Architectural Theory 2

Code:

300303

Acronym:

300303

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
CNAEF	Architecture and Urbanism

Instance: 2010/2011 - A

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Arquitectura (A)
Course/CS Responsible:	Integrated Master Degree in Architecture

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MIARQ	207	MIARQ	3	-	9	-	243

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

Aiming the mobility of the meanings and the complexity of the materials offered to the construction of architecture, how could we creatively serve the destiny of architecture as structure, expression and physical projection of the imagination, as experimentation and experience, as knowledge and construction, without subverting the structuring of architecture by the arbitrary and abusive manipulation of the complexity of the materials that organize it? How could we establish a discourse on architecture that reflects propositively upon its actions, without thereby evading the spaces of the specific problems of the discipline and/or evading the intentionalities-materials of the project’s house-boby, in its action towards the definition of the places and the meanings?; what is to have a theoretical discourse that, turning invention and discipline, work and knowledge a problem, identifies-agitates a particular way to conceptualize architecture – tectonic/mobile platform –, being aware that “all conflict is on projects and not on this or that discipline” (B. Miranda)?

“If the vocation of theory is to produce the concepts by which architecture relates to other areas of the social practice, also architecture may be placed as construction of new concepts of space and its dwelling; that is to say, buildings and drawings may be theoretical searching a coherence between object and analysis, producing concepts as objective and material as the built form.” Taking Michel Hays’ assumption, in the study of the house – systems, processes, forms, meanings and senses –, in this course it is objective to address: scales-dimensions of the dwelling-of inhabiting-of the house; inhabiting and quotidian, body house and landscape, house and interior figures; residence strategies, domestic regimes, housing morphologies – supports and variable units, association and grouping, identity and indetermination.

Program

In the long duration that (counter)says-(un)does in/by the circumstance, between the excess of freedom and the excess of vigilance, architecture inscribes in that double risk what its theory has identified as problematic argumentation of autonomy and heteronomy, natural and artificial, art and utility, abstract and concrete, local and global, real and virtual.
Reyner Banham, who showed himself to be a polemist in the poetic exchanges between ‘art brut’ and ‘pop’ culture, wrote, a few years ago, “a home is not a house”. In this perspective, the house will probably be the geometry of a device on/to a complex of geometries of relations and measurements, of categories and figures, of meanings and senses. Opposite to Farnsworth (1945-50) – house of all the inhabitants/house of no inhabitant, a kind of immobile enclosure suggesting a quotidian’s freezing – the Schindler-Chace houses (1921-22), the Eames’ house (1947) or the Smithson’s house are the making a problem of the container as (des)placement (un)focus on the banal, without rhetoric: what is a house made of? “Home is not a physical space, but an inconstable/instable need; wherever you are, home is always in another place” (R. Sennett) – the “Slow House” (Diller-Scoffidio).
Starting with a few topic(s) of architecture(s) | topic(s) of house(s), the argument will occur in an open weft of theoretical vibrations-resonances (re)collected-associated in a diffuse geography of authors-positions-manifests: Agamben, Attali, Baldeweg, Banham, Conde, Foucault, Friedman, Gausa, Graham, Habraken, Hall, Klein, Lefebvre, Lerup, Levinas, Marti, Morales, Moles, Moley, Moneo, Pezeu-Massabuau, Quetglas, Smithson, I. Solà-Morales, Sloterdjik, Soriano, Teyssot.

The programmatic contents will be exposed with basis on a chart with six theme-coordinates:
1 “Speculative progress: For an analytical architecture as experience. Knowledge, Experience and project”
. Architecture and experience, architecture and techniques, architecture and indetermination, architecture and knowledge, architecture and autonomy-heteronomy, architecture and invention, architecture and hospitality.
2 “House: theme, variation, escape”
. Residence and urban phenomenology. Town culture and architecture signs. Town and building: town as place, town as site, town as architecture.
. House, dwelling, residence, domicile, building, ruins.
. Forms of dwelling – invariant, repetition, variation, series, combination, grouping, association; functional minima; minimal aggregation units; maximal aggregation units.
. Dwelling and minimal unit – functional, automatic, normalized, mobile, virtual.
3 “Device-house – dwelling, domain, devices”
. Space production.
. House artifact. House dwelling machine [machine à habiter]. Machined house.
. Public, private, collective, domestic, intimate, between. Groupal. Common.
. Crafts house. Prosthesis house. Laboratory house. Net house.
4 “House – interior figures: ‘ceremony, intimae, private, domestic, bohemian, social, nomad’, net”
. Body and interior: convention, measure, material, surface, wall, threshold, passage, , percurse.
. House, face and hospitality. House, person and host.
5 “House and the dissolution of the compartmental module unit”
. House of one and house of masses. House of all, house of nobody.
. Continent and house dissolution – strategies of residence, dwelling concepts: supports and variable units, identity and indetermination (systems and dispositions).
6 “Mobil house. Mobile house. Kit construction”
. Collage house – built and transformation, confront strategies.

Mandatory literature

BALDEWEG, Juan Navarro; La Habitación Vacante, Valência: COAC/Editorial Pré-Textos, 1999
BALLESTEROS, José; Ser Artificial. Glosario prático para verlo todo de otra manera, Madrid: Fundación Caja de Arquitectos, 2008
BARBEY, Gilles; L’Évasion Domestique. Essai sur les relations d’affectivité au logis, Presses Poytchniques et Universitaires Romandes, 1990
Companion to Contemporary Architectural Thought, (edit.: Ben Farmer, Hentie Louw), London: Routledge, 1993
FORTY, Adrian; Words and Buildings. A vocabulary of modern architecture, London: Thames &Hudson, 2000
HERNANDEZ, Manuel Martin; La Invención de la Arquitectura,, Madrid: Celeste Edicione, 1997
LEFEBVRE, Henri; La Production de l’Espace, Paris: Anthropos, 2000 (4ª edição)
LERUP, Lars; Building the Unfinished. Architecture and human action, London: Sage Puiblications, 1977
MORALES, José; La Dissolucion de la Estancia. Transformaciones domesticas 1930-1960, Madrid: Editorial Rueda, 2005
PALLASMAA, Juhani; The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the Senses, , Londres: Routledge, 2000
SANTA-MARIA, Luís Martinez; Intersecciones, Madrid: Editorial Rueda, 2004
SANTA-MARIA, Luís; El Árbol, el Camino, el Estanque, ante la Casa. , Barcelona: Fundación Caja de Arquitectos, 2004.
SOLÀ-MORALES, Ignasi de; Diferencias. Topografia de la Arquitectura Contemporanea, Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1995
VALDERRAMA APARICIO, Maria Luz; La Construcción de la Mirada: Trés Distancias , Universidad de Sevilla/Secretariado de Publicaciones, 2004

Complementary Bibliography

CERTEAU, M., GIARD, L., MAYOL, P.; L’Invention du Quotidien, Paris: Gallimard, 1994
GORDO, António Gámiz; Ideas sobre Análisis, Dibujo y Arquitectura, Sevilha: Universidade de Sevilha, Secretariado de Publicaciones, 2004
Housing for the Millions. John Habraken and the SAR (1960-2000), Rotterdam: NAI publishers, 2000
LEATHERBARROW, David; The Roots of Architectural Invention. Site, enclosure, materials, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993
MIRANDA, Antonio; Ni Robot Ni Bufón, Madrid: Ediciones Catedra, 1999
PICON, Antoine; Digital Culture in Architecture. An introduction for the design professions , Basel: Birkhauser, 2010
SANSOT, Pierre; Les Formes Sensibles de la Vie Sociale, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986
SORIANO, Federico; Sin_Tesis, Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2004
Theorizing Architecture Theory. An anthology of architectural theory (1965-1995), (ed. Kate Nesbit)., New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996

Teaching methods and learning activities

The promotion of an investigation project will express itself as agitator support within teaching-learning: practicable of apprenticeships, object of study, objective in the learning act. Teaching time of three hours of weekly class will aim a statement of times articulated for: exposition of the subject; execution, individual or in group, of short duration exercises to deepen the themes of the program; orientation and monotoring of the annual individual investigation work; presentation and information of results.

keywords

Humanities > Philosophy > Phenomenology
Technological sciences > Architecture
Humanities > Arts

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

Description	Type	Time (hours)	Weight (%)	End date
Attendance (estimated)	Participação presencial	108,00
	Total:	-	0,00

Eligibility for exams

It is a prerequisite for obtaining frequency of the curricular unit the presence of at least 75% of the classes actually given.

Calculation formula of final grade

Evaluation will focus on the result of the improvement showed by the student in the several programmed or spontaneous interventions, developed in the scope of the pedagogic process of the discipline The final classification will result from the balancing of four components: assiduity and participation, 10%; assemble of exercises of study and/or critical reflection made along the year, 20%; work; practical group exercise, 30%; process and defense of the individual final syntheses work, 40%.