Seminar Courses Spring 2019

Seminar Courses Spring 2019 School of Architecture KTH Stockholm

Seminar Courses

A. The Historic Dimension in Architecture Johan Mårtelius The course deals with historical knowledge as an active component in architectural creation. Architectural history explains the present as a result of a developing process, but it also presents experience from past centuries or millennia as still relevant knowledge. The backward view, and its interpretation, concern many aspects, including sustainability, contextual belonging and cultural identity.

Various cases of active historical reception will be discussed, such as that of European renaissance, but with a special focus on early 20th century Nordic radical classicism. Thus concepts of modernity, permanence and tradition will be dealt with in relation to historic cases, movements and theoretical frameworks. ​

B. Ahmed for Architects Brady Burroughs Calling all feminist killjoys! Academic publishers Routledge produce a series called Thinkers for Architects, introducing philosophical and theoretical ideas to an architectural audience. The 15 current titles include Bourdieu, Foucault, Derrida, Merleau-Ponty, the usual suspects, with one female thinker, Irigaray. In this course we will begin to outline a book they should have commissioned, Ahmed for Architects, as a revision to the series. By reading and discussing key texts from queer feminist Sara Ahmed’s work, we’ll collectively produce a fanzine-primer that introduces her concepts, ideas, and their possible connections to the discipline and culture of architecture.

C. History Now: Between Past and Future Erik Sigge With post-truth and fake news, the discipline of history is under scrutiny. Our view of history is contingent on our view of society and tied in the present to a (hopeful, indifferent or ill-fated) future. This course will explore the use and usefulness of history and of historical studies (in architecture and beyond), through readings and discussions of a selected number of seminal and little-known texts. The course is intended to raise critical questions on the reading, learning and writing of history, and to consider what kind of facts and empirical material that make up evidences for our studies and narratives. The course also addresses present-day issues of historiography and contemporary approaches of historical study, and asks what counts as historically relevant, and when? Who is history for, and who is to write it?

The course is structured as a traditional seminar course with readings and discussions, lectures and presentations. Each student is expected to engage in the discussions of the seminars and write a short essay related to the literature of the course.

D. Architecture Beyond Anthropocene Elizabeth B Hatz The course presents a set of (possible/impossible) stances facing architecture after Anthropocene through a speculating lecture series.

A selection of Course Literature is offered. The outcome shall be a short reflective text (max 200 words) by each participant relating to the themes, readings and stances presented. Images are optional.

The material shall be gathered into a book by the participants, finalized in its physical form on the 10/4 and presented to the Course Leader.

E. Architectural Exhibitionism II: Technologies of Display Thordis Arrhenius How do cultures of 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 display of architecture? This seminar series will speculate on how the technology of architectural exhibit is currently changing and discuss why cultures of display have become such an integrated part of architectural production in the 21st century. The course is suitable for students that wish to experiment and test curatorial initiatives or are interested in museum and exhibition cultures in relation to an architectural proposal. We will work with both drawing and text, to investigate the diversified media of the architectural exhibition.