Since the first industrial revolution, science and technology have constantly challenged architecture. Technology in particular has represented a powerful source of change for architecture. New materials and structural types have emerged, inducing dramatic changes in the definition of the architectural discipline. From iron construction to digital architecture, from Viollet-le-Duc's structural rationalism to Archigram's technological eclecticism and beyond, the course will study important episodes in this two centuries history.

The lectures deals not only with the practical consequences of the intercourse between architecture, science and technology, like the development of concrete construction or the 20th century quest for three dimensional structures, but also with their cultural dimension. Theoretical issues, such as the relations between architectural aesthetics and mechanization or the influence exerted by the social sciences, from history to sociology, are evoked. For science and technology have not only fostered changes in building techniques. They have shaped architectural culture.

Students enrolled have to pass a mid-term examination based on the lectures. At the end of the term, they produce a paper related to the field covered in the course.

Buildings, Texts, and Contexts
GSD 4203-M3, Lecture, Spring

This six-module sequence, offered over three semesters, presents an introduction to the complex, interwoven web of conceptual issues and historical narratives in western architecture from antiquity to the present. Each module presents detailed case studies of buildings, writings, and theoretical concepts in the specific contexts of their formation. In each case study, a major architectural or urban project is presented in depth and discussed in its social, political, and cultural contexts. Special attention is given to the interdependent relationships between architectural concepts and audiences, social institutions, aesthetic theories, and building practices. The first and last modules examine critical and theoretical issues in architecture's history (module 1) and contemporary practice (module 6); modules 2-5 cover, in chronological sequence, four of the major historical periods in the history of western architecture. Each module may be taken independently.

4203-M3, Buildings, Texts, and Contexts: Romanticism and Industrialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, charts the emergence of rationalism and neo-classicism, as well as the impact of the industrialization, professionalization, and institutionalization of architecture and urbanism.

Space and Subjectivity in the Modern Period
GSD 4417, Seminar, Fall 2007, with Ewa Lajer-Burcharth

The seminar examines the relation between architectural space, real and imagined, and the constructions of the self from the 18th century to the present. Issues of interiority, dwelling, sexuality, narcissism, voyeurism, ornament, and technology are considered. Case studies range from the invention of intimacy in eighteenth-century architecture to the conception of the self implicit or explicit in modern architecture. Regarding contemporary architectural production, the question then arises of the subject it is meant for. Should we build today for cyborgs?

Proseminar in History, Theory and Urban Studies
GSD 4501, Fall 2007, with Eve Blau

This research seminar addresses subjects of history, theory and human sciences related to architecture and the city for students preparing for or enrolled in doctoral degree programs.

Digital Culture, Space and Society
GSD 4412, Lecture, Spring

Computer and networks like the Internet have transformed our perception of space. They are also synonymous with the development of a new type of society often characterized as informational. Although its full scope has become visible only in the past decades, the digital revolution is rooted in a relatively long history. The massive expansion of information at the beginning of the twentieth century, or the intensive use of computer-aided simulations during the Cold War, represent key episodes of this history. The course will study these episodes as an introduction to the contemporary questions raised by the digital revolution in the domain of urban and architectural planning and design.

A first set of questions regards the reshaping of sociability that is taking place under our eyes. What are its consequences on the way cities and building are conceived? Should one design for cyborgs? The use of the computer by planners and architects raises another set of interrogations regarding the consequences of such an evolution. Does it jeopardizes the physical basis of architectural design as some critics put it? What is taking place under our eyes is perhaps a radical shift in our definition of materiality, a shift the effects of which extend far beyond the urban and architectural realm.

Themes covered by the course:

1. The Rise of the Society of Information.
2. Cold War, Computers and Simulation.
3. Systems Theory and Urban Debates in the 1950s and 1960s.
4. Cybernetics and Architecture.
5. The Development of the Internet.
6. Virtual Communities and Public Space.
7. Urban Nomadism and Telepresence.
8. Cyborgs Stories.
9. Cities and Events.
10. Architecture and the Virtual: An Historical Perspective.
11. The Poetics of Computation.
12. Contemporary Approaches in Digital Architecture.
13. Towards a New Materiality.