Selected Current (and Recurrent) Topics in Architecture Theory and Design Practice

A research seminar consisting on assigned readings, presentations, discussions, and design experiments on current (and some ever re-current) topics in architectural theory and design practice.

Anchored on an in-depth reassessment of the role of typology in the process of design, its history, its many reincarnations and its present renewed interest, the seminar will aim to address and explore issues, problems, and questions – some old and some fresh – which will emerge from our inquiries but have also been latent yet unanswered or unexplored.

It is our present understanding of typology, that any attempt at its reformulation within the current architectural discourse will inescapably require a considered response and integration of these interrelated issues: thus Image, figura, wholeness, fragmentation, diagraming, etc. will be specifically explored and played in conjunction with typology in an attempt to achieve a new synthesis and understanding of the architectural design process. Invited guests will visit specific seminars to amplify on the readings and the instructor’s presentations, and to participate in the discussions.

Assignments: a mid-term short paper, an oral presentation to the class and a final short paper or experimental design.  

Students enrolled in this seminar will be expected to have already acquired a broad and solid knowledge of the overall arch of Western Architecture history, from Classical Antiquity to the Present.

Successful performance on this seminar will fulfill M Arch II distributional electives requirements in the area of Theory/Discourse.

Prerequisites: Students must be: a) Second year M Arch II students, b) post-Core M Arch I students, and c) students that have had prior study of Renaissance and Western modern architecture or waved all Architecture Core Program’s Building Texts and Contexts courses.