Seminar Courses. 2024 Spring

Seminar Courses Spring 2024. YR 4/5 School of Architecture KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Course codes for seminar courses YR 4: A42SEV YR 5: A52SEV

Seminars Spring 2024

Thordis Arrhenius

Monumental Histories

Anders Bergström

The Archive of the Stockholm Public Library

Roberto Crocetti

Structures

Chen Feng

An Introduction to Space Syntax

Katja Grillner

Feminist Writing in Architecture

Malin Heyman

Unworlding

Ulrika Karlsson

Drawing, Recording, Imaging the Ground

Daniel Lindberg

Rammed Earth

Elisa Maria López

Nature, Culture, Space

Helena Mattsson

Race, Space, History & Architecture

Meike Schalk +

Environmental Learning with Young People

Anette Göthlund + Miro Sazdic

Seminar Courses

Monumental Histories: Architectural Obsolescence Thordis Arrhenius In the radical modernization of Stockholm in the 1960s, an extensive part of the building stock in downtown was torn down and the pattern of plot division and property ownership was changed. This re-scaling of the city generated new development sites that allowed for large-scale city blocks. With a focus on architectural obsolescence and the architectural monument, this seminar course will study a set of recently demolished monumental buildings in the city of Stockholm and write their history. In the seminars, we will speculate on the interdependency between the notion of the historical monument and monumentality, as well as on the binary opposition between change and permanence, memory and history. As an assignment, you will write an obituary commemorating a lost (post)modern building.

The Archive of the Stockholm Public Library Anders Bergström Sweden’s most referred building in an international context serves here as a case study for a critical historiography. Ever since the Stockholm Public Library was completed in 1928, its reception has changed over the years. Already at a very early stage, the library was overshadowed by the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition, and it was first included in the canon of modern architecture about 1960. The reception has been based on a rather limited knowledge of the project as a whole, given the character of a primary material that can be referred to as “the archive”. The seminar highlights this material, consisting of drawings, photographs, documents and printed texts, as well as the building itself.

Structures Roberto Crocetti The course is primarily aimed at architect students who desire a better understanding of load-bearing structures. An important objective of this seminar course is to endow the students with a sort of “structural alphabet” which on one hand will simplify the understanding of structural problems and on the other hand will make the communication with the engineer considerably easier.

In this course the student will be encouraged to build physical models, e.g. using wood or paper, in order to gain a better understanding of different types of structures, thus being able to describe their physical behavior.

An introduction to Space Syntax Chen Feng Space syntax is a set of theories and techniques that offer a framework to quantify aspects of spatial relationships embedded in buildings and cities. It enables a reading of the perceptual and functional affordances of inhabited space that are relevant to design and planning. The course introduces students to the theory of space syntax and the associated methods of spatial analysis that can be applied to (a) model the human functions of urban space, (b) benchmark design alternatives, (c) evaluate competing designs to support design choices, and (d) inform the design imagination.

Feminist Writing in Architecture Katja Grillner During this seminar we will study feminist writing within theories and critical practices of architecture. The course contains lectures and peer group discussions around assigned readings and your own writing. The following themes are dealt with in the lectures: Writing feminism; Voice and address; Place, space, situation and dialogue; Academic conventions. The seminar aims at enabling students to develop tools for feminist interpretations of architecture and in an extended sense, to create new architectures. On completing the seminar, the student will have a basic orientation concerning feminist writing practices within architecture, and have initiated the development of a personal relation to it. The seminar will be given together with the course AD237V .

Unworlding Malin Heyman Based on the assumption that our current, post-Enlightenment conceptualization of “world” is predicated on unsustainable asymmetries, this seminar will explore the relevance of contemporary theorist Jack Halberstam’s recent discourse on “unworlding” - an antithesis to utopian notions of “world”-making – to critical architectural practice. The course will introduce readings and precedent studies in the examination of reciprocities between architectural production and making “world” from antiquity to the present, as well as exercises in thinking architecture with strategies of “unworlding” – such as refusal and resistance – informed by the work of Denise Ferreira da Silva, Gordon Matta-Clark and others.

Drawing, Recording, Imaging the Ground Ulrika Karlsson To make a plan, to draw, to trace, to make notations, to record, to describe or to imagine life on ground, on a two-dimensional flat plane has shown to be an architectural question and a question of geometry changing over time. To draw the plan as a footprint, nested in the ground (common during the renaissance), to locate a horizontal cut somewhere above ground to make a floor plan (the current idea of a plan today), or to lower the plan into the soil to reconstruct archeological remains in a plan view, are different architectural conceptions of drawing, recording and imaging a plan.

Rammed Earth Daniel Lindberg Is ordinary earth, the world’s oldest building material, still one of the most sustainable options for construction? If compressed without additives, it can be returned to the ground or reused. We will explore the history of this material, its current use, and future application possibilities. What are its properties, and how can it figure creatively in architecture? Can rammed earth be applied in large-scale building construction and compete with more resource-intensive materials? Why are more buildings not made with earth? Through readings, lectures, models, and experiments, we will develop an understanding of rammed earth and its potential as a building material.

Nature, Culture, Space: Anthropological Approaches to Environment Elisa Maria López The aim of this course is to expand our understanding of the environment: the diverse spaces humans build, live, and work. How might we understand built and unbuilt environments as expressions of social and cultural relations? How can we understand the social beyond the human, and how humans and non-human relations shape the world? The seminar will interrogate the concept of environment through the lens of sociocultural anthropology. We will examine diverse relations between nature and culture through ethnographic accounts, films, and theory from around the world to gain an understanding of how environments – from cities to nature reserves – are produced as materializations of the social.

Race, Space, History & Architecture Helena Mattsson “Architectural historians have traditionally avoided the topic of race.”

This is the opening of the anthology Race and Modern Architecture anthology. This book is one of the first collections of texts discussing the role of race as a concept establishing human differences in the construction of the Western canon of architectural modernism. Scholars have revealed Western knowledge as racialized in most other humanities fields, but there has been a profound silence in architecture.

Taking Race and Modern Architecture as the starting point, this seminar course will move beyond the history of modern architecture, and investigate issues of space-making and race-making in more recent practices. Individual work will be mixed with group work, and students are encouraged to explore different narration formats, such as an essay, reportage, or film.

Environmental Learning with Young People Meike Schalk, Anette Göthlund, Miro Sazdic This seminar course addresses urban environmental learning with children and youths taking the (built) environment as a pedagogical tool.

Course readings and lectures will introduce participants to historical and contemporary notions of urban pedagogies and their methodological approaches, such as walking, drawing, mapping, narrating, recording, imaging, filming, and podcasting. The course includes a whole-day workshop with young people (April 3) and happens between Konstfack – University of Arts, Crafts and Design and KTH with instructors from both institutions. Dates: Feb 14, 21 (10-12), March 13, April 3 (10-15), 10, 17, 24. Time: 13.30-15.30. )

Courses: A42SEV, A52SEV