Year 4
Advanced Architectural Studies Module Coordinator: Dr Tania Sengupta Teaching Assistant: Marcela Araguez
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2017
Seminars Flexible Bodies, Flexible Selves Tijana Stevanovic Hidden Histories and Multiple Modernities Edward Denison U-topographics: Utopic Journeys into Postmodern Culture Robin Wilson Architecture & The People: unpicking the politics of how places are made (and what that means for practice) Daisy Froud Criticism & the History of the Architectural Magazine Anne Hultzsch Senses and the City Jacob Paskins An Ecology of Mind – revisiting Gregory Bateson’s 1976 seminar in the era of World Systems Jon Goodbun Type: Culture, Meaning, Practice, Politics Tania Sengupta Architecture, Art & the City Eva Branscome Ornament: Barbaric Splendour or Architectural Sophistication? Oliver Domeisen Architecture and the Image of Decay Paul Dobraszczyk Gothic Designs, Gothic Desires Jeffrey Miller
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The Advanced Architectural Studies module, in the first year of the two-year professional Masters programme, focuses on architectural histories and theories. Here, we reflect on architecture within a broader, critical, intellectual and contextual field, simultaneously producing and being produced by it. We look at architecture’s interfaces with other disciplinary and knowledge fields – from the scientific and technological to the social sciences and the humanities. We straddle empirical and theoretical knowledge, design and history, the iconic and the everyday. Depending on individual interest, the course helps students engage with architectural history and theory as a critical approach to augment design, as a parallel domain to test out design approaches or as a discrete or autonomous domain of architectural engagement. It focuses on three key types of academic development: first, a reflective, critical and analytical approach; second, research instinct and investigative methods, and third, skills of synthesis, writing and articulation. The module also acts as foundational ground for the Masters thesis that students undertake in the final year of the MArch programme. The course consists of a set of lectures followed by the core of the module – six tutor-led seminars on a diverse range of themes. These span the architectural histories of various global contexts, and, thematically, issues such as buildings, urbanism, typology, ecology, politics, technology, production, public participation, urban regeneration, phenomenology, historiography and representation (see list of seminars). The lectures are on the architectural, urban and spatial histories of sequential moments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but rendered through the individual conceptual and methodological frameworks of each of the seminar tutors. At the end, based on their learning from the lectures and seminars, the students formulate a critical enquiry around a topic of their choice and produce a 4,000-word essay.