052-0834-23L  PhD Teaching: At the End of the Wire

SemesterFrühjahrssemester 2023
DozierendeC. Galis, C. Rachele, L. Stalder
Periodizitätjedes Semester wiederkehrende Veranstaltung
LehrspracheEnglisch


KurzbeschreibungThis course shifts the study of infrastructure from abstract material and bureaucratic networks to the buildings, objects, and technologies at the wire’s end. Using the design of these terminal elements as our primary points of analysis, we will read the history of infrastructure through its use and interpretation in local communities.
LernzielSeeking to destabilize the idea that an infrastructure can ever be considered a singular “thing,” this course will view infrastructure as something that takes different forms in local contexts across its vast geography. We will work from the material objects by which an infrastructure is used back to its networked structure—and not the other way around—to recognize that what appears to be a unified system is actually built according to a series of fragmented uses.

Case studies in the course will look not at wires and pipes but rather the things that plug into them—electric light, televisions, computers, sinks, etc.—and the ways various communities have understood the promises and performances of infrastructure through their use.

The methods presented in this seminar will challenge the idea that projects of 19th- and 20th-century infrastructural modernization can be viewed through a universal lens by directing attention to the ways their top-down structures have historically been subverted, resisted, and undermined by local users. These methods present an opportunity to consider the responsibilities of architecture and design as practices that sit precisely at the intersection between large-scale infrastructures and specific sites with their own histories.
InhaltThis seminar will look to scholars working in diverse historic and geographic contexts who study infrastructure through the material forms it takes in local communities. While their approaches and scales of analysis differ, we will read all of their work with an attention to two primary goals. The first is historic: to understand how top-down and bottom-up perspectives of infrastructure have historically differed in each author’s respective site of study. The second is historiographic: to understand how each author writes histories of infrastructure through its use and interpretation in local communities.

While our focus will remain on how infrastructure has been designed in local contexts through the study of its buildings, objects, and technologies, we will look beyond architectural history to diverse scholarship, emphasizing that the problems of infrastructure are fundamentally interdisciplinary. Authors featured in the seminar come from fields including science and technology studies, postcolonial theory, media theory, anthropology, and the environmental humanities amongst others.
KompetenzenKompetenzen
Fachspezifische KompetenzenKonzepte und Theoriengefördert
Verfahren und Technologiengefördert
Methodenspezifische KompetenzenAnalytische Kompetenzengefördert
Soziale KompetenzenKommunikationgefördert
Kooperation und Teamarbeitgefördert
Sensibilität für Vielfalt gefördert
Persönliche KompetenzenKreatives Denkengefördert
Kritisches Denkengefördert
Integrität und Arbeitsethikgefördert
Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstreflexion gefördert
Selbststeuerung und Selbstmanagement gefördert