ARC 327R / ARC 386M Seminar
Wed 6:00 - 9:00pm, SUT 2.110
Open to all ARC students
Kyriakos Kyriakou: kyriakos.kyriakou@austin.utexas.edu
Do you dare to look at the ordinary, uninteresting, banal, or even dirty parts of Austin?
What is the sidewalk you walk on every day made of? What does the Congress Avenue Bridge look like without the bats? Have you ever stepped inside a nail salon?
This seminar experiments with observing, recording, and learning from common yet overlooked places, based on the hypothesis that exposure to unfamiliar conditions sharpens our ability to observe and learn. Can you de-familiarize yourself from your everyday environment?
We will explore the work of architects who acted as ethnographers, challenging the canons of their time through curiosity-driven journeys into the mundane—figures like the Smithsons, Rudofsky, Venturi & Scott Brown, Boyarsky, Ungers, Koolhaas, Bow Wow, Van Eyck, and Hara. Their work will be supplemented by readings and lectures from thinkers beyond architecture, drawing from sociology, geography, literature, journalism, and cinema.
Students will embark on bi-weekly explorations of ordinary yet unknown places, uncovering the rituals of everyday life in Austin and identifying their architectural significance. The goal is to cultivate the gaze of a curious explorer—one who engages deeply with all contexts, seeking to understand the world around them while refining their ability to record and communicate their findings.
