U D 383M / ARC 327R / ARC 386M / CRP 385C / LAR 388 Seminar
Wed 9:00am - 12:00pm, SUT 2.110
Open to all U D, ARC, CRP, and LAR students
Juana Salcedo: juana.salcedo@austin.utexas.edu
In this seminar we’ll attend to care as a critical concept that has the potential to disorient and reorient the practice of the spatial arts. Care, repair, and maintenance tend to be neglected and undervalued actions. Architecture has preferred to reward and celebrate the brand new, the latest innovation, even more if created by a ‘solitary genius.’ Throughout our sessions, we will delve into the overlooked assemblages of places, infrastructures, and living beings that support everyday life, inquire about the relations of power that shape these, and experiment on ways to describe “how the world gets put back together,” borrowing from Shannon Mattern. We’ll do so by turning our attention to where we are all situated, the city of Austin, and inquiring about urban practices of care, tracing these processes and making them visible through critical mapping and storytelling techniques. Our work will be informed by a wide body of interdisciplinary conversations about care, with particular attention to discussions in the context of architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture. In sum, care will be our lens to delve into the political and socioenvironmental dimensions at play in shaping the built environment as well as a provoking concept to nourish our imagination of alternative presents. Students will learn how to evaluate and rethink spatial design through the concept of care and rehearse their research and representation skills.
