Architecture IV: Making and the Territory
Architecture IV: Making and the Territory
Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesdays 8:15am
HIL E3
The first two lectures provide a thematic survey for the rest of the course, a short history of architecture and modernity, as it developed in the Americas. They draw upon diverse sources from architecture, anthropology, history and culture and serve as reflections on design, skill, craftsmanship, bricolage, perception and nature: broadly the context in which we practice architecture today.
These are followed by case studies from the twentieth century that focus on particular architects and places, exploring how the making of the city can be described in making and construction, just as much as by the history of urban design.
The course concludes with an epilogue set in London, a reflection on the conditions of contemporary practice and on the return of the American legacy to Europe. All together it may quite simply be an anthropology of architecture. But in this case, one not written by anthropologists but by architects. As a whole, the series should help you critically reflect on how the world is made, and the challenges your generation will face.
Course Schedule
I: Making
Tuesday 27th February
II: How the Picturesque Ruined the World
Tuesday 6th March
III. Mies Makes
Tuesday 13th March
IV: In Search of a Perfect Life: Charles & Ray Eames
Tuesday 27th March
V: Real Estate Opportunities: Frank Gehry & LA
Tuesday 10th April
VI: In Search of Real Life: Lina Bo Bardi
Tuesday 17th April
VII: Epilogue: Never Natural
Tuesday 24th April
Trying to be There
Talk and guest crit by artist Richard Wentworth, Tuesday 27 October 2015, 6.30pm, HIL F 41.
Architecture IV
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesdays 8:15am
HIL E3
The first four lectures are a quartet providing the thematic introduction to the rest of the course. They draw upon diverse sources — from architecture, anthropology, history and culture — and serve as reflections on design, skill, craftsmanship and nature: broadly the context in which we practice architecture today.
The six lectures that follow are a series of more in-depth case studies from the long twentieth century. They focus on particular architects and places, exploring how the making of the city can be described in making and construction, just as much as by the history of urban design. The final lecture on the Picturesque — and ultimately our place within nature — brings the series to a close.
It may quite simply be an anthropology of architecture. But in this case, one not written by anthropologists but by architects. It is about being modern and pre-modern. It is about being local and globalized. It is about material, culture and skill. As a whole, the series will make you reflect on larger issues to do with how we construct the world.
Course Schedule
I: What is Design?
Tuesday 17th February
II: Craft
Tuesday 24th February
III. Mies Makes
Tuesday 3rd March
IV: Bricolage
Tuesday 10th March
V: Plecnik in Ljubliana
Tuesday 24th March
VI: Stirling's Arrows
Prof Dr Laurent Stalder
Tuesday 31st March
VII: Crafting Design in Post-war Italy
Dr Catharine Rossi
Tuesday 14th April
VIII: Real Estate Opportunities: Frank Gehry & LA
Tuesday 21st April
IX: Dirty Old River: London (Part I)
Tuesday 28th April
X: Lina Bo Bardi
Nicholas Lobo Brennan
Tuesday 12th May
XI: Dirty Old River: London (Part II)
Tuesday 19th May
I. What is Design?
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesday 17.02.15 8:15am
HIL E3
Further Reading
Tim Ingold, Making
Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind
David Pye, The Nature and Aesthetics of Design
David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship
Further Viewing
Stanley Kubrick, Barry Lyndon
Sergei Bondarchuk, Waterloo
II. Craft
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesday 17.02.15 8:15am
HIL E3
Further Reading
Michel Houllebecq, The Map and the Territory
William Morris, News From Nowhere
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
III. Mies Makes
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesday 03.03.15 8:15am
HIL E3
IV. Bricolage
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesday 10.03.15 8:15am
HIL E3
Further Reading
Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind
Charles Jencks, Nathan Silver, Adhocism
Further Viewing
Jacques Tati, Playtime
Jacques Tati, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot
Tom Sachs, Space Program
Buster Keaton, The Scarecrow
V. Plecnik in Ljubljana
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesday 24.03.15 8:15am
HIL E3
VI. Stirling's Arrows
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Prof. Dr. Laurent Stalder
Tuesday 31.03.15 8:15am
HIL E3
VII. Crafting Design in Post-war Italy
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Dr. Catharine Rossi
Tuesday 14.04.15 8:15am
HIL E3
Dr. Catharine Rossi is a Senior Lecturer in Design History at Kingston University, London where her research specialisms include 20th and 21st century Italian design, the relationship between design and craft and ethically engaged approaches to design past and present.
The curator of Space Electronic: Then and Now at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, she has co-edited The Italian Avant-Garde: 1968-1976 (Sternberg Press, 2013), contributed to publications including the V&A's Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 – 1990 (2011) and La Moda: The Glamour of Italian Fashion 1945 – 2014 (2014), is the author of Crafting Design in Italy: From Post-War to Postmodernism (Manchester University Press, forthcoming) and is a regular contributor to magazines including Crafts, Disegno and Domus.
VIII. Real Estate Opportunities: Frank Gehry & LA
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesday 21.04.15 8:15am
HIL E3
IX. Dirty Old River: London
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesday 28.04.15 8:15am
HIL E3
Further Reading
Steen Eiler Rasmussen, London: the Unique City
R.S.R. Fitter, London's Natural History
Ian Nairn, Nairn's London
X. Lina Bo Bardi
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Nicholas Lobo Brennan
Tuesday 12.05.15 8:15am
HIL E3
XI. Dirty Old River: London (Part II)
Architecture IV
Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesday 19.05.15 8:15am
HIL E3
Constructing the World
A lecture series exploring the relationship between construction, craft design and the making of the city. Urban design is often considered to be a subject about large scale territories. Yet the making and experiencing of the city is local and human. From Ljubljana to Los Angeles, the city has been determined by the interrelation of making, materials and skill.
Architecture VIII
Studio Tom Emerson
Every other Tuesday, starting on 18th February
HIL E4, 8-10AM
Craft and (Radical) Architecture
Dr. Catharine Rossi is a Senior Lecturer in Design History at Kingston University, London where her research specialisms include 20th and 21st century Italian design, the relationship between design and craft and ethically engaged approaches to design past and present.
The curator of Space Electronic: Then and Now at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, she has co-edited The Italian Avant-Garde: 1968-1976 (Sternberg Press, 2013), contributed to publications including the V&A's Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 – 1990 (2011) and La Moda: The Glamour of Italian Fashion 1945 – 2014 (2014), is the author of Crafting Design in Italy: From Post-War to Postmodernism (Manchester University Press, forthcoming) and is a regular contributor to magazines including Crafts, Disegno and Domus.
The History of the World in Three Materials
History is usually told through accounts and interpretations of the unfolding of events and people over time. However it can also be told by examining what we make. The conceptual art pioneer, Seth Siegelaub, who talked in our lecture series last year, abandoned art to collect textiles. He describes how the story of civilisation can be read in the development of textiles – law, economics, religion, agriculture, art, class, craft, technology, even architecture. In other words every aspect of human activity has been shaped by weaving. We shall look at how the primary classes of materials, the basis for architecture, has affected not only architecture but also our broader culture and how our decisions as architects are embedded in the world. It could be seen as the anthropology of materials. Our series will look at the primary classes of materials, timber, stone, metals, ceramics and glass from a technical and cultural perspective and explore how knowledge and meaning in architecture emerges out of the of material production.
Material and Skill
Tom Emerson
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
19 February 2013, hil e4, 8–10am
Timber and Culture: Making Connections
David Leviatin, London.
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
5 March 2013, hil e4, 8–10am
David Leviatin specialises in the conservation and construction of timber framed buildings. A Harvard Ph.D. in American Studies, Leviatin's interdisciplinary work brings together his experience as a documentary photographer, cultural historian and carpenter. His London based company, Boxed Heart Timber Frame, focuses on combining the practical and theoretical aspects of building construction in an effort to reveal the connections between craft and culture.
Brick: The Forgotten Material
James Campbell, Cambridge.
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
9 April 2013, hil e4, 8–10am
Dr James Campbell is an architect and architectural historian. He has practised as an architect in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and the United States. He and Frank Salmon together formed the MSt in Building History, a course in the Faculty run jointly with English Heritage.
His research focuses on three areas: the development of building construction;
17th c. architecture (particularly Wren and Hawksmoor); and the history and development of libraries. His PhD looked at the work of Wren and seventeenth-century carpentry. His first book, Brick: a World History (2003), was featured as Guardian ‘book of the week’ and is available in eight languages. His book Building St Paul's (2007) provides an introduction to the key issues in seventeenth century architecture and building construction through a retelling of the story of the building of the cathedral. He is currently working on a book on the history of libraries, to be published by Thames and Hudson and editing a book on staircases to be published by Donhead.
Premature Iron
Douglas Murphy, Glasgow
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
23 April 2013, hil e4, 8–10am
Douglas Murphy is a writer on architecture. He is the author of The Architecture of Failure (Zero books), and is architecture correspondent at Icon magazine.
His research focuses on cultures of technology and nature in radical architecture from the late 19th century to the present day.
He is currently writing Last Futures for Verso, about the missed opportunities of experimental urbanism in the 60s and 70s.
He blogs at Entschwindet und Vergeht.
Crafting, constraining, weaving, recording , but not completing
At the turn of the twentieth century, the mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré defined two types of truth: scientific or ethical. A scientific truth is demonstrable while an ethical truth is felt and together these form the totality of human experience. In this lecture series we shall explore five themes which form part of that human experience and in particular architectural experience. We shall explore notions familiar to every architect but perhaps not sufficiently discussed: craft, constraints, weaving, the making of history and incompleteness. They do not claim to construct a theory but rather ask certain questions about how the world is made and how the architect contributes to its unending experiment.
Constraints
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
3 April 2012, hil e4, 8–10am
How is art history made?
Seth Siegelaub in conversation with Professor Philip Ursprung
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
4 April 2012, 6.30pm, Cabaret Voltaire
Spiegelgasse 1, 8001 Zürich
Seth Siegelaub was born in the Bronx in 1941. After running his own gallery in New York from 1964 to 1966, he played a pivotal role in the emergence of what became known as Conceptual Art, which resulted in a series of 21 art exhibitions in groundbreaking formats he organised between 1968 and 1971. In 1972 he left the art world and moved to Paris, where he published and collected leftist books on communication and culture and founded the International Mass Media Research Center. In the early eighties he began collecting textiles and books about textiles, and in 1986 founded the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles, which conducts research on the social history of hand-woven textiles. In 1997 he edited and published the Bibliographica Textilia Historiae, the first general bibliography on the history of textiles, which has since grown online to over 25,000 entries.
Stichting Egress Foundation
Raven Row
To build is to weave
Professor Timothy Ingold
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
24 April 2012, hil e4, 8–10am
Professor Tim Ingold is Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He is a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Taking an unconventional approach to anthropology he is looking at ways of bringing it together with architecture, archaeology and art and their mutually enhancing ways of engaging with our surroundings.
His bibliography includes Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (2000). Lines: A Brief History (2007), Creativity and Cultural Improvisation (with Elizabeth Hallam, 2007), Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description,
(2011).
Professor Tim Ingold's full biography
The unfinished
Professor Robert Harbison
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
15 May 2012, hil e4, 8–10am
Robert Harbison is Professor of Architectural History and Theory. He obtained a BA at Amherst College and a PhD at Cornell University. His research interests range widely across cultural history and include gardens, architecture and the other arts, overlaps between different cultures, and the Baroque in all its forms. He has taught at the Architectural Association, Cornell University and Washington University, St Louis.
Craft
Tom Emerson on craft, the pilgrim fathers, square cuts, Gehry and why things shouldn’t be done too well.
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
22 February 2011, hil E6, 8–10am
Bricolage
Irénée Scalbert on bricolage, Lévi-Strauss, Colin Rowe, Charles Jencks, Guiseppe Penone, Robinson Crusoe and other topics.
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
8 March 2011, hil e4, 8–10am
Constraints
Tom Emerson on constraints and treatment of space in the writings of Georges Perec.
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
NEW DATE 3 April 2011, hil e4, 8–10am
Measure
Robert Tavernor on Smoot’s ear, the metric revolution, and the measure of humanity.
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
19 April 2011, hil e4, 8–10am
Where do shapes come from?
Artist Richard Wentworth on points, claws, optics and the shapes of flight.
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
3 May 2011, hil e4, 8–10am
We were never modern
Tom Emerson on flight, Tati, nasa and making the modern interior.
Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
17 May 2011, hil e4, 8–10am
Architecture viii
Six turns in the architectural imagination
At the turn of the twentieth century, the mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré defined two types of truth: scientific or ethical. A scientific truth is demonstrable while an ethical truth is felt and together these form the totality of human experience. In this lecture series we shall explore 6 themes which form part of that human experience and in particular architectural experience. They shall be of the ethical order but will stop to pick up and even challenge scientific, verifiable knowledge. We shall explore notions familiar to every architect but perhaps not sufficiently discussed: measure, failure, constraints, craft, bricolage and shapes. Together they will present one story through knowledge and the architectural imagination. They do not claim to construct a theory but rather ask certain questions about how the world is made and how the architect contributes to its unending experiment. They could be seen as 6 turns of the architectural imagination.
Submission
For this course you are asked to prepare your own seventh turn in the architectural imagination. You are to produce a short written or illustrated essay on a subject of your choice, a subject which you feel deserves more consideration in architectural discourse. You may either write an essay – of 1500 to 2000 words (in English or German) or taking inspiration from John Berger's Ways of Seeing, produce a visual narrative, not unlike an illustrated lecture.
You should submit your title by end of week 4 and, unless it has been challenged by the chair, you should proceed with defining your term or terms and then develop your story.
The submission date is Tuesday 10 May. A selection of the best essays will be presented at the end of the course.
