
Michel Feher, Non Governmental Politics, New York: Zone Books 2007
Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, New York: Zone Books 1997
Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic (eds.), The Endless City, London: Phaidon Press 2010
Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Enemy of All, Piracy and the Law of Nations, New York: Zone Books 2009
Immanuel Wallerstein, World System Analysis, Durham: Duke University Press 2004
David Harvey, The Conditions of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1991
Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage Publications 1992

45
HCT DEBATES: DIS-LOCUTIONS: ARCHITECTURE AND THE POLITICAL
Organised and hosted by Marina Lathouri, John Palmesino and Douglas Spencer

The HCT Debates provide a venue for exchange of ideas and arguments. External speakers are
invited every week to present and engage with tutors and students. The aim is to position the
multiple voices making possible a process of thinking in common, by definition a pedagogical
practice different from the seminar or the lecture. The sessions are therefore open to the public.

Every time brings specific conditions to the manner in which the claims on architecture are made.
New technologies and modes of design and production have prompted elaborate arguments on
economic policies, new organisational models, environmental strategies and sustainable development
patterns. There seems to be, however, a lack of reflection on the fundamental question of
architecture as a composite form of knowledge with specific traits, and a distinct set of practices, yet
in difficult connections with cultural economies and material configurations. Processes involved in
the constitution of these multiple territories – professional, disciplinary, cultural and legal – and the
negotiation of frontiers – conceptual, practical and technical - are proposed here essentially as a
dispute over their proper locus.

Is it possible to proceed through a critical body of architectural references, existing or to be

constituted, in order to engage existing material organisations and their institutional frameworks? Is it
possible that the various regimes of the architectural project might still enable us to rethink
conceptions of space, conflicts of appropriation and norms of use nearing the juridical delimitations
of public and private domains?

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the lectures and seminar series students are expected to be able to do the following:
 Demonstrate an understanding of the complexity of architectural practices as they relate to
theoretical ideas as well as developments of the city
 Evaluate the relation between architectural practices and critical thinking
 Undertake self-directed research and reading, and participate in discussions based on
considered responses to presentations and arguments

Assessment Criteria:

Assessment is based on an interview that each student will conduct with one of the speakers. The
evaluation is on the basis of the following criteria:
 Evidence of active participation in the debates
 The application of critical faculties and the capacity to formulate clear questions and engage
with the views of a speaker

Each week, the MA students are asked to prepare questions and observations based upon
preliminary reading. Also each student is expected to conduct an interview with one of the speakers.

Timetable

To be confirmed

46
Design by Words
One-week workshop on reading and writing with Fabrizio Gallanti and Marina Lathouri

8 – 12 February

In this one-week intensive workshop, writing is considered as practice of thinking and a tool to
communicate ideas in a clear and direct way, moving away from the complexities of architectural
jargon and academic writing.

The objective is to introduce the students to formats and techniques of writing, with particular
emphasis on the strategies to advance and develop ideas at an early stage of work. For such purpose,
three readings are suggested, and three exercises (evaluated and discussed on a daily basis) will be
developed over the course of a week, with early morning and late afternoons sessions (to guarantee
time in between for the act of writing).

Architecture in Words: Writing the Visual from Plato to Damisch

One-week seminar series with Anthony Vidler

23 – 27 May (TBC)

Plato's supposed problems with "writing" didn't stop him from writing, and writing about visuality;
art and architectural historians have, from Vasari to Winckelmann, had to negotiate the image, or the
space, through words. After an introduction to the antique vocabulary of painting and architecture,
the seminars will examine the writings of John Ruskin, Adrian Stokes, Colin Rowe, Hubert Damisch,
Jacques Derrida, among others.

These four seminars will follow on and resume the discussions of the Architecture Knowledge and Writing
lecture and seminar series in Term 2. In parallel to the Thesis Research Seminar, students will be
expected to produce a brief example of their own descriptive prose.

47
ASSIGNED READING MATERIAL

Assigned reading for weekly sessions can be found in the AA Library on shelves reserved for the History
and Critical Thinking programme, under the course title.

These may be borrowed on overnight loan (after 5 p.m.) or weekends and must be returned by 10:30 the
following or Monday morning. If problems arise from late returns of reserved material then their use
will be restricted to library hours only. The bookshops listed in the following pages generally stock the
course reading material.

A copy of the Architectural Association Guide to the Library includes an introduction to the catalogue system
used at the AA Library and useful reference sources. Copies are available in the Library.

Photocopy machines are available in the Library and in the Graduate School.

LIBRARIES

Architectural Association Library

36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES tel.: 7887 4032

The Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning

University College London,
Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1 tel.: 7387 7050
Students are allowed use of the library on two occasions during the academic session and an ID is
required. The Main and Science Libraries are open Monday-Thursday 8:45 a.m.-10:30 p.m., Friday 8:45
a.m.-7:00 p.m., Saturday 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m..

The British Architectural Library

Royal Institute of British Architects, 66 Portland Place, London W1 tel.: 7580 5533
This library is primarily for reference, although an application may be made to the Education
Department of RIBA for a student membership, which allows up to 5 books to be borrowed from a
limited lending stock.
Open 1:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. on Monday, 10:00-8:00 Tuesday, 10:00-5:00 Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, 10:00-
1:30 on Saturday

The British Library

96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB tel.: 7412 7677
All M.A. students must register as readers at the British Library. An application form may be obtained
from the Reader Admission Office. In order to obtain authorisation, students should submit this form
to the AA Graduate Office.
Open 9am-5pm Friday, and Saturday; 9am-8pm Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

The British Library of Political and Economic Science

London School of Economics
Portugal Street, WC2 tel.: 7955 7229

48
Development Planning Unit
9 Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1 tel.: 7388 7581
Students need a letter of introduction from the AA. The library is being restructured and is open on a
limited basis. Phone for details.

Institute of Latin American Studies Library

32 Tavistock Square, London WC1 tel.: 7387 4055
Reference only; no letter required.
Open Monday, Tuesday, and Friday 9:30am-5:30pm, Wednesday and Thursday 9:30am-7:00pm.

RIBA Drawings Collection

21 Portman Square, London W1 tel.: 7580 5533 ex 4804
An extensive collection of architectural drawings, a catalogue of which is available in the AA Library.
Open 10am-1pm Monday-Friday by appointment. Phone a day or two before.

Royal Academy
Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1 tel.: 7300 8000
The collection includes work by Royal Academicians dating from the Academy’s founding in 1786,
including paintings, architectural drawings and sketches, and portraits. Open 2pm-5pm Monday-Friday or by
appointment during the morning. Advance notice of your interest is helpful.

The Sir John Soane Museum

13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2 tel.: 7430 0175
John Soane’s House and collection, a catalogue of which is available in the AA Library.
Open 10am-5pm Tuesday-Saturday

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, WC18
Students need a letter from the AA, and must pay an annual fee and refundable deposit.
Phone for opening hours.

University of London Library

Senate House, Malet Street, WC1 tel.: 7636 4514
A letter from the AA is required to apply for a reader’s ticket, which is for reference only.
Open 9:30am-9:00pm Monday-Friday, 9:30am - 5:30pm Saturday.

Victoria and Albert Museum Library

The National Art Library, South Kensington, London SW7 tel.: 7589 6371
Available for occasional reference, but regular readers must apply for a ticket.
Open 10am-5pm Tuesday-Saturday. Closed Monday.

Warburg Institute
University of London, Woburn Square, London WC1 tel.:7580 9663
A letter of introduction from the AA Graduate School office is required in order to obtain a reader’s
ticket. Open 10am-6pm Monday-Friday and Saturday mornings from the end of October.

Westminster Public Library

Central Reference Library, St. Martin’s Street, London WC2 tel.: 7798 2034
Open to the public for reference use only. Open 10am-7pm Monday-Friday, 10am-5pm Saturday.

49
BOOKSHOPS

The following bookshops are most convenient to the AA:

Dillons 1 Malet Street, London WC1 (7636 1577)

Foyle’s 119 Charing Cross Road, London WC2 (7434 4391)

The Triangle Bookshop Architectural Association

Waterstone’s 121-151 Charing Cross Road, London WC2

A.Zwemmer Ltd. 24 Litchfield Street, London WC2 (7836 4710)

50
TEACHING STAFF

MARINA LATHOURI
Architect, M.Arch (Hon.), MPhil, PhD

Director MA History and Critical Thinking in Architecture

PhD Committee and AA Academic Board
Architectural Association

Education
University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Fine Arts
PhD History and Theory of Architecture (2006)

University of Sorbonne, Department of Philosophy, Paris, France

MPhil Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics (1993)
School of Architecture Paris-Villemin, Paris, France
MPhil History and Theory of Architecture (1992)
The Berlage Institute, The Netherlands
Certificate of Advanced Studies in Architecture (1991)
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Architecture, Greece
March (1989)

Academic Positions
Architectural Association, MA History and Critical Thinking in Architecture, Director
Architectural Association, PhD Programme, Director of Studies

University of Cambridge, Department of Architecture, Visiting Lecturer (1999-)

Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Distinguished Visiting Professor (2012- )

University of Thessaly, Greece, Visiting Professor MA (2012-13, 2014-)

Open University, Athens, Adjunct Professor (2014-)

Universidad de Navarra, Spain, Visiting Professor MA/PhD (2009-)

Universidade do Minho, Portugal, Director of Studies PhD Programme (2008-10)

University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Fine Arts, Adjunct Professor (1996-1999)

University of Greenwich, Masters of Arts in Architecture (MAA) and Masters of Science in

Architecture, School of Architecture and Construction, External Examiner (2006-11)

University of Kent, MA in Architecture and Cities, School of Architecture, External Examiner (2012 -
2015)

51
Research Interests

Lathouri’s research interests lie in the conjunction of architecture, history and political philosophy.
Most recently, she co-authored the book Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City, published
several articles and directed a Research project at the AA entitled City Cultures. In her teachings and
writings, she aligns histories of the architectural and urban project and theoretical arguments with
visual and design practices. Writing, in particular, is being argued as a catalyst since the inception of
the discipline for the demarcation of architecture as distinct form of knowledge and the articulation
of aesthetic norms and professional conventions. Further, the various discrete languages in which
architecture operates and the concept of translation can reopen debates that have greater
ramifications for the history of architecture itself and shed light in to the ways in which architecture,
subjected to legal and economic constraints, cultural specificities and political ideologies becomes a
form of negotiation between different systems.

Recent Publications
Books:
Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City, London: Routledge, 2008
City Cultures: Contemporary Positions on the City, London: AA Publications, 2010
Essays in Books and Articles:
Forthcoming: “Out-of-Focus Impression: The Uncertain Typology of Louvre-Lens”, in: The Building,
Lars Muller Publishers, 2015
Forthcoming “Co-habitations”, University of Thessaly Publications, 2015
Forthcoming “Homo Ludens: experiential narratives of the post-war city”, in: Memory narrates the city:
oral testimonies for the past and the present of urban space), Athens 2015
“Fragments: thinking inside the box”, in: Little Worlds, London: AA Publications, 2014
“Projective Architectures: the question of borders in a connected world”, in: Masterplanning the
Adaptive City: Computational Urbanism in the Twenty-first Century, London and New York: Routledge
2014, p.20
“A History of Territories, Movements and Borders: Politics of Inhabitation”, in: System City:
Infrastructure and the space of flows, Architectural Design Special Issue 04/2013, p.32
“The City as a Project: Types, Typical Objects and Typologies”, in: Architectural Design, Jan/Feb 2011
“North Penn Visiting Nurses’ Association Headquarters”, in: First Works: Emerging Architectural
Practices of the 1960s and 1970s, London: AA Books, 2009
“The Frame and the Fragment: Visions for the Modern City”, in: AA Files, no 51, 2005
“Notes on Nomadism and Urban Dwelling”, in: Places of Nomadic Dwelling, Athens: Hellenic Institute
of Architecture, 2001
“vEL Architects: Urban Filter”, in: Cambridge Architecture Journal Scroope no 12, 2001
“Enterlacs de Topia, Interlacing Topia”, in: L’Arc Ouest pour Thessalonique: Nouveaux Espaces Collectifs
dans la Ville Contemporaine, Athens: Untimely Books, 2000
“Le Corbusier: From Paris to Chandigarh, Variations on the Same Theme (1922-56)”, in: La Citta
Nuova, Washington: ACSA Press, 2000

52
“CIAM Meetings 1947-59 and the Core of the City: The Transformation of an Idea”, in: La Citta
Nuova, Washington: ACSA Press, 2000

Research Projects / Recent Lectures

“Waiting for appropriation: Notes toward a history of the architectural project”, Paper presented at: “Tabula
Rasa”, International Conference, Universidad de Navarra, Key note Speaker, February 2015

“The object under translation”, Paper presented at: “Architecture in Translation: The Mediation of Social and
Urban Spaces”, International Conference, Venice Biennale, Speaker, September 2014

“Translations in Architecture: From open plan to open system”, Paper presented at: Resonances of Modernity,
International Conference on the occasion of the hundred years of Le Corbusier’s Maison Dom-ino,
Architectural Association, Speaker, 2014

Design by Words, Laboratory on Writing in collaboration with Fabrizio Gallanti (Canadian Centre of
Architecture), Architectural Association 2014
Architecture Politics, History and Critical Thinking Debates, Architectural Association,
Organiser/Moderator, 2013-
Politics and Spaces, History and Critical Thinking Debates, Architectural Association,
Organiser/Moderator, 2009-13
City Cultures Research Cluster AA/CC, Architectural Association, Director, 2008-11
Writing Architecture, Post-Graduate Seminar, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, 2012-
Critical Writing in Architecture, International Conference, Architectural Association,
Organiser/Speaker/Moderator, 2011
History and Theory in Architectural Education, International Workshop at Werner Oechslin Library
Foundation, Einsiedeln, Switzerland, Speaker, 2009
Re-reading Palladio, International Conference in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts,
Organiser/Moderator, 2009
Writing in Architecture, International Course at Werner Oechslin Library Foundation, Speaker, 2008
“Reconstructing the topographies of the modern city: the late CIAM debates”, PhD Dissertation presented at the
University of Pennsylvania, 2005
“Aris Konstantinidis: The Building and the Land”, Exhibition of drawings, photographs and models by
Aris Konstantinidis, at Princeton University and The Foundation for Hellenic Culture in New York,
Curator, 1998
“Aris Konstantinidis: The Building and the Land”, International Conference, Princeton University, School
of Architecture, Organiser/Speaker/Moderator, 1998

Design Research
Lead Consultant, Urban and Planning Department of the City of Geneva, Switzerland, 2000-03

1992-2000
Project Architect of Exhibition Space / Curator, H. P. Berlage’s Stock Exchange, Amsterdam

53
Architectural Studies for Sustainable Houses, San Francisco
Research Project for New Housing Systems, The Netherlands
“Sign of the Future”, International Ideas Competition, Graz, Austria
6th International Design Competition, Osaka, Japan
C.A.U.E. 94, “Hotel Industriel”, Paris, France
Planning and Design of Housing District and Cultural Centre, Montauban, France
Design Consultant, Architecture Studio Architects, Paris

Design Awards
1st Prize, International Competition, Master Planning and Infrastructure Research for the urban
district Gare des Eaux Vives in Geneva and its rail connection to France (1999)
Design Honour, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam (1999)
Winning Entry, International Competition of Urban Design, the Northern districts of the city of
Thessaloniki, Greece (1997)
Distinguished Project, Biennale of Venice (1991)
2nd Prize, International Competition of Urban Design, Master Plan and Design of Olympic Village,
Russia (1991)

Lectures
Lathouri has lectured at the AA and University of Cambridge at all levels, undergraduate and
graduate as well as widely in Europe, U.S.A. and Latin America.

Academic affiliations to the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Cambridge University,

Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste
Stuttgart, Universidad de Navarra, Werner Oechslin Library Foundation, University of Greenwich,
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Virginia Tech, University of Thessaly Greece,
Silpakorn University Bangkok and Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.

http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/GRADUATE/?name=hct
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/PORTFOLIO/MICROSITES/microsite.php?title=History%20&%20Critical%20Thinking%2
0MA&return=../../STUDY/GRADUATE/?name=hct&url=hct.aaschool.ac.uk/

54
MARK COUSINS
Director, History & Theory Studies, Undergraduate School

Education
Merton College, Oxford University 1966 - 1971
Warburg Institute 1971 – 1974

Qualifications
BA (Hons) in History, First Class 1970
MA in Art History 1971

Academic Positions
Lecturer in Sociology and Social Anthropology, Brunel University 1974 - 1976
Lecture in Sociology, Thames Polytechnic 1976 - 1980
Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Thames Polytechnic 1980 - 1988
Principal Lecturer in Sociology, Thames Polytechnic 1988 - 1992
Deputy Head of School of Economics + Sociology, Thames Polytechnic 1988 - 1992
Director of History and Theory Studies, AA 1992 -
Ph.D Supervisor, AA 1992 -
Founder member of London Consortium Graduate School 1994
Head of Histories and Theories Programme, AA 1995 - 2009
Visiting Professor, Columbia University, New York 2001 - 2009
Senior Fellow, London Consortium 2009
Guest Professor, School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing, China 2010 – 2015

Books
Michel Foucault. Mark Cousins + Athar Hussain, Macmillan 1984
Sigmund Freud: The Unconscious. Introduction by Mark Cousins, Penguin 2005

Articles in Books
‘The question of ideology’ by Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain. in Power, Action and Belief,
Sociology Review Monograph 32. R.K.P 1986
‘The linguistic fault: the case of Foucault’s archaeology’ by Mark Cousins. in Towards a
Critique of Foucault, ed. M.Gone R.K.P 1986
‘The Aeffect’ by Mark Cousins. in Corporate Fields, AA DRL Documents 1. AA 2005
‘The Practice of Historical Investigation’ by Mark Cousins. in ‘Poststructuralism and the
question of history’, ed. D.Attridge et all. Cambridge University Press 1987.
‘Material Arguments and Feminism’ by Mark Cousins. in The Woman in Question, ed.
Parveen Adams and Elizabeth Lowie. MIT Press 1990
‘Introduction’ by Mark Cousins in Time and the Image, by Carolyn Gill. Manchester
University Press 2000
‘The Persistence of the Image: Hitchcock Vertigo’ by Mark Cousins in Art: Sublimation or
Symptom, ed. Parveen Adams 2003
PHD PROGRAMME 2011-12 39
‘From Royal London to Celerity Space’ by Mark Cousins in After Diana, ed. M. Merek Verso
1998
‘Brzydota’ by Mark Cousins in Co to jest architectura, ed. A.Budak Krakow 2002
‘Building an Architect’ in Occupying Architecture, ed. J.Hill. Routtedge 1998
‘Where?’ in Desiring Practices, ed. K Ruedi 1996

55
Articles
‘The Logic of Deconstruction’ in Oxford Literary Review 1978
‘John and their relation to the mode of moderation’ in Economy and Society vol.14 no.1
1985
‘Diana’s London’ Harvard Design Review 1998
‘Is Chastity a Perversion’ New Formations no.9 1989.
‘The Ugly’ I in AA Files no.28 1994
‘The Ugly’ II in AA Files no.29 1995
‘The Ugly’ III in AA Files no.30 1995
‘Lo foe’ in Analysis - Art no.17 1998

Catalogues
‘Cruel Architecture’ by Mark Cousins. in Projects by Tony Fretlon Architects 1998
‘A arte da Articulação: The Art of Articulation’ by Mark Cousins. in Jane e Louise Wilson:
Tempo Suspenso, Gullenhiam Foundation, Lisbon 2010
‘Second Site’ in Antony Gormley, Museum of Modern Art, Monterry 2009
‘Random Walk’ AA Publication 1998
‘Madame De’ in Alles Schmuck
‘Disabling Beauty’ in Portfolio no.30 1999
‘Away from Home’ Wexner Centre, Columbus, Ohio 2003
‘Out of Sight’ in Cerith Wyn Evans, Kunsthaus Graz 2007
‘Second Site’ Athony Gomley 2009
‘The Art of Articulation’ Wilson sisters. Gullenhiam, Lisbon 2010

Lecturing / Teaching
At the AA I have lectured at all levels, undergraduate and graduate. For a long time my
Friday lectures, which are open to the public have been the centre of my teaching, together with
Ph.D. supervision. I have lectured throughout the world in the USA, Europe, China, Australia, as
well as throughout the UK.

External Activities
In 1993 I founded with Paul Hurst and Colin McCabe the London Consortium
1986 – 1990: Member of Advisory Board. ICA
1993 – 1998: Member of the Visual Arts and Architectural Panel, Arts Council of England
1997 – 1999: Consultant to Zaha Hadid on her section of the Millennium Dome

Research
I am currently establishing a research project with colleagues at Southeast University, Nanjing, in the
School of Architecture. To this end I went out to Nanjing and lectured, gave seminars and held
discussions with colleagues. Chinese graduate students who are adequate in English to become aware
of the meanings of architectural categories as they are used in Europe and the USA. Our plan is to
work together with Chinese scholars and Ph.D. students to put together a conceptual dictionary of
architectural and urban terms and where necessary on Chinese terms of translation so that Chinese
translation of English texts can achieve a standard and verified consultancy of translation. Of course
there are all sorts of theoretical and methodological issues bound up in this. But the intention is to
offer something immediately useful in the development of Chinese incorporation of Western texts,
arguments and problems. The aim is to establish this over the first few years, and to transfer the
whole project online so that it becomes the instrument and the property of its users. If successful
then it would be desirable to reverse the process and work out an English version and understanding
of Chinese building terms and the complex topic of Chinese gardens. To this end the University has
appointed me Guest Professor 2010 – 15. The research is now seeking funding from the private
sector, to supplement the already successful application to public sources in China.

56
JOHN PALMESINO

Italian architect and urbanist, born in Switzerland in 1970

He has established Territorial Agency in 2007 together with Ann-Sofi Rönnskog.
He is Diploma Unit Master at the AA Architectural Association, London.
He is Director of AA Territories Think Tank
He is Research Fellow at the Research Architecture Centre, Goldsmiths University of London.

Territorial Agency is an independent organisation that innovatively promotes and works for
sustainable territorial transformations. Territorial Agency works to strengthen the capacity of local
and international communities in comprehensive spatial transformation management. Territorial
Agency’s projects channel available spatial resources towards the development of their full potential.
Territorial Agency’s work builds on wide stake-holder networks. It combines analysis, projects,
advocacy and action.

Research Projects

With Territorial Agency, photographer and film maker Armin Linke and curator Anselm Franke, he
is the author of Anthropocene Observatory, a multi-year research and film project investigating the
unfolding across international institutions of the consequences of the thesis of a new man-made
geological epoch. The project is commissioned by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

Territorial Agency is involved in large-scale spatial transformation projects, among which the
integrated plan for the Makermeer, commissioned by Rijkswaaterstaat in the Netherlands, and the
plan for the relocation of the city of Kiruna, in Northern Sweden.
Initiator of the multidisciplinary research project ‘Neutrality’. The research investigates the relations
between architecture, the processes of construction of the inhabited space and the forms of polity in
the 21st Century. The project analyses the modalities of operation of the clusters of introverted and
almost self-referential institutional, economical, political, military, cultural innovation spaces and
enclosed knowledge circuits that appear to be the critical hallmarks of today’s city and cultural
climate. He is conducting his researches on neutrality as a device of transformation and control of
the contemporary inhabited space for his PhD at the Research Architecture Centre, Goldsmiths,
University of London.

He is director of the AA Territories Think Tank. Recent research organised includes the Graham
Foundation award winning project Plan the Planet, Jacqueline Tyrwhitt and the Formation of
International and Global Architecture. He is the recipient of a 2009 Graham Foundation Grant
award for his researches on the ‘Architecture of UN peace-keeping missions’.

He is in charge of the Master course at the Research Architecture Centre, where he is leading a
research on the spatial transformations related to the operations of International organisations,
Intergovernmental Organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).
He has taught together with Prof. Irit Rogoff a MA course on Geographies at the Visual Cultures
departments, Goldsmiths, University of London.

He is has been Research Advisor at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht between 2010 and
2013.

Head of research at ETH Zurich, Studio Basel / Contemporary City Institute, between 2003 and
2007. ETH Studio Basel is a research institute for the investigation of the transformation patterns of

57
the city of the 21st Century, established by the Pritzker Prize winner architects and professors
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron.
He has managed the transition of ETH Studio Basel into a full Research Institute of the ETH Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology, establishing the research agenda and methodology. He has led the
Institute researches on a series of international cities, also in conjunction with Harvard School of
Design, where he helped establish the Independent Thesis Programme led by Herzog and de
Meuron, working on collaborative projects with ETH Studio Basel. He has managed the works for
the publication of the research ‘Switzerland–An Urban Portrait’. He has curated the participation of
the Institute at the 10th Architecture Biennale in Venice, 2006.

He has co-founded Multiplicity with Stefano Boeri in 1996

Multiplicity is a multidisciplinary network of architects, urbanists, social scientists, photographers,
filmmakers and visual artists that explores contemporary territorial transformations. The Milan –
based organisation deals with contemporary urbanism, representation of inhabited landscape
transformation, visual arts and general culture. Main projects include USE Uncertain states of
Europe (Mutations, Triennale di Milano), SOLID SEA (documenta11), Border Devices (Biennale di
Venezia), The Road Map (KW Berlin).
He is author of several territorial research studies, with particular attention to the transformations in
the general European context and the Swiss urban structure in particular. His research focuses on the
representation of self-organisation processes in the construction of the contemporary urban
condition.

Member of the Advisory Board of Barcelona Regional.

Member of the International Advisory Board for the Sustainable Development of Mexico City
Member of METROBASEL, Platform for the development of the Basel metropolitan region
Advisory Board of AISS Arts in Social Structures, an international NGO funded and run by artists.

Lectures / Academic Affiliations / Publications

Palmesino has lectured widely in Europe, Asia, in Japan, Australia and in the US.
Academic affiliations to the AA Architectural Association School of Architecture, Goldsmiths,
University of London, ETH Zurich, EPFL Lausanne, Royal Academy of Arts Copenhagen,
Politecnico di Milano, IUAV Venezia, University of Genova, and at the Harvard School of Design,
with Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron.

He is co-author of ‘USE- Uncertain states of Europe’, Milano 2003; ‘MUTATIONS’, Barcelona

2000; ‘Lessico Postfordista-Scenari della mutazione’, Milano 2001. He has published several essays
and articles in the major architecture and urban magazines (Domus, Abitare, Archis, Volume,
StadtBauWelt, etc’).

58
DOUGLAS SPENCER

PROFILE
Douglas Spencer’s recent writing includes contributions to the collections The Missed Encounter of
Architecture with Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2014), Architecture Against the Post-Political (Routledge, 2014)
and New Geographies 6: Grounding Metabolism (Harvard 2014). He is a regular contributor to the journal
Radical Philosophy and has also written for The Journal of Architecture, Domus, Culture Machine, and Telos.
He is currently writing a book titled The Architecture of Neoliberalism, to be published by Bloomsbury in
2016.

EDUCATION & QUALIFICATIONS

1978-1981 Amersham College of Art - Arts Diploma
1985-1988 Sheffield City Polytechnic – BA (Hons) History of Art, Design and Film Studies (2.1)
1992-1995 Thames Valley University - MA Cultural Studies
2008-2012 University of Westminster - PhD Architecture History and Theory

POSITIONS
2014 to date PhD Supervisor, Royal College of Art
2013 to date PhD Supervisor, University of East London
2012 to date PhD Supervisor, Architectural Association
2011 to date Co-director, ‘Urban Prototypes’ Research Cluster, Architectural Association
2011 to date Graduate School of the: Lecturer, MA Historical and Critical Thinking
2008 to date Graduate School of the Architectural Association: Lecturer, MA Landscape Urbanism
2008-2012 University of Westminster: Senior Lecturer In Architecture: History and Theory
2007 to date University of East London: Senior Lecturer in Architecture: History and Theory
2000-2008 Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College: Lecturer in Historical and Critical Studies
2006 Middlesex University: Visiting Lecturer – Architecture and Art History
2005 University of East London: Visiting Lecturer – MA Architecture
1994-2000 Amersham and Wycombe College: Lecturer in Historical and Critical Studies

PUBLICATIONS:
BOOKS
Critical Territories: From Academia to Praxis, Actar/List Lab, Barcelona, 2014 (with Eva Castro, Eduardo
Rico and Alfredo Ramirez)

Landscape and Agency: Critical Perspectives, editor, with Tim Waterman and Ed Wall, Routledge, London
and New York, (in preparation, due 2016)

The Architecture of Neoliberalism, London, Bloomsbury (in preparation, due 2016)

59
CHAPTERS IN BOOKS (selected)
‘The Alien Comes Home: Getting Past the Twin Planets of Possession and Austerity in Le Guin’s
The Dispossessed’ in The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, edited by Laurence
Davis and Peter Stillman, Lexington Books, 2005
‘From Representation to (Re)invention: Digital Architecture, NURBS and the Body’ (with Henriette
Bier) in Aesthetics and Urbanism edited by Gerhard Bruyns, O10, Rotterdam, 2006
‘Outside the Kaleidoscope’ in Recycling Culture/s edited by Sara Martin, Felicity Hand, Isabel Clúa,
Cambridge, 2008
‘Instrumental Urbanism and Immaterial Labour’, in Positions on the City, Marina Lathouri and Ryan
Dillon, eds., AA Publications, 2010
‘Investing in the Ground: Reflections on Scarcity, Remediation and Obdurate Form’, in Jon
Goodbun, ed, Scarcity: Architecture in an Age of Depleting Resources Architectural Design, Wiley Academy,
London, 2012
‘Environments of Distributed Labour’ in NETworks: An Atlas of Connective and Distributive Intelligence in
Architecture, AA Publications, 2013 (forthcoming)
‘Remaking the Public in Post-reform China: OMA’s CCTV and the Image of Labour’ in Elie Haddad
and Nadir Lahiji, eds. Against the Post-Political: Reclaiming the Critical Project in Architecture, Routledge,
London, 2014

‘The New Phantasmagoria: Transcoding the Violence of Financial Capitalism’ in Nadir Lahiji, ed.
Idolatry and Ideology: The Missed Encounter of Radical Philosophy with Architecture, Continuum, London, 2014

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS: JOURNALS

‘When a Moving Body Meets a New Formation: Plasma Studio and the Fourth Floor of the Hotel
America’ in AA Files 53, Spring 2006.
‘Landscape Urbanism at the AA’ in Domus (China) November 2007.
‘Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture within and against
Capitalism’ (review essay) in Radical Philosophy, 153, January/February 2009.
‘Landscape Urbanism at the Architectural Association’ in Topos 71, June 2010.
‘Replicant Urbanism: The Architecture of Hadid’s Central Building at BMW Leipzig,’ in The Journal of
Architecture, vol.15, no.2, April, 2010.
‘Architectural Deleuzism: Neoliberal Space, Control and the ‘Univer-City’’, Radical Philosophy 168,
July/August, 2011.
‘Nature is the Dummy: Circulations of the Metabolic’, New Geographies 6: Ungrounding Metabolism, 2014

SELECTED GUEST/KEYNOTE LECTURES

Keynote lecture, ‘Complexity without Contradiction: Cybernetics, Architecture and Enchantment’,
Nordic Association of Architectural Research, Annual Conference 2010, April 22-24, University of
Tampere, Finland.
‘Instrumental Urbanism and Immaterial Labour’, AA City Cultures Research Cluster Symposium, 14
May, 2010, Architectural Association, London.
‘Groundworks’ Infrastructures and Landscapes symposium, 14 October 2010, Institute of Urbanism

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and Landscape, AHO, Oslo.
‘Marketing Strategies: FOA and Ravensbourne’, MA History and Critical Thinking, Architectural
Association, London, 31 January 2011.
‘Schooled in Precarity: the subject of education’, Roscoe Occupation, Manchester University, 8
March 2011.
‘Remaking the Public: CCTV, the Hyperbuilding and the Image of Labour’. Berlage Institute,
Rotterdam, 27 April, 2012.
‘Architecture and the Technoaesthetics of the Environment’, Processing Environments symposium,
Guggenheim Bilbao, 19 June 2012.

SELECTED CONFERENCE PAPERS

Where is the Body in Digital Architecture? - Aesthetics & Architectural Composition, Dresden
International Symposium of Architecture, Dresden, Germany, June 2004.
(Dis)possessed of a Vision: post-consumerist Utopias in Le Guin and radical design theory - Utopian
Studies Society – 5th International Conference, University of Porto, Oporto, Portugal, July 2004.
Deleuzian Architecture in Control Societies - Defining Space conference: School of Architecture,
Landscape and Civil Engineering /School of Languages, Literatures and Film, University College
Dublin, Ireland, October 2007.
General Intellect, Collective Intelligence and Immaterial Labour: office architecture and the
management of the network - Networks of Design conference: The Design History Society, University
College Falmouth, UK, September, 2008.
Replicant Urbanism - Urbanism and Urbanization: 5th International PhD Seminar, Faculty of
Architecture, Urbanism and Planning, K.U. Leuven, 3 October, 2009.
Parallel Lines: formal expression as publicity in the architecture of Hadid’s Central Building for
BMW Leipzig - 6th Annual AHRA Research Student Symposium: Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff
University, 12 December 2009.
Landscape, Agency, and Artifice, Landscape and Critical Agency, Landscape and Critical Agency
symposium, the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, 17 February 2012.

CONFERENCES ORGANISED
Landscape and Critical Agency, a one-day symposium at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University
College London, 17 February 2012, with Murray Fraser, Ed Wall and Tim Waterman*

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Visiting Tutors

TIM BENTON

Tim Benton taught for 40 years at the Open University. His research achieved international renown
in the history of architecture and design between the wars. His work on Le Corbusier is very widely
cited; his book on the Villas of Le Corbusier (first edition in French, 1984) has gone through several
editions and now exists in French, English and Italian editions. In a series of important articles
Benton extended the research of this classic text. His book The Rhetoric of Modernism Le Corbusier as
lecturer (2007) was awarded the prestigious Grand Prix du Livre sur l’Architecture by the Academie de
l’Architecture, Paris and is currently available in French and English editions. A new book LC-Foto
Le Corbusier photographer was published by Lars Mueller Publications in July 2013 and his latest
book Le Corbusier peintre à Cap Martin by Editions du Patrimoine, France, 2015. He has just edited a
new edition of the English language publication of Le Corbusier’s Precisions (1930), Schediegger &
Spiess, 2015.

Benton also worked on a number of ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions and their catalogues, including Art
Deco 1910-1939 and Modernism designing a new World at the V&A and the exhibition on the
Italian architect Luigi Moretti at the MAXXI gallery in Rome (opened 27 May 2010). He recently
curated an exhibition on Art Deco, at the Fundacion March,Madrid (2015)He curated one of the
rooms of an exhibition on Le Corbusier and Photography at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-
de-Fonds (2012), subsequently on show at the CIVA gallery Brussels. His international reputation is
confirmed by an entry on his work in the volume 6 of the Dizionario dell’architettura del XX secolo,
Turin 1995 and by invitations in the United States, including a semester as Robert Sterling Clark
Visiting Professor at the Clark Art Institute at Williams College (2009), Columbia University (2007),
the Bard Graduate College (2003 and 2006) and at the École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne
(2010-2013).

Selected recent works:

Benton, Tim. 2015. Le Corbusier Peintre a Cap Martin. Paris: Editions du Patrimoine. 120 pp.

Benton, Tim, Manuel Fontan del Junco, and Maria Zozaya, eds. 2015. Modern Taste; Art Deo in Paris
1910-1935. Edited by Fundacion Juan March. Madrid: Fundacion Juan March.

Benton, T. (2014) 'Le Corbusier et la Méditerranée' in: J. L. Bonillo, Domus Mare Nostrum. Toulon,
Hemisud for Conseil General du Var: pp. 23-33, 978-2-913959-55-2

Benton, T. (2010) 'Art Deco in the Anglo-Saxon World' in: J. C. Dias, Art Deco 1925. Lisbon,
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation: 113-128

Benton, T. (2011) 'The Villa de Mandrot and the place of the imagination' in: M. Richard, Massilia.
Marseilles, Editions Imbernon: 92-105

Benton, T. (2010) 'Le Corbusier e il vernacolare: Le Sextant a Les Mathes 1935' in: A. Canziani, Le
Case per artisti sull'Isola Comacina. Como, NodoLibri: 22-43

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Benton, T. (2012) 'Le Corbusier's secret photographs' in: N. Herschdorfer and L. Umstätter, Le
Corbusier and the Power of Photography. London, Thames & Hudson: 30-55

Benton, T. (2010) 'Il concorso per il palazzo del Littorio' in: B. Reichlin and L. Tedeschi, Luigi
Moretti, Razionalismo e trasgressivita tra Barocco e informale. Milan, Electa: 101-120

Benton, T. (2009) The rhetoric of modernism : Le Corbusier as a lecturer, Boston, MA, Birkhaeuser (and the
French edition: Benton, T. (2007) Le Corbusier conférencier, Paris, Le Moniteur, which was awarded
the Prix du Livre by the Académie de l’Architecture, Paris, 2008)

Benton, T. (2007) The villas of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret 1920-1930, Basel ; Boston, Birkhäuser
(new and enarged edition, also in French)

Benton, T. (2006) 'Representing Modernity' in: The Imagined Interior (ed. J. Aynsley) London, V&A
Publications

Benton, T. (2005) 'Charlotte Perriand: Les années Le Corbusier' in: Charlotte Perriand. Paris,
Editions du Centre Pompidou: 11-24

Benton, T. (2005) ‘Building Utopia’, 'Modernism and Nature' and 40,000 words of catalogue entries
in: Modernism Designing for a new world. (ed. C. Wilk) London, V&A Publications

Benton, T. (2004) 'Pessac and Lège revisited: standards, dimensions and failures' Massilia 3: 64-99

Benton, T., P. Carl, et al. (2003) Le Corbusier & the architecture of reinvention. London, AA Publications

Benton, C., T. Benton, et al. (2003) Art deco, 1910-1939. London, V&A Publications (now in fourth
reprint)

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TINA DI CARLO

Tina Di Carlo, a former curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and a Harvard and
Courtauld graduate, specializes in modern and contemporary art, architecture and design. She is
currently completing her doctoral dissertation on the 1988 Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition at
MoMA, to be published as part of the Writing Architecture series through MIT Press. She writes and
speaks internationally and is the recipient of a Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine
Arts grant.

Education

Oslo School of Architecture, Oslo Centre for Critical Architectural Studies, Exhibiting Architecture:
Place and Displacement, PhD first-place fellow, funded through the Norwegian Research Council,
2011-2014, awarded 2015.

Goldsmiths, University of London, Visual Cultures, Master of Research, 2011

Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Master of Architecture, 2000
Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Master of Art History, 1996

Université de Paris-Sorbonne IV: Certificat de langue et civilisation françaises, 1989

Middlebury College, Madrid, Spain: semester abroad

Awards Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Grant

Teaching and Research

Architectural Association, London

Course Consultant, MA History and Critical Thinking, 2015–2016

Oslo School of Architecture, Visiting Professor, autumn 2014

Concurrent Trends: Postmodernist and Deconstructive Architecture [1968-88]

Berlage Institute, Professor, spring 2009.

When Economies Become Form in Alagoas, Brazil. Studio developed in collaboration with
Itacare/Duas Barras to address the social imperatives through architecture intervention in an
emergent region.

Selected Publications

Deconstructivist Architecture: Exhibition #1489 and the Museum of Modern Art, Cambridge and London:
The MIT Press as part of the Writing Architecture Series, forthcoming

1:1 or Scaleless, Volume, forthcoming, spring 2015 as part of the 1:1 conference at Het Nieuwe
Instituut, Rotterdam symposium, April 2015

“Bernard Tschumi, Architecture: Concept & Notation,” Artforum, November-December 201

“Avant la lettre: Bernard Tschumi’s Architecture: Concept & Notation” Log, fall 201

“Deconstructivist Architecture: Exhibition #1489 and the Museum of Modern Art,” Cahiers du
Musée d’art Moderne, autumn 2014, 81–95.

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Selected Conferences and Talks.

“1:1,” Het Niewue Institute, Rotterdam, April 2015.

“ASAP,” Critical Shifts, Columbia University, April 2014.

“Deconstructivist Architecture as a Critical Project: Exhibition #1489 and the Museum of

Modern Art, Technical University and National Museum, Munich, January 2014

“Deconstructivist Architecture: Exhibition #1489 and the Museum of Modern Art,” Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris, January 2014

“Constructivist Deconstructivist: Deconstructivist Architecture and the Museum of Modern Art,”

Princeton Conjunction, Princeton University, May 2013

“Constructivist Deconstructivist: Deconstructivist Architecture and the Museum of Modern Art,”

Oslo School of Architecture: Place and Displacement, February 201

“Revisiting Deconstructivist Architecture,” Nordik X, Stockholm, October 2013.

Experience

2015 – present Editor, Drawing Matter

2003 – present Protagonist and Contributing Editor, LOG,

2009 – 2014 Founder and Director, ASAP Archive for Art and Architecture

2008 Strategic Advising, Itacare Capital Investments

2000 – 2007 Museum of Modern Art, New York, Department of Architecture and Design
 Assistant Curator, Exhibitions and Collections, 2004-07
 Curatorial Assistant, Exhibitions and Collections, 2001-03
 Research Assistant, 2000-01

On-Site: New Architecture in Spain (assisting Terence Riley)

OMA in Beijing, 2006
CCTV: TVCC, 2006 (in Beijing)
By Size, 2005
Emilio Ambasz, 2005
The Highline, 2005
Yoshio Taniguchi: Nine Museums (with Terence Riley)
Tall Buildings, 2004 (with Terence Riley and Guy Nordenson)
Envisioning Architecture, 2004
The Changing of the Avant-Garde, 2002 (with Terence Riley)

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FABRIZIO GALLANTI

Fabrizio Gallanti has wide-raging and international experience in architectural design, education,
publication, and exhibitions. Until July 2014 he was the Associate Director Programs at the Canadian
Centre of Architecture in Montreal and currently is Mellon Senior Fellow at Princeton University
School of Architecture.

He holds a Ph.D. in architectural design from the Politecnico di Torino (Turin, Italy 2001) and an M.
Arch. from the University of Genova (1995). Between 2002 and 2006 he lived in Santiago, Chile,
practicing as architect and teaching Architectural Design and Architectural Theory at the Universidad
Diego Portales (2002-2006), Pontificia Universidad Católica (2002-2006) and at the Universidad
Nacional Andrés Bello (2004-2006). Between 2006 and 2007 he was the academic director for the
international courses at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti), Milano, Italy. Between 2008 and
2011 he taught Architecture Design at the Politecnico di Milano, Facoltà di Architettura Ambientale.

He curated several cycles of lectures and international seminars, referred to architecture and
urbanism: multiplicity. Una collezione di luoghi, Triennale di Milano, Italy, (2000-2001), Urbania, Bologna,
Italy (2009), ArchiLiFE, Le LiFE, Saint Nazaire, France (2010), Learning from…, Canadian Centre for
Architecture (2011/2013). He curated several exhibitions, among others: Next to city, Akademie
Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany (1997), Su_RUT?, Galeria Gabriela Mistral, Santiago de Chile
(2004), Searching for an Ideal Urbanity, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany (2007), Alturas de
Macchu Picchu. Martin Chambi – Álvaro Siza at work and ABC:MTL. A self-portrait of Montreal both at the
Canadian centre for Architecture, Montreal (2012).

He frequently writes for international architecture magazines and journals such as 32, A+U, Abitare,
Domus, Museion Journal, CLOG, San Rocco, Journal of Architectural Education and Il Giornale
dellʼArchitettura. In 2006 he was the guest editor of the special issue of the Japanese architecture
magazine A+U Chile Deep South, dedicated to contemporary Chilean architecture. In 2010 he was the
guest editor of the academic journal Materia #01 published by the Universidad San Sebastian with a
special issue dedicated to architectural education. Between 2007 and 2011 he was architecture editor
at Abitare magazine and chief editor of the Abitare web-site. Between 1993 and 2004 he was a
founding member of gruppo A12, collective of architects dedicated to the hybridization between
architectural design and visual arts, based in Genoa and Milan (www.gruppoa12.org). During its
trajectory gruppo A12 has produced a consistent body of work and research that encompassed a
multiple array of practices: architecture design (25 apartments housing complex in Borghetto
Lodigiano, Italy 1996-1999; Europan 5, first prize), spatial installation and exhibition designs (ZKM
Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe; manifesta 3, Lubljiana; P.S.1, New York;
Musée dʼArt Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Kröller Müller Museum,
Otterlo; Villa Medici, Rome; Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu). In 2000 gruppo A12
participated to the Venice Architecture Biennale with the research project “parole”, a dynamic
dictionary of the contemporary city (http://parole.aporee.org). Since 2003 he has developed a
professional partnership with Francisca Insulza. Their work has been exhibited in various venues
(Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago de Chile; exo, Sao Paulo; film + arch, Graz; Architecture
and Urbanism Biennale Shenzhen Hong Kong, Canadian Centre for Architecture Montreal).

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