Tom Avermaete: Catalogue data in Autumn Semester 2022 |  |
| Name | Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete |
| Field | History and Theory of Urban Design |
| Address | Geschichte u.Theorie d. Städtebaus ETH Zürich, HIL D 70.7 Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5 8093 Zürich SWITZERLAND |
| Telephone | +41 44 633 73 09 |
| tom.avermaete@gta.arch.ethz.ch | |
| Department | Architecture |
| Relationship | Full Professor |
| Number | Title | ECTS | Hours | Lecturers | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 052-0801-00L | Global History of Urban Design I  | 2 credits | 2G | T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This course focuses on the history of the design of cities, as well as on the ideas, processes and actors that engender and lead their development and transformation. The history of urban design will be approached as a cross-cultural field of knowledge that integrates scientific, economic and technical innovation as well as social and cultural advances. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | The lectures deal mainly with the definition of urban design as an independent discipline, which maintains connections with other disciplines (politics, sociology, geography) that are concerned with the transformation of the city. The aim is to make students conversant with the multiple theories, concepts and approaches of urban design as they were articulated throughout time in a variety of cultural contexts, thus offering a theoretical framework for students' future design work. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | In the first semester the genesis of the objects of study, the city, urban culture and urban design, are introduced and situated within their intellectual, cultural and political contexts: 01. The History and Theory of the City as Project 02. Of Rituals, Water and Mud: The Urban Revolution in Mesopotamia and the Indus 03: The Idea of the Polis: Rome, Greece and Beyond 04: The Long Middle Ages and their Counterparts: From the Towns of Tuscany to Delhi 05: Between Ideal and Laboratory: Of Middle Eastern Grids and European Renaissance Principles 06: Of Absolutism and Enlightenment: Baroque, Defense and Colonization 07: The City of Labor: Company Towns as Cross-Cultural Phenomenon 09: Garden Cities of Tomorrow: From the Global North to the Global South and Back Again 010: Civilized Wilderness and City Beautiful: The Park Movement of Olmsted and The Urban Plans of Burnham 011: The Extension of the European City: From the Viennese Ringstrasse to Amsterdam Zuid | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | Prior to each lecture a chapter of the reader (Skript) will be made available through the webpage of the Chair. These chapters will provide an introduction to the lecture, the basic visual references of each lecture, key dates and events, as well as references to the compulsory and additional reading. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | There are three books that will function as main reference literature throughout the course: -Ching, Francis D. K, Mark Jarzombek, and Vikramditya Prakash. A Global History of Architecture. Hoboken: Wiley, 2017. -Ingersoll, Richard. World Architecture: A Cross-Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. -James-Chakraborty, Kathleen. Architecture Since 1400. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. These books will be reserved for consultation in the ETH Baubibliothek, and will not be available for individual loans. A list of further recommended literature will be found within each chapter of the reader (Skript). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | Students are required to familiarize themselves with the conventions of architectural drawing (reading and analyzing plans at various scales). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 052-0803-00L | History and Theory of Architecture I | 2 credits | 2V + 2U | M. Delbeke, T. Avermaete, L. Stalder, P. Ursprung | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Introduction and overview of the history and theory of architecture from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. The course covers the chronology and key works, protagonists and discourses of early modern European architecture. ‘Fundamentals for the History and Theory of Architecture I-II’ provides a practical introduction to the methods and instruments of the history of art and architecture. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | 1. Acquiring basic knowledge of the history and theory of architecture during the early modern period, of its key protagonists and discourses and of the methods and instruments of architectural research. 2. Identifying the main architectural issues and debates of the period and recognising the places and architectural works covered in the course. 3. Acquiring the tools to develop a historically informed reading of the built environment, recognising debates, styles, ideas and problems which drive and inform architectural production. 4. Developing the tools to draw on historical, theoretical and critical research to the benefit to one's own architectural culture. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | The course ‘History and Theory of Architecture I-II’ offers a chronological and thematic survey of early modern architecture and architectural theory produced in Europe from the 15th up to 19th century. The course is based on thematic lectures, analysing key European architectural works, texts and iconography. Themes will include the origin of the Vitruvian tradition in architectural theory and practice and its dissemination in Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries; the mediatisation of architectural principles through the development of book production during the 16th century; the development of divergent theories of architectural composition and design in Italy and France between the 16th and 17th centuries; the formation and international spread of religious symbolism through architecture; analyses of original design practices, such as in the case of Michelangelo; a study of building types, such as the palazzo and the villa, and their codification by architects like Andrea Palladio; debates over questions of beauty and ornament, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries; questions of patronage and the relationship between architecture and political and religious powers (e.g. the French Monarchy and the Roman Papacy); the relation between buildings and their urban setting in the development of European capitals like Rome, Paris and Berlin; historicism and attitudes towards the past in architectural styles. In addition to the main lectures, the course ‘History and Theory of Architecture I-II’ will also include a series of seminars, called ‘Small Narratives’. These seminars are meant to widen the scope of the programme by exploring case studies, such as buildings and ruins in Zurich, which relate and contribute to the content of the course. While content of the ‘Small Narratives’ seminars is not part of the exam, students are invited to make use of it for their study, and attendance is compulsory. The course ‘Fundamentals of the History and Theory of Architecture I-II’ aims to explore and develop basic methods and strategies to research the history of art and architecture. It consists of four parts, each developed under one of the four Chairs of the gta, and each dealing with a particular area of study in the field of architecture and art history. The course will consist of four different exercises and tasks, carried out under the supervision of each of the four Chairs throughout the year: 1. Architecture and books (M. Delbeke) 2. Architecture and media (L. Stalder) 3. Architecture and art (P. Ursprung) 4. Urbanism and the Commons (T. Avermaete) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | Course scripts, PowerPoints and lecture recordings for ‘History and Theory of Architecture I-II’ will be available to download from the course page at the beginning of the semester. Printed copies of the course scripts will also be available for purchase. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | For the course ‘History and Theory of Architecture I-II’ students will rely on assisted self-study to acquire basic knowledge of the history of architecture in Europe. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 052-0817-22L | Theory of Architecture: How to be Independent - Architectural Techniques of the Non-Aligned  The course is limited to 24 students. | 2 credits | 2S | H. K. Le Roux, T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This seminar explores resistance to the post-1945 (1957-1980) globalisation of architectural techniques, which can be found in media used to communicate alternatives. Inspired by practices documented in the dispersed grey literature from the “global South” from 1957-1980, we will experiment with the alternative, independent productions of our own manuals about autonomous ways of building. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | During what Okwui Enwezor called “the Short Century” of African independence, building activists published in ways that circumvented the need to use former colonial powers to reproduce knowledge. There were manuals on building in earth, experiments in fibre-based roofing, re-wilding, and bio-energy, amongst others. Given that this research area is distant in time and space, the seminar aims to build empathy in imagining and reacting to the dilemmas faced by activists and architects in the new Non-Aligned nations. Through this process we will realise our own alternative creative agency as an asset that we could bring to other situations where we need to act autonomously. The case studies it will explore, which are not well known beyond local circulation, will support us to devise and communicate ways to create architecture without easy recourse to new materials, exotic technologies, foreign exchange, or the advice of outsiders. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | Case studies of architectural experimentation from, amongst others, local agencies in Ghana, Tanzania, Egypt, Zambia, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Cuba, India, and allies in the US Peace Corps, anti-apartheid South Africa, and Europe. Co-designing a platform for sharing interesting content, and printing manuals using an off-grid Mimeograph or Spirit Duplicator process. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | Nkrumah, Kwame. 1965. Neo-Colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd. Enwezor, Okwui, and Chinua Achebe. 2001. The short century: independence and liberation movements in Africa, 1945-1994. Munich: Prestel. Baker, Laurie. Mud. 1993. Trichur, India : Centre of Science & Technology for Rural Development. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | This course is directed exclusively to students on master level. Final Critique: week of 19.12.-23.12.2022 The weekly schedule is published at the beginning of the semester and is included in the reader | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 052-0827-22L | Seminar History and Theory of Urban Design: Sites and Services For students from the 3rd semester | 4 credits | 2S | S. Loosen, T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | ‘Sites-and-services’ was an important housing paradigm that was mobilized in the context of development aid to provide cost-efficient housing for the global poor. Since these were essentially unfinished projects that relied on their future inhabitants to complete their dwellings, in this seminar we discuss what we can learn from the histories of such atypical housing projects. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | By focusing on the history of ‘sites-and-services’ projects, this seminar aims to develop on the one hand to a historical understanding of urban design in the postcolonial context of development aid, and on the other a theoretical understanding of the centrality of the act of inhabitation to architecture and its history. Upon completion of the course, the students will have: (1) acquired a general knowledge of the role of architecture and urban planning in the historical context of development aid, the main actors involved, and strategies adopted; (2) acquired an in-depth knowledge on the specific housing paradigm of ‘sites-and-services’; (3) developed a critical attitude in engaging with the history of postcolonial urban design; (4) developed a theoretical understanding of the act of inhabitation as central to architecture and its history; (5) developed a reflective attitude on the modes of writing architectural history and the role of inhabitation in it; (6) strengthened their analytical skills by engaging in text- and project-based discussions, their collaborative skills in team-based project analyses, and their communicative skills in presenting the outcomes of their work to their peers. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | The City Lived: ‘Sites-and-Services’ In our seminar series ‘The City Lived’ we focus on the history of urban design with a particular emphasis on the lived experiences in the city. This semester’s seminar will focus on ‘sites-and-services’, which was an important housing paradigm that was mobilized in the context of development aid to provide cost-efficient housing for the global poor. This housing strategy consisted of providing ‘sites’ – plots of land to construct dwellings on – in combination with a set of ‘services’, ranging from infrastructural features such as sewerage and waste disposal, to market-based interventions that aimed to make cheap building material more easily accessible or financial loan schemes that offered inhabitants the means to invest in their homes. It often operated on a large scale and targeted thousands of households in a single project. As it was heavily endorsed by major actors such as the World Bank and the United Nations for several decades since the 1970s as a cost-efficient way to relieve a high number of people from their most basic housing needs whilst simultaneously offering authorities the means to direct the enormous growth of spontaneous settlements in the urban peripheries, these ‘sites-and-services’ schemes have left a major imprint on many cities in the Global South. Despite this impact, their histories are not that well documented. Since these were essentially unfinished projects that relied on their future inhabitants to complete their dwellings, in this seminar we not only intend to dig up the histories of such projects but also to discuss what we can learn from the histories of such atypical housing projects. Inhabitants have drastically expanded and transformed the initial minimal design to often unrecognizable degrees according to their needs and resources and many of these sites are now integrated into wider urban patterns. How do we write the history of ‘unfinished’ projects? How do we acknowledge the act of appropriation and inhabitation as integral part of such projects? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | Texts that need to be read before each lecture will be provided in a course reader at the start of the semester or digitally via our website. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | The course will be graded as follows: Active participation in the course: 20% Active participation in the course involves the capacity of asking mature questions in response to lectures, critically discussing required readings during our discussion seminars and giving constructive feedback to fellow students during presentations. Mid-term assignment: 30% In small teams, students will present a collective presentation on one particular sites-and-services project, each outlining an individual research question they would like to focus on in the remainder of the semester. Final assignment: 50% The final assignment consists of two components: (1) an in-class presentation where in small teams students will present both a collective and individual presentation on one particular sites-and-services project; (2) a short individual written paper, pursuing a research question that reflects the individual student's interest in the topic. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 052-0833-22L | PhD Teaching Does not take place this semester. | 2 credits | 3S | C. Rachele, T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | The course discusses the material encounter of modern architecture and photojournalism as both converged to transform Brasília, the new capital of Brazil designed by Costa and Niemeyer, into a global mass media event. The photographic material produced for magazines promoted images of a new imaginary nation and staged dissonances and microhistories of this massive urban-architectural endeavor. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | To understand the construction process of modern architecture’s photographic representation in international mass media through the collaboration network between photojournalists, editors, illustrated magazines, photo agencies and new technologies. To explore how photojournalism challenges the sterile photographic depiction of modern architecture’s spaces. Instead of abstract conditions and no people, photojournalistic images perform a sort of ‘offstage’, introducing the construction site, everyday events, temporary settlements, imperfections, materials, maintenance, impacts on landscapes and communities. To investigate the exploitative nature and colonial gaze of “humanitarian” photojournalism, and the search for the exotic in faraway lands. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | PhD Teaching: The Architecture of the Photograph: Brasília, 1957-1960“ The fact remains that, right from its foundation, Brasilia benefited from a communicative strategy that made the new capital a clearly identifiable and indeed familiar place - even to people who had never visited it.” Maristella Casciato Supported by portable cameras, Kodak films, halftone printing, air travel, media organizations, and the State, photojournalism in its many forms composed a mediatized representation of the Brasilia and its architecture, offering the public a dramatization of modernism’s colonial expansion to frontier territories in Brazil. In this course, we will investigate the published and unpublished material of photojournalists from around the world who flocked to the interior of Brazil to capture the genesis of Brasília. In a construction site that resembled a battlefield, under extreme sun heat, surrounded by mud and red dust, we will follow the steps of Swiss René Burri (Magnum Photos) and Jack Metzger (Comet Photos), Germans Peter Scheier (Pix Publishing) and Michael Friedl (Freelancer), Swedish Ake Borglund (Se Magazine), Hungarian Thomaz Farkas (Freelancer), Ukrainian Dmitri Kessel (Life Magazine), and American Frank Scherchel (Life Magazine). Like detectives, students will investigate analog cameras, films, printing technologies, search for archives, photographs, missing links, clues and contradictions. Like storytellers, they will develop a cohesive visual narrative by arranging existing and imaginary fragments into an exhibition or photo-essay. Assessment based on active participation in interactive seminars and final essay/exhibition. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 052-0839-22L | Particular Questions in Architectural Theory: Parity in History? | 2 credits | 2S | A. Hultzsch, T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Can we achieve gender parity in architectural historiography? This course is intended to give students an insight into writing critical histories of architecture, challenging and expanding canons. Based on reading seminars and writing exercises, sessions will focus on questions of gender and parity in architecture while exploring specific case studies from the 18th and 19th centuries. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | Can we achieve gender parity in architectural historiography? Can we talk about equal numbers of women, men, and other gender identities when all textbooks agree that there simply were (much) more male architects than those identifying as female until very recently – and still are, if we accept the star system? What would shift, if we insisted on finding a woman with architectural agency for each man we are taught about? How would we find these women? In this course, we will explore what forms of agency woman had before 1900, focusing on her pen as her main tool. Writing and publishing allowed woman a public voice long before she was allowed to enrol for professional degrees or have the vote at the ballot box. She was not silent, and she had a lot to say about her environment. Her lived experiences and her skill to ascribe meaning to spaces for others to relive is as crucial to our understanding of architectural history as that of contemporaneous design practices. We must listen to her if we want to come closer to parity in architectural histories. This course will broaden students’ understanding of the modern age by challenging existing canons in terms of gender, class, race, and other social categorisations creating systems of oppression. Consisting of reading seminars and writing exercises, we will engage both with 18th and 19th-century primary sources as well as with feminist theory across the last 300 years, embedding these in the wider contexts to achieve parity. Writing is central to the course, both as primary source as well as a tool to develop our own engagement with architecture and its histories. Students will gain skills in historical research as well as with digital humanities tools. Concepts taught include situated writing, intensive/extensive reading as well as text mining and analysis. Students will be enabled to write their own histories, to take agency themselves in which ways they want to know about the past. Assignments will consist of several written pieces, produced during the semester, of differing length and format, both creative and academic, always closely linked to our joint research. The pieces will be peer reviewed in class to produce a collaborative response to the question: Can we achieve gender parity in architectural historiography? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | All readings will be available on Moodle. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | This course is intended for students from the 5th semester onwards. Attendance is a key requirement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 052-0851-22L | Topical Questions in History and Theory of Architecture: (Un)settling Territory | 2 credits | 2S | H. A. Kennedy, T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This course poses the question of how projects of land, terrain, and territory enfold laboring bodies and gather around, legislate, and flow through settlement. Linking the architectures of colonization to modernization's damaged ecologies, we will trace the ways in which those spatial orders have been disrupted and re-imagined, proposing new methodologies for the design of planetary futures. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | Seeking to unearth longstanding entanglements between land and architecture, we will chart the imperial global geographies, the territorial formations, and their knowledge systems, shaped and sustained over the last 500 years by the spatial grammar of colonization—the “rifts of broken earths” created by modernization’s displacements. These formations share a common heritage of practices informed by the same recurring themes that define the damaged ecologies of the Anthropocene, a subject of increasing decolonial scrutiny within studies of the built and landscaped environment. Those themes include entrenched forms of racialized violence, land alienation, environmental degradation, and large-scale species loss, narratives of modernity archived by the land and landscape. Thinking alongside Kathryn Yusoff and Swati Chattopadhyay and engaging Indigenous spatial ontologies and Black feminist- and postcolonial counter-mapping, we will trace the ways in which those territorial orders have been disrupted, unsettled, and re-imagined, proposing new methodologies for the design of planetary futures. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | This course opens with the hypothesis that the historical dynamic of deterritorialization that is fundamental to imperial and colonial structures—the unit of the global, formed by empire and capitalism—has taken shape through design and architectural interventions, stressing the need to better understand modern architecture’s land histories. Postcolonial theory further underscores the necessity to shift how we read design’s participation in capitalist transformations of the environment, its long history of “development thinking.” Thinking within and across differences, the readings for this course share a core set of decolonial practices, new patterns of thought, to chart the spatial histories of these transformations. Working with an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach and privileging marginalized voices and geographies, we will explore these interventions and developments with perspectives offered by recent movements in Black studies, critical feminist geography, Indigenous environmental history, and multispecies studies. Engaging these perspectives serves to shift how we understand who and what has shaped the architectural past, while unearthing long-standing but overlooked entanglements between land and the built environment. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | This course is aimed at students from the 5th semester onwards. It will require a set amount of reading and sessions will include intensive discussion and in-class exercises, so consistent attendance is very important. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 063-0805-22L | History and Theory in Architecture IX | 1 credit | 1V | T. Avermaete, H. Teerds | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This course offers a brief introduction to contemporary urban problems and challenges. Based on a thematic approach, the course explores how these issues pose a challenge to the fields of architecture, urban design and planning. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | This course aims to offer a survey of the history and current state of urban theory for students of urban design and architecture. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | It is a somewhat commonplace to say thatwe live in an 'urban age': cities are the most common habitat for the inhabitants of the world, today. Moreover, while more than half the global population lives in cities according to the reports of the UN, it is expected that within the next few decades this amount will increase to two-thirds. This 'urban' condition, however, cannot be generalized. Within the term 'city' a broad range of different urban conditions are taken together: from metropolises to suburban neighborhoods, and from shrinking (old industrial) cities to the new cities that prosper under the conditions of globalization. It also generalizes too much with regard to the urban condition within cities in the so-called Global North as compared to the Global South. In other words: the urban condition is as diverse as there are cities. However, it is also true that it is precisely in the cities that the challenges of our time are most apparent: globalization, gentrification, poverty, climate change. These topics call for a response. The development of cities forms the topic of discussion, not only within the fields of architecture, urban design, spatial planning, but also among politicians, economists, anthropologists, philosophers, citizens and activists. The urban realm and reality has provoked them to think and write about its form and functioning, appearance and structure, to protest against particular issues, and to take initiatives to direct the development in a different direction. Designers and planners reflect on the urban developments as well, sometimes in participating in the development themselves, sometimes from the sideline. This is obviously not new, nor limited to the current urban condition. The discourse regarding the size and growth of cities, its functioning and politics, has a long pedigree in history, going back to the establishment of Greek and Roman city-states. This survey course aims to offer an introduction to issues at stake in cities, tailored to students of architecture and urban design. It will explore the past and current discourses, and will access a broad range of perspectives. It also does an effort to expand the scope beyond regular Western-European and North-American perspectives from Western world. The course will specifically address how architecture (positively or negatively) is involved in these issues. The aim of the course is to challenge the question how architects and urban designers can have an influence on urban developments and issues that we often regard as beyond the scope of architecture. With this challenge, also students are urged to reflect upon their own position regarding architectural interventions in the urban fabric, facing the current condition of the urban environment (in all its diversity). This course consists of weekly, one-hour lectures that address one particular topic at a time. In each lecture, this theme is investigated through different texts and case-studies that highlight crucial moments in the history and developments of cities. At the same time, the case studies will be structured so as to bridge between urban theories and concrete urban situations, design reflections and political ambitions. This will help convey to students the historical pedigree of current discourses on cities, whether simultaneously gain insight the role of designers in respect to the chosen topic. Students will prepare the meetings by reading fragments from core texts on the forehand. The course is finalized through the writing of an essay, wherein the student is challenged to question how architectural agency can address (a) contemporary urban issue(s). Lecture 01 – Introduction Lecture 02 – Politics Lecture 03 – Public Space Lecture 04 – Capital Lecture 05 – Climate Change Lecture 06 – Technology Lecture 07 – Tourism Lecture 08 – Migration Lecture 09 – Housing Lecture 10 – Participation Lecture 11 – Architectural Agency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | For this course, each week students will read fragments from key readings on the topics addressed. The readings will be made available via the website of the course prior to HS2022. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 063-0857-22L | Subject Semester HS22 (Fachsemester) in the Field of History and Theory in Architecture (Avermaete) Enrolment by email to the chair sanna.kattenbeck@gta.arch.ethz.ch; Application deadline is Wednesday 7th September 2022, 8 p.m. A student can only register once for a "Fachsemester" during the Master studies! Available places will be allocated firstly conform the A-B-C-studio priority system, and secondly, if necessary, randomly. You will receive a message about acceptance or rejection for the subject semester by Thursday, September 8, 2021, 2 p.m. at the latest. Students who have been rejected have the opportunity to choose a design class. | 14 credits | 29A | T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Zürich’s Land Commons This Research Studio focuses on the land commons of Zürich and explores how the ways in which land is managed and appropriated influences the construction of the city. What are land commons and how do architects and how do architects and other citizens engage with them? How do they help us in addressing the social, political, and environmental challenges of our time? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | The Research Studio has two main objectives: First, to develop an ‘Archeology’ of Zürich’s land commons. In this part, the work of the urban historian or theoretician is understood as an archaeological venture. The collective stock of Zürich’s variegated land use, as well as the crafts and realizations (buildings and neighborhoods) related to it, will be systematically analyzed as the outcome of codes and as reliant on established practices of ‘commoning’. The result will be a catalogue of the city’s common-pool land resources, illustrating how these provide a basis for practices of ‘commoning’ and how, as architectural, and urban figures, they are integrated into and have an impact upon the city fabric. Second, to identify a ‘Project for the City’. Based on the archeology, we will explore the inherent logics of the land commons of Zürich. The idea is that the uncovering of these logics not only helps to comprehend the historical development of the land commons, but also to speculate about future scenarios for engaging with the scarce land resources in the city. The past, present, and future roles of the land commons in the city will be discussed, as a more comprehensive project for the city as we know it and as it might evolve. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | Cities have always been places based on common resources. While designing and constructing the architecture of the city, architects, urban designers, builders, and inhabitants have had to engage with common resources located in particular places and geographies: inherited common-pool resources (water, nature, air); material common-pool resources (clay, brick, stone, wood); as well as immaterial common-pool resources (craft, knowledge). This understanding of the city, as being intrinsically related to common resources has gained renewed attention, as neoliberalism replaces ever-shrinking welfare structures, and global urbanization is accompanied by rising inequality. It is not only architects and urban designers who are again becoming interested in alternative principles of governing common resources, but also political movements and society at large. Hence, some of these issues – generally labeled ‘the commons’ – have received growing attention in the last decades within the fields of critical urban studies, urban history, urban geography and the social sciences. After four semesters focusing on the water commons, the green commons, the housing commons, and the material commons, this Research Studio continues the investigations into the rich history of ‘the commons’ in the city of Zürich by focusing on its land resources. The ‘land commons’ will be investigated from architectural, urban, typological, environmental, and material perspectives. We will explore how common practices have affected the development of the city, and conversely how land commons enable and structure common practices. Ultimately, this historical research will unlock an alternative reading of the urban and architectural qualities of the built environment of the city, potentially pointing to more socially inclusive and environmentally conscious alternatives to the mostly market driven land use of the city. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | Methodology: Exploring the Tools and Knowledge of the Architect The main hypothesis of the Research Studio is that historical and theoretical research can gain from a profound use of the tools and knowledge of an architect. During the Research Studio students will employ specific architectural tools, such as drawing, writing, and model making to explore historical and theoretical realities. Students will be urged to explore various methods of composing analytical and interpretative drawings. They will reflect upon the capacity of drawing methods from the field of architecture, such as plan drawing, sectional drawings, mappings, serial visions, public drawings, diagramming and perspective representations to act as tools of historical and theoretical research. At the same time, they will be asked to investigate various analytical and interpretative modes of scale-model making. Students may work with different types of models (structural models, mass models, counter form models, landscape and territorial models) as ways to historically or theoretically explore the reality of the city. Far from being simple graphic or artefactual restitutions of the city, these drawings and models will create morphological, thematic or theoretical links between various occurrences in the city. These methods of drawing and model making will be combined with more conventional investigative techniques in the fields of history and theory such as discourse analysis, iconographic studies and compositional investigation, to support a better historical or theoretical understanding of specific occurrences and conditions in the city of Zürich. Students will also be stimulated to use their spatial, formal, material and constructive architectural knowledge to offer alternative historical or theoretical interpretations of the reality that they encounter in the archives, in the library or in the city. They will be asked to activate their specific spatial, typological, compositional, technical, material and constructive expertise to probe into the various historical layers of the architecture of the city in newfangled ways. Within the general theme of land commons, students will be guided to identify their own subtheme, as well as explore their own different methodologies of doing research. During the Research Studio students will confront their empirical knowledge (about space, typology, composition, technique, material and construction), pertaining to the autonomy of architecture, with other types of knowledge (on politics, economy, the social and cultural) that belong to the heteronomy of architecture. In the relation between autonomous and heteronomous knowledge, a new understanding of the city will be constructed. The combination of these tools and methods will offer an in-depth mode of historical and theoretical research, wherein the students will retro-actively explore the spatial, formal, material and constructive features of a particular situation to uncover and reconstruct the logics that have led to a certain urban condition. On the basis of this research, students will be able to develop an architectural hypothesis of the developments in the city of Zürich. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | Course syllabus and reader will be made available during the course's first week. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | A student can only register once for a "Fachsemester" during the Master studies! The studio is self-dependent work and tutoring takes place on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Enrollment will not take place through the D-ARCH website. To enroll for this Fachsemester please send an e-mail to sanna.kattenbeck@gta.arch.ethz.ch by Wednesday 7th September, 2022, 8 p.m. Available places will be allocated firstly conform the A-B-C-studio priority system, and secondly, if necessary, randomly. You will receive a confirmation by Thursday 8th September 2022, 2 p.m. In case of over-applications, students who are not selected will have the opportunity to choose a regular design studio through the D-ARCH website. https://avermaete.arch.ethz.ch/researchstudio | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 064-0005-22L | Advanced Topics in History and Theory of Architecture For Architecture doctoral program only. | 1 credit | 1K | T. Avermaete, M. Delbeke, L. Stalder, P. Ursprung | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Corrective historiographies for architectural research | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | Acquiring insight into advanced research methods available to PhD-researchers in the fields of the history and theory of art and architecture. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | In an era of postcolonial theory and reflection, architectural historiography is faced with a series of new challenges and ambitions, concerning its subjects and its methods. This course will reflect upon three of them: the death of the author, center and meta-theory. A first point investigates how recent scholarship seems to dissociate from histories of single and all-decisive authors, to make way for perspectives that render buildings and neighborhoods as a matter of negotiation between multiple agencies. Second, this course will dwell upon the Euro-American bias of our histories, as well as its implicit center-periphery model, and look at recent attempts to tell more cross-cultural historiographies of architecture. Third, the course will discuss the strong meta-theoretical bias of postcolonial historiography (using theories of power, alterity, gender) and question if this has not resulted in disqualification of the material and formal presence of architecture in our history writing. This threefold change in architectural historiography seems to coincide with a shift in the contemporary discourses on the changing role of the architect, the cooperative character of architectural practice and the renewed interest in the craft. The course will question the productiveness of these resonances between historiography and design practice. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | Scans of selected texts for discussion and exercises will be provided at the beginning of HS 2022 on the course website: https://doctoral-program.gta.arch.ethz.ch/courses/advanced-methods-in-the-history-and-theory-of-architecture | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | - Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 2011. - Smith, Linda T. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books, 2012 - Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. London: Routledge, 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | The seminar addresses the fellows of the Doctoral Program in History and Theory of Architecture. All other doctoral students of the Faculty of Architecture are welcome. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 064-0017-22L | Research Methods in Landscape and Urban Studies: Writing Landscapes, Writing the Urban | 2 credits | 2K | F. Persyn, T. Avermaete, T. Galí-Izard, H. Klumpner, C. Schmid, M. Topalovic | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This seminar supports researchers writing on topics related to landscape, urban studies, and architecture through offering hands-on guidance and a safe space for peer-to-peer exchange. The seminar participants receive guidance on how to work with fieldwork, literature reviews, and archival research, develop arguments and narrative arcs in writing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | Research writing can often be a solitary, arduous, and unrewarding exercise, this seminar aims to promote peer-to-peer exchange, and offer hands-on guidance and a safe space for researchers writing on topics related to landscape, urban studies, and architecture. The seminar will offer guidance as to how researchers can work with fieldwork, literature reviews, and archival research, develop arguments and narrative arcs in writing, in addition to practical tips and tricks. While the seminar is primarily geared towards supporting doctoral researchers in the dissertation-writing phase, it is open to all researchers regardless of where they might be in their research provided they are in the process of developing a work of academic writing such as research plan, a journal article, or a design manifesto. The participants of this seminar are expected to bring a text that they would like to develop over the course of the semester. The texts can be diverse in format and length; it can be a dissertation or book chapter, journal or magazine article, or a research plan. The seminar will alternate between inputs by invited guests, reading and discussion sessions, tutorials, and peer-review. A total of five input lectures by invited guests will be offered during the seminar, where senior academics from the Department and elsewhere will provide a behind-the-scenes look into their writing process. The invited guests will discuss as to how they structure their arguments, organise their sources and materials, and how they find inspiration for their writing process. These input lectures will be alternated with thematically organised tutorial sessions structured around the following themes: writing about fieldwork and field methods, about landscapes, about political ecology and economy, ethnographic human and other-than-human vignettes, about dwelling and urban space. In the first half of these tutorial sessions, the seminar participants will discuss and debate a requisite reading followed by a writing tutorial and feedback session based on the texts. The seminar participants can choose to present the work developed during the seminar at the LUS Doctoral Crits organised at the end of the semester. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | The format will provide an overarching methodological meta-theme, to be defined prior to the event. One external guest critic will be invited. In this case, each presentation will conclude with a discussion round, providing sufficiently detailed feedback for every doctoral candidate. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | 22.09 – EXERCISES IN STYLE 29.09 – Ethnography from the field and archive – ADAM JASPER 06.10 – Writing spatially, writing otherwise - MATTHEW CRITCHLEY 13.10 – Indigenous Landscape Urbanism - KELLY SHANNON 03.11 – Informed gardening activism - BARBARA VAN DYCK 10.11 – Ordering the unfamiliar - ANNE HULTZSCH 17.11 – Landscape, dwelling, and the political ecology - MAAN BARUA 24.11 – From notes to narrative - NIKOS MAGOULIOTIS 01.12 – Imagining the invisible - NANCY COULING 08.12 – Writing in the Planetary Age - HOLLYAMBER KENNEDY 15.12 – LUS Doc Crits | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | Barua, M. (2014) ‘Bio-geo-graphy: Landscape, dwelling, and the political ecology of human-elephant relations’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(5), pp. 915–934. Crysler, C.G. (2003) Writing Spaces: Discourses of Architecture, Urbanism and the Built Environment, 1960–2000. London: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203402689. Eco, U. (2015) How to write a thesis. MIT Press. Geertz, C. (1973) ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture 1973’. Hultzsch, A. (2017) Architecture, travellers and writers: Constructing histories of perception 1640-1950. Routledge. Jackson Jr, J.L. (2013) Thin description. Harvard University Press. Jon, I. (2021) ‘The City We Want: Against the Banality of Urban Planning Research’, Planning Theory & Practice, 22(2), pp. 321–328. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2021.1893588. Kennedy, H. (2019) ‘Infrastructures of “Legitimate Violence”: The Prussian Settlement Commission, Internal Colonization, and the Migrant Remainder’, Grey Room, pp. 58–97. Madden, M. (2005) 99 ways to tell a story: exercises in style. Penguin. Malm, A. (2013) ‘The origins of fossil capital: From water to steam in the British cotton industry’, Historical Materialism, 21(1), pp. 15–68. Malm, A. (2016) Fossil capital: The rise of steam power and the roots of global warming. Verso Books. Malm, A. and Hornborg, A. (2014) ‘The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative’, The Anthropocene Review, 1(1), pp. 62–69. Marcus, G.E. (1995) ‘Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography’, Annual review of anthropology, 24(1), pp. 95–117. Narayan, K. (2012) Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov. University of Chicago Press. Queneau, R. (2018) Exercises in style. Alma Books. Shannon, K. and Manawadu, S. (2007) ‘Indigenous Landscape Urbanism: Sri Lanka’s Reservoir & Tank System’, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 2(2), pp. 6–17. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2007.9723384. Soja, E. (2003) ‘Writing the city spatially1’, City, 7(3), pp. 269–280. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1360481032000157478. Tornaghi, C. and Van Dyck, B. (2015) ‘informed gardening activism: steering the public food and land agenda’, Local Environment, 20(10), pp. 1247–1264. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | The seminar is joint-organized by the chairs of the professors H. Klumpner, Ch. Girot, G. Vogt and M. Angélil (who in HS18 is mainly responsible for the course (one full-day event in the academic semester). Participants in both cases will be expected to submit single-page abstracts of their papers in advance and to make a presentation of app. 20 minutes at the colloquium. The discussion rounds will be moderated by the organizing professor and the invited guests. Enrolment on agreement with the lecturer only. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||