ARC 386M
Post-Professional Seminar

Instructors: Andrew Vernooy and Larry Doll

Description:

Architecture represents, brings clearly to mind, ideas which we have about the world in which we live. It is a cultural art which continually reframes our condition of dwelling within an otherwise natural environment. Each generation of ideas must address both the universal condition of dwelling as well as the artifactual condition of the architecture which preceeded it. Therefore, architecture remains a continual critique of itself and the social context of which it is a part. It is the intent of this seminar to explore a variety of ideas pertaining to contemporary architecture and urban design. It is not a survey of a particular point of view or a catagory of logic. It is intended to be fragmental. Our objectives center on the generation of discussion within the studio component of the first semester of the Post Professional Program. If the topics are controversial, if they prevoke rebuttal, if they irritate, the seminar will have served its purpose.

Topics addressed by the seminar include but are not limited to the following: the city as consumption, Modernity/Postmodernity: a culture in transition, cultural embedment / cultural dispersion, criticism and ideology, image and reproduction, textuality and illiteracy, typology, applied phenomenology, monuments and fragments, the preservation of public space, the presence of the past, the project of the modern, and rhizome and root.

Meeting Times:

TTh 9:30- 11:00 am

Structure:

Topics for the following week will be introduced by lecture in the first hour of the class; the discussion session for the reading assigned for that date will follow immediately. A student will be assigned the task of initiating the discussion but all students will be expected to participate. Two copies of the reading will be provided in advance of the lecture and it will be expected that everyone attending will have read the material. You will be called upon to discuss it.

Requirements:

Position Statements (4): 40%
Essay: 15%
Paper: 15%
Participation: 20%
Final: 10%

Readings:

It is up to you to coordinate possession of the readings in order that everyone gets an opportunity to read them before class. NO INCOMPLETES WILL BE GIVEN IN THIS CLASS