Seminar Courses Autumn 2018

Seminar Courses Autumn 2018 School of Architecture KTH Stockholm

Seminar courses

The History of Swedish Housing Research Erik Sigge The history Swedish housing is relatively well researched and conventionally described in relation to the Swedish welfare state and its developments. This course studies Swedish housing research and explores the contents and methods of specific research projects during the past 100 years. The course provides an understanding of housing research in relation to an overall development of building research and the state’s (and municipalities’) advancement of new housing policies and programs. The course also aims to investigate some of the lesser known research areas and periods, such as historical research on sustainability and housing research after 1985.

To Perform Architecture Sepideh Karami A performative reading of architecture, complicates architectural sites, as well as proposes an understanding of architecture that goes beyond the disciplinary limits. It transforms architecture from objects into sites, into grounds of action or “performing ground” (Laura Levin). Performing ground refers to the continuity of the work of architecture when inhabited by a character. This course aims at investigating such performative aspect in architecture. Through a series of design experiments, students are encouraged to develop performative methods and bring in other forces into architecture, to confront “architecture’s will to be fixed and durable” ( Dorita Hannah) with a temporal and unstable condition.

Permanence and Conversion Johan Mårtelius The two main concepts explored in this course may seem contradictory, but are in fact naturally linked by interaction. The capacity of built structures for conversions may be the key to extended life, or permanence. And the architectural art of conversion may result in products with more richness and sustainability than in an original work. Besides the two key concepts, those of cultural heritage and collective memory will be fundamentally considered.

Historical examples will be explored, from Palladio and Sinan in the 16th century to Carlo Scarpa, Lina Bo Bardi and Rafael Moneo in the 20th. Among local Swedish cases to be considered are the transformations of the Swedish National Bank into the parliament hall 1979-83, and of the electricity station on Södermalm into a mosque, 1997-2000.

Many relevant cases concern industrial and military complexes that have been turned into administrative, academic or cultural sites.

Especially museums are often installed in buildings originally having served other purposes. Also many religious buildings are results of conversions. Here the many “supernumerary” churches in the Swedish landscape form interesting future cases.

The course will be based on seminars and literature plus site visits. A specific case or type should be selected for an individual assignment.

Architecture and Feminisms: Infrastructure and Gender Hélène Frichot Feminist theorist Judith Butler argues that the demand for infrastructure is a basic demand for inhabitable ground, and that the political space of appearance is never separable from questions of infrastructure and architecture. Though they tend to recede into the background, architecturally augmented infrastructures are everywhere, supporting the transports and communications of everyday life.

Human and non-human modes of inhabitation rely on the material and immaterial infrastructures that sustain them. When infrastructures fail, society falters and risks falling into disarray. Using a weblog platform this Critical Studies in Architecture seminar focuses on (architectural) infrastructures by addressing intersections of gender and architecture. See: archandphil.wordpress.com/infrastructure-and-gender-autumn-2018

Architectural Exhibitionism Thordis Arrhenius Not until the postmodern period, as part of the general museum boom, did we see the establishment of the architecture museums as a public institution. This blooming in the late 1970s and 1980s is a critical point of departure to discuss the political power of the architectural exhibition in the twenty-first century. How do cultures of exhibition and display shape and define the discipline of architecture? How is contemporary architectural exhibitionism related to the neo-liberal turn and to the new digitalisation of architecture production? And how, in turn, does the saturation of image production and ‘posting’ in architectural cultures today relate to the public museum?

Starting from Boris Groys’ argument of the fluidity of art (In the Flow, 2016), this seminar series will speculate on how the agency of the architectural museum institution is currently changing and how cultures of display have become an integrated part of architectural production.

New Peripheries, New Centers Alejandra Navarrete Llopis New Peripheries, New Centers: A Visual Map of Minority Communities’ Spaces in Sweden, focuses on daily-life objects, interior spaces and urban contexts inhabited by minority communities that contest dominant discourses, policies and practices in Sweden.

Among others, case studies include women’s associations building new rooms for solidarity and sisterhood; migrant families inhabiting domestic settings of the Million Programme; and indigenous communities proposing a different form of territorial organization. Through research, analysis and documentation, students propose a visual map to discuss strategies for spatial re-appropriation, re-occupation and re-inhabitation by those communities under struggle. The course offers a series of theoretical sessions and workshops to advance a common vocabulary on inclusion, integration and accessibility.

Million Housing Apartment in Tensta,”Restructuring Swedish Modernist Housing.” Project: Erik Stenberg. Photo: Matti Östling. 2012

Seminar courses

Stating architectural agenda Sölen Köseoglu Throughout history, international events have been the medium for architects to discuss what is emerging and vital. From modernist exhibitions, manifests and meetings to today’s architecture and design awards, exhibitions, biennials and triennials; offering a critical discussion platform that aims to present a perspective on the future in an experimental environment. From this point of view, this course aims to discuss new initiatives in architecture also new ways of doing architecture economically and politically through works and discourses produced for events like Venice Architecture Biennale, Chicago Architecture Biennial and Istanbul Design Biennial, evaluating design products related to their sociological, psychological, and ecological surroundings.

Computer aided design and manufacturing seminars Helena Westerlind, Vasily Sitnikov Industrial processes used in production of concrete constructions normally limit the variety of geometry down to merely orthogonal shapes or simple radial curvatures. However, with development of new computer aided design and fabrication methods, e.g. CNC milling, architects and designers gained access to a broad range of shapes based on non-repetitive patterns and highly complex curves.

In this course we will look into how operations with freeform geometry by means of CNC machining can be applied on a large scale in fabrication of concrete components.

Image courtesy - ETH Zurich, Block Research Group

Where are we going?

Anders Wilhelmson Architecture and planning have traditionally been closely connected to structures of power – the spatial translation to ruling ideology. At the same time, architecture and architects have also been engaged in challenging the current order, questioning what the future will be like and proposing alternatives. This course focuses on the relationship between architecture, politics, urban and cultural history. We will trace the history of visionary architecture, ideal cities, radical design, post-modernity and alternative practices, as well as the forces behind todays architecture and urban development and how these have re-interpreted and challenged the way we understand architecture.