Symptomatic Reading of Architecture

Harvard GSD

Within the longstanding traditions of architectural interpretation, this course proceeds from two alternative positions that share a single premise: the semiotic model of architectural theory is exhausted. The first alternative is symptomatic reading in its Althusserian lineage — structural causality, the Lacanian theory of the subject, and current extensions of ideology critique — which locates meaning in a work’s silences and structuring absences. The second is François Jullien’s écart—the…