Tom Avermaete: Catalogue data in Spring Semester 2023 |  |
| 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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| 052-0802-00L | Global History of Urban Design II  | 2 credits | 2V | T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This course focuses on the history of the city, as well as on the ideas, processes and actors that propel their development and transformation. This course approaches the history of urban design as a cross-cultural field of knowledge that integrates scientific, economic and technical innovation as well as social and cultural change. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | The lectures in this course deal with the definition of urban design as an independent discipline that nevertheless maintains strong connections with other disciplines and fields that affect the transformation of the city (e.g. politics, sociology, geography, etc). The aim is to introduce students to the multiple theories, concepts and approaches of urban design that have been articulated from the turn of the 20th century to today, in a variety of cultural contexts. The course thus offers a historical and theoretical framework for students’ future design work. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | 23.02.2023 / lecture 1: Housing and the Industrial City 02.03.2023 / lecture 2: Cities and Ideologies 09.03.2023 / lecture 3: Envisioning Urban Utopias 16.03.2023 / lecture 4: Reconstructing the City, Constructing New Towns 23.03.2023 / no class (Seminar Woche) 30.03.2023 / lecture 5: New Capitals for New Democracies, New Institutions for Old Democracies 06.04.2023 / lecture 6: Rethinking Masterplanning (guest lecture) 13.04.2023 / no class (Easter) 20.04.2023 / lecture 7: Countercultural Experiments with Urbanity 27.04.2023 / lecture 8: Finding Meaning in the Postmodern City 04.05.2023 / lecture 9: Open-Ended Strategies for Imploding Cities 11.05.2023 / lecture 10: Reflections on an Age of Urbanisation | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | Prior to each lecture a chapter of the reader (Skript) will be made available through the webpage of the Chair. These Skripts will introduce the lecture, as well as the basic visual references of each lecture, key dates and events, and references to further/additional readings. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | The book that will function as main reference literature throughout the course is: -Tom Avermaete, Janina Gosseye, Urban Design in the 20th Century: A History (Zürich: gta Verlag, 2021). Other books that provide background information for the course are: -Eric Mumford, Designing the Modern City: Urban Design Since 1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018) -Francis D. K. Ching, Mark Jarzombek and Vikramditya Prakash, A Global History of Architecture (Hoboken: Wiley & Sons, 2017) -David Grahame Shane, Urban Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective (Hoboken: Wiley & Sons, 2011) 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). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 052-0804-00L | History and Theory of Architecture II | 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. (Prof. Dr. M. Delbeke) Introduction in the methods and instruments of the history of art and architecture. (Prof. Dr. M. Delbeke, Prof. Dr. L. Stalder, Prof. Dr. P. Ursprung, Prof. Dr. T. Avermaete) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | Acquiring basic knowledge of the history of architecture and architectural theory, resp. of the methods and instruments of research into architecture. Being able to identify the main architectural issues and debates of the period and geography covered in the course. Acquiring the attitudes and tools to develop a historically informed reading of the built environment. Acquiring the tools to be able to draw on historical, theoretical and critical research to nourish one's architectural culture. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | The course History and Theory of Architecture II offers a chronological and thematic overview of the architecture and architectural theory produced in Europe from the 15th up to 19th century. Thematic lectures about key questions at play during the period will be combined with the in-depth analysis of historical buildings. Themes will cover the emergence and development of Vitruvian design theory and practice up to the 19th century, and related issues such as the emergence of the architect; the media of architectural design and practice (drawings, models, building materials); patterns and media of dissemination and influence (micro-architecture, imagery); building types (the palazzo and the villa); questions of beauty and ornament; questions of patronage (e.g. the Roman papacy); the relation of buildings to the city (e.g. the development of European capitals); attitudes towards history (origin myths, historicism); the question of the monument. The course Fundamentals of the History and Theory of Architecture II consists of different parts, each dealing with a particular area of research into the history of art and architecture (1) The historiography of architecture (M. Delbeke) (2) Architectural media (L. Stalder). (3) Architecture and art (P. Ursprung) (4) Urbanism and the Commons (T. Avermaete) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | Literature and handouts will be provided over the course of the term. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | For the course History and Theory of Architecture II students will rely on assisted self study to acquire basic knowledge of the canonical history of architecture in Europe. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 052-0818-23L | Theory of Architecture Seminar: Pressure Points - The Subjects of Race and Feminism | 2 credits | 2S | R. Choi, T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This course examines architecture through a set of lenses developed in Black studies, feminist technoscience theory, Black queer/trans studies. In asking questions around exclusion and belonging in the contemporary study of spaces, the course explores how constructs around race & gender have created interlocking forms of oppression that permeate the culture practice and discipline of architecture. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | This course examines the built environment through a set of lenses developed in Black studies, Critical Race Theory, feminist technoscience theory, Black queer and trans studies. In asking questions around exclusion and belonging in the contemporary study of spaces, the course explores how constructs around race and gender have created interlocking forms of oppression that permeate the culture practice and discipline of architecture. The course asks what role imagination can serve in the practice and discipline of architecture—an imagination which pressures the field to contend with the past and nurture a radical practice of imagination where it might unhinge itself from systems of oppression in the immediate present. The course will alert students to the problematics of white Western modernity’s use of race and gender to create certain categories of populations: the vulnerable, dispossessed, and disenfranchised as an entry point to discuss alternative narratives around difference. Readings will include contemporary concepts of abolition, Black aesthetic theories of fabulation and futurism, Black feminist poetics, and critical race theory among others. We will read Sylvia Wynter, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Denise Ferreira da Silva, to name a few. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | The course will alert students to the problematics of white Western modernity’s use of race and gender to create certain categories of populations: the vulnerable, dispossessed, and disenfranchised as an entry point to discuss alternative narratives around difference. The course will question such frames as way to apply pressure points on the accepted histories of architecture and the built environment. Readings will include contemporary concepts of abolition, Black aesthetic theories of fabulation and futurism, Black feminist poetics, and critical race theory among others. We will read Sabine Broek, Tavia Nyong’o, SA Smythe, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, and Sylvia Wynter, to name a few. The full syllabus with weekly reading sets can be viewed on our course webpage. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 052-0828-23L | Seminar History and Theory of Urban Design: Public Urban Scale Models  Does not take place this semester. | 4 credits | 2S | T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Building cities is not solely a matter planners, designers, and developers, but also of the public. Urban Scale Models are well equipped to enable public participation in such development processes. This course focusses on such physical models, and provides students with an historical, theoretical and personal understanding of the urban scale model as a public tool. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | The aim of the course is to provide students with an historical and theoretical understanding of the urban scale model as a public tool. Besides that, the aim is to actively engage with models, in order to test, experience and investigate the public dimensions of the urban scale models. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | Urban development is obviously not a matter for designers, planners, politicians and developers alone. In any case, the city is a form of co-production. Not only because somewhere in a development process there is always a moment of participation, involving citizens in the discussion or development of the city, but also because the city is in the end mainly 'produced' by its inhabitants. Usually, such a participation moment is too little and too late, often only offered at the moment when policymakers and developers have already decided what is to be built or what is to be adapted. It is becoming increasingly clear that involving residents at an early stage of a process leads to more support for the developments, and therefore to more successful urban developments. In this seminar, we focus our attention on the physical urban scale model, because it is precisely models that are well equipped to enable participation in development processes. Models have strong performative characteristics, enabling the participation of different actors, not only the stakeholders in a project, but also the public at large. Models are well equipped to function as instruments of negotiation. They can steer a discourse around the development of particular projects through their accessibility for a lay public, and by inviting the public to interact, react and participate. Aspects as materiality, abstraction, scale, legibility of the model, as well as the mediation techniques through which the model is brought to the attention of a larger public, define and calibrate the degree of accessibility and the possible of involvement of different actors. These aspects thus define what we can call the ‘publicness’ of the model. In this seminar students will explore together with various actors such characteristics that enable urban scale models to become public instruments. Using historical and theoretical examples, students will be shown how models can enhance an urban discourse and how this discourse is shaped by different actors on the model. Through a few introductory lectures and the discussion of some texts on urban models, a theoretical framework is developed. In a few guest lectures, the actual functioning of the model in practice is examined and the theory tested (lectures by for instance an architectural office focussing on participation processes, the planning office of the municipality). Also the relationship between the physical and the digital model will be discussed. Besides that, the students will engage in the course by building a few models themselves. In each model they investigate a particular aspect of the model, which define the publicness of it (e.g. scale, abstraction). In a final model, they reflect on the relationship between the different aspects and the accessibility of the model as an invitation to interaction and participation. These models will be presented in an exhibition at the HIL building. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | During this course different texts will be discussed. The compulsory readings will be made available via the website of the course prior to the start of FS2023. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 052-0840-23L | History and Theory of Architecture Seminar: Contamination | 2 credits | 2S | H. K. Le Roux, T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | How can we tell the stories of distant things that influence each other? This seminar discusses and creates (hi)stories in architecture and urbanism that take into account the cross-site and interdependent relations of dominant and dependent duos. It looks at and creates new representations of north-south and south-south productions of space. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | The seminar is aimed at students whose research interests and design ambitions encompass global sites. It will introduce concepts from world systems, postcolonial and decolonial theory. Following student- and site-led research areas, it will create opportunities to challenge singular readings of architectural and urban places by finding the alterity within them. This work in turn will lead a fresh representation of sites in the form of a short text, curatorial work, or presentation. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | Readings and seminars Exemplary work in architectural and urban history, film and curation Discussions on own projects in development Round table and presentations | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | Jane Hutton, 2020. Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of material movements Giovanna Borasi, ed. 2011. Journeys: how travelling fruit, ideas and buildings rearrange our environment Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006. Babel [film] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 052-0852-23L | Diasporic Modernities and Insurgent Domesticities | 2 credits | 2S | H. A. Kennedy, T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This seminar begins with the premise that the modern built environment has been shaped in relation to migration, diaspora, and displacement. In this class, we will explore the ways in which settlement and migration are enacted in relation to one another, tracing the ways in which architectural knowledge is created alongside transience, marginalization, and domestic insurgency. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | Unstitching the fabric of empire and capitalism’s violently guarded “worlding” capacities, we will think through the insurgent labor of inhabitance at the small-scale, in precarious everyday circumstances, militarized zones of occupation, across the contested commons of formerly colonized lands, in humanitarian camps and refugee cities. By and large, these spaces are contemporary embodiments of a transformation in relations between bodies, capital, and land that has its roots in the 16th century. Thinking with Sara Ahmed, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, and others whose work provides a powerful framework for rethinking the relationship between belonging, dispossession, and the built, we will explore the effort that goes into “uprooting” and “regrounding” homes, challenging the naturalization of homes as origins: “Being grounded,” Ahmed writes, “is not necessarily about being fixed; being mobile is not necessarily about being detached.” The readings will engage recent scholarship in architectural historiography, including the on-going work of the research collective Insurgent Domesticities, which “draws on practices that emerge from and constitute interiority, which transform the figurations, materiality, and narrations of ‘home’ and ‘domesticity’ within the present worldwide protectionist climate, in which ‘home’ is still a fiercely pursued, maintained, and guarded space.” This course has been planned in collaboration with the international symposium Concept Histories of Settlement, co-organized by Hollyamber Kennedy and Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, that will take place this semester. In this seminar, we will study the work of the contributors to this symposium—architectural and environmental historians, urban ethnographers, film makers, architects, and activists. Students in this class are warmly invited to participate in the symposium. Together, we will propose new methodologies for writing embodied histories of the built and imagined environment that “unsettle” our settled attitudes towards inhabitance, domesticity, and the global land politics that entangles them. We will build a platform for new architectural narratives concerned with diasporic and mobile practices of belonging. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | Working with images from their current home or family environments, students will explore experimental modes of writing, narrating their own architectural stories or experiences of diaspora, domesticity, and / or insurgency. Alternatively, students can explore experimental architectural narratives of a migration story from history, tracing the relation between movement and place at the large and small scale. It is an invitation to write dissident lives “on the move,” with care, into scholarship. This is a reading and writing-based seminar. We will engage in close readings of select critical texts and will experiment with different forms of writing about diasporic and migration space, about belonging, inhabitation, domesticity, and its mirrors—unsettlement and displacement. Students will be asked to read 1 of the 2 required readings each week and to upload a short comment on the text, including key words, to the class Miro board. Using these key words, we will build a glossary of terms for this subject. There will be 3 short-form writing exercises due in the class which we will workshop together. At the conclusion of the course, students will have a small dossier of their own critical texts. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | This course is designed for Master's student level, and also open for PhD candidates. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 063-0804-23L | History and Theory of Architecture VIII: Seen from the South | 2 credits | 2V | C. Nuijsink, T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This course is a quest for non-Eurocentric paradigms and perspectives in urban theory developed in the South. By highlighting different urban logics and experiences, the course aims to broaden our understanding of the heterogeneity of urbanisms around the world. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | Upon completion of the course, students will have: (1) gained an awareness of why curriculum decolonisation is crucial as part of our commitment to justice; (2) identified the existence of alternative canons of knowledge which have been previously marginalised or dismissed, yet whose inclusion and discussion are essential to expanding the canon; (3) acquired in-depth knowledge of multiple urban theories developed in the South; (4) learnt to contextualise non-Western histories and knowledge within the framework of imperialism, (neo)colonialism, and power structures; (5) strengthened their analytical skills by engaging in in-class discussions and weekly responses. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | Our understanding of how urban designers and architects can design cities is still largely affected by Western urban conditions and perspectives. The European city, in particular, with its steady and controlled growth, has served for a long time as the background against which new urban design methods and instruments are developed. As scholars who advocate a decentring and reframing of the widest conceptualisations of the urban have argued, urban design history is still based upon the dichotomy of “First World” model cities that generate new theories versus problematic “Third World” cities in need of correction. However, if our urban theorisations remain anchored in this Euro-American experience, we will be incapable of analysing and understanding the heterogeneity of urbanisms around the world. This course sets out to overcome this asymmetrical ignorance by recalibrating the gaze. Course reading, lectures and in-class discussions centre around urban theories developed in cities in Latin-America, Africa and Asia to illustrate that urban design and urbanisation are not prerogatives of the Western world. The course will highlight alternative canons of knowledge which have been hitherto marginalised or dismissed because of (neo)colonial power structures, yet are crucial in understanding the design and production of cities. Through studying urban theories based on cities that develop according to other logics and generate different urban experiences, this course seeks to extend our knowledge of urban design, interrogate its assumptions, and enlarge our intellectual horizons to include a wider range of perspectives. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | This course is curated by senior staff of the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design (GTA), who will ensure a wide range of voices and perspectives are represented. The course will start with a series of input lectures by scholars whose work will bring fresh perspectives to the realm of urban theory. Each input lecture will be followed by a critical reflection and in-class discussion. During the semester, students will work on the final assignment: writing a short biography of one protagonist whose work is discussed in class. Two sessions in the course are entirely dedicated to working on this assignment, acting as peer-review sessions in which students critically review each other's work. 'History and Theory of Architecture VIII: Seen from the South' is considered the first in a series. The focus of the required reading and the invited guests will change each year. The Spring 2023 course will explore the concept of “public space” in non-Western contexts. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | During this course different texts will be discussed. Both required and further reading will be made available via the website of the course prior to the start of FS2023. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | This course is a 2 ECTS Kernfach for Masters students offered by the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (GTA). The course will be graded as follows: Active participation in the course: 30% Active participation in class is defined by weekly attendance, the ability to ask mature questions in response to the guest lectures, and the provision of constructive feedback to fellow students during workshop sessions. Responses to reading: 30% This course requires students to demonstrate active engagement with the urban theories offered on the course by submitting weekly responses to the required reading. In addition, each student will be asked to engage with further reading at least once during the semester, write a response to it, and contribute this additional knowledge to the class discussion. Final assignment: 40% The final group assignment consists of: 1. Writing a clear and concise biography of one of the protagonists discussed in class 2. The creation of a select bibliography of the protagonist's work using MLA citation format. 3. Locating a portrait image of the selected protagonist, and providing the photo credits. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 063-0858-23L | Subject Semester FS23 (Fachsemester) in the Field of History and Theory in Architecture (gta) Does not take place this semester. Enrolment in agreement with the chair only. Meetings as required and in consultation with the chair. A student can only register once for a "Fachsemester" during the Master studies! | 14 credits | 29A | T. Avermaete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Material Commons and the City: Zurich This Research Studio focuses on the material commons of Zurich and explores how local material resources influence the aesthetic, construction and craft cultures. It attempts to answer questions as: What are the material commons and how do architects and other citizens engage with them? How do material resources produce a common architectural and urban idiom? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | The Research Studio has two objectives. First, to develop an ‘Archeology’ of Zürich’s material commons. In this part, the work of the urban historian or theoretician is understood as an archaeological venture. The collective material stock, as well as the crafts and realisations (buildings and neighbourhoods) related to it, will be systematically analysed 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 material 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 develop a 'Retroactive Manifesto'. Based on the archeology of the first phase, students will explore the inherent logics of the material commons of Zurich. The idea is that the uncovering of these logics not only helps to comprehend the historical development of the material commons, but also to speculate about future scenarios for engaging with material resources in the city. The past, present and future roles of material 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 | Material Commons and the City: Zurich Cities have always been places based on common resources and common practices. 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); and immaterial common-pool resources (craft, knowledge). This understanding of the city, as related to common resources and practices, 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. Some of these issues – generally called ‘the commons’ – have also received growing academic attention in the last decades within the fields of critical urban studies, urban history, urban geography and the social sciences. This Research Studio continues the investigations into the rich history of ‘the commons’ in the city of Zürich by focusing on its material resources. The ‘material 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 material commons enable and structure common practices. The research will unlock an alternative reading of the urban and architectural qualities of the built environment 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 material 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | A student can only register once for a "Fachsemester" during the Master studies! Self-dependent work. Enrollment on agreement with the chair only. Meetings as required and after consultation with the chair (Wednesdays). The collective and individual projects together will offer an alternative reading, which retro-actively traces the urban territory and architectural quality of the city of Zurich back to the local common resources and common practices. The different materials – texts, drawings, models – will be combined in an atlas, which presents this alternative reading to a larger audience. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 064-0004-23L | Advanced Topics in History and Theory of Architecture: Read into it: Architecture through literature | 3 credits | 2K | M. Delbeke, T. Avermaete, L. Stalder, P. Ursprung | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This seminar avails itself of the complexities and richness of pre-1850 literary sources on architecture to explore and discuss some fundamental methodological questions: who writes about architecture and art, and why? What is a legitimate historical source? How can we gain access to it? How do we develop an at once historical and critical approach? How does mediation generate interpretation? Etc. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | Acquiring insight in the different possible research methods available to PhD-researchers in the fields of the history and theory of art and architecture. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | The course will alternate bi-weekly reading seminars with individual work on a selection of historical literary sources on architecture. Participants will be asked to work on sources proposed by the lecturer, and to bring sources of their own choice. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | In-person meetings on alternate weeks. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 064-0018-23L | Research Methods in Landscape and Urban Studies: Writing Urban Landscapes of the Anthropocene | 3 credits | 2K | F. Persyn, T. Avermaete, T. Galí-Izard, H. Klumpner, C. Schmid | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | This course addresses the specificity of writing about the urban, landscape, and territory in the Anthropocene. The seminar surveys key writings, ideas, and figures in the Anthropocene debate in conversation with critiques from environmental humanities and postcolonial studies. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | Anthropocene has emerged as a contested yet transdisciplinary term to describe the planetary condition under climate change and environmental catastrophe. While being attendant to its critiques, the Anthropocene discourse provides researchers from critical landscape and urban research to engage with a diversity of fields such as earth sciences, art, environmental humanities, agrarian, literary, and cultural studies. This course addresses the specificity of writing about the urban, landscape, and territory in the Anthropocene. The seminar surveys key writings, ideas, and figures in the Anthropocene debate in conversation with critiques from environmental humanities and postcolonial studies. A number of invited guests working at the forefronts of Anthropocene research will bring seminar participants into their research and writing process. Additionally, the seminar will offer a number of hands-on critical writing and peer-review sessions to help the seminar participants develop and work with the allegories of the Anthropocene. Typically, the seminar sessions will alternate between inputs by invited guests, reading and discussion sessions, tutorials, and peer-review. The invited guests will provide a behind-the-scenes look into their writing process, including how they structure their arguments, organise their sources and materials, and find inspiration in their writing process. During the first half of the 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 seminar would be organised the following sessions and will culminate with LUS Doctoral Crits organised at the end of the semester: 24.02 Introduction – Writing in the Anthropocene - Nitin Bathla 03.03 Botanical City - Sandra Jasper 10.03 Histories of Settlement workshop - Hollyamber Kennedy & Anooradha Siddiqi 17.03 Landscapes in deep time: Nuclear Waste and the Swiss Alps - Rony Emmenegger 31.03 Landscapes of the empire - Hollyamber Kennedy 21.04 Territories of Swiss Colonialism - Denise Bertschi 28.04 A guided walk through the multispecies landscape of Zurich- Flurina Gardin 05.05 Geological Filmmaking - Laura Coppens 12.05 Landscapes of fossil capitalism - Giulia Scotto 19.05 LUS Doctoral Crits | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | Voie, Christian Hummelsund. "Nature writing in the Anthropocene." In Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication, pp. 199-210. Routledge, 2019. Boes, Tobias, and Kate Marshall. "Writing the AnthropoceneAn Introduction." the minnesota review 2014, no. 83 (2014): 60-72. Gandy, Matthew, and Sandra Jasper, eds. The botanical city. Jovis Berlin, 2020. Kennedy, Hollyamber. "Infrastructures of “legitimate violence”: The Prussian Settlement Commission, internal colonization, and the migrant remainder." Grey Room 76 (2019): 58-97. Emmenegger, Rony. "Deep Time Horizons: Vincent Ialenti’s Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press." Anthropocenes–Human, Inhuman, Posthuman 2, no. 1 (2021). Grommen, Ciel, Denise Bertschi, Tali Serruya, Karim Bel Kacem, Carol Joo Lee, Yeji Lee, and Seyoung Yoon. "Territories of Assembly." In Artsonje Art Centre, Seoul. 2014. Litvintseva, S., 2018. Geological Filmmaking: Seeing Geology Through Film and Film Through Geology. Transformations. Scotto, Giulia. "Between Visible and Invisible: ENI and the Building of the African Petroleumscape." In Oil Spaces, pp. 84-108. Routledge, 2021. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | The seminar is jointly organized by the coordinator of the Doctoral Programme in Landscape and Urban Studies, and the I-LUS faculty. The seminar is open to all researchers working at the urban landscape and territorial scale 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, an article, or a design manifesto. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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