Discourse Practices

This course takes stock of the proliferating media and institutional frameworks within which architectural research takes form. We will understand these discursive modes–publications, exhibitions, installations, labs, collectives, pedagogies, policies, among others–as sites where architectural thought moves between the documentary and the propositional. We will look broadly at the landscape of discourse practice with the aim of thinking together about the particular affordances, limits, materialities, methods, reach, and politics of these various modes of working, and we will approach our topics on historical, theoretical, and practical terms.

This course will be comprised of lectures that introduce a range of historical and contemporary discourse practices, seminar discussions of texts (historical, theoretical, and otherwise) that might animate our understanding of those practices, and, finally, practical workshops. Participants in this class will be expected to lead reading discussions, formulate a research proposal, and examine a particular case study (historical or contemporary) through an in-class presentation and final paper.