everything.study
4.607

Thinking About Architecture: In History and At Present

Units arranged · Graduate

Studies the interrelationship of theory, history, and practice. Looks at theory not as specialized discourse relating only to architecture, but as touching on many issues, whether they be cultural, aesthetic, philosophical, or professional. Topics and examples are chosen from a wide range of materials, from classical antiquity to today.

Fall 2009

This class will be constructed as a lecture-discussion, the purpose being to engage important theoretical issues while simultaneously studying their continuing historical significance. To enhance discussion, three debates will be held in class. Each student will be required to participate in one of these debates. Each student will also be required to write three short papers. Class participation is essential and will be factored into the final grade. The course will portray the history of theory neither as the history of architectural theory exclusively, nor as a series of prepackaged static pronouncements, but as part of a broader set of issues with an active history that must be continually probed and queried. The sequence of topics will not be absolutely predetermined, but some of the primary issues that will be addressed are: pedagogy, professionalism, nature, modernity and the Enlightenment. Classroom discussions and debates are intended to demonstrate differences of opinion and enhance awareness of the consequences that these differences had in specific historical contexts.

Readings

  • SES #: 1 · TOPICS: Course introduction · READINGS: “The Vision.” In The Works of Lucian of Samosata . Translated by Henry Watson Fowler and F. G. Fowler. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009, pp. 1-7. ISBN: 9781103536498.
    Reading assignment
  • Plato. “Book VII, 514a-518d: The Cave.” In The Republic . Translated by Desmond Lee. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 2007. ISBN: 9780140455113.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Book X.” In The Collected Dialogues of Plato . Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780691097183.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Book VI.” In The Collected Dialogues of Plato . Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780691097183.
    Listed reading
  • Buy at MIT Press Tschumi, Bernard. “Architecture and Limits,” “Violence of Architecture,” and “Disjunctions.” In Architecture and Disjunction . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996, pp. 101-140, 207-204. ISBN: 9780262700603. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Nietzsche, Friedrich. Sections 108, 109, 115-117, 124-126. In The Gay Science . Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York, NY: Vintage, 1974. ISBN: 9780394719856.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Preface,” and “First Treatise: ‘Good and Evil,’ ‘Good and Bad’.” In On the Genealogy of Morality . Translated by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1998, pp. 1-33. ISBN: 9780872202832.
    Listed reading
  • Latrobe, Benjamin. “Letter to Robert Mills.” In The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Volume 2, 1805-1810 . Edited by John Van Horne. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986, pp. 239-244.
    Listed reading
  • Locke, John. “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” Chapter 2 in The Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration . New York, NY: Dover, 2002. ISBN: 9780486424644.
    Listed reading
  • Kant, Immanuel. “Analytic of the Sublime.” In Critique of Judgement . Book II, sections 40-54. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780192806178.
    Listed reading
  • Tafuri, Manfredo, and Luisa Passerini. “History as Project: An Interview with Manfredo Tafuri.” ANY no. 25/26 (2000): extracts from pp. 28-31.
    Listed reading
  • Vitruvius. On Architecture . Book 1. Translated by Frank Granger. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931. ISBN: 9780674992771.
    Listed reading
  • Gropius, Walter. Scope of Total Architecture . New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1955, excerpts. (Twelve points, beginning with “I sum up my conclusions for a transitional approach in architectural education”)
    Listed reading
  • Greenberg, Clement. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” In Perceptions and Judgements, 1939-1944 (The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 1) . Edited by John O’Brian. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986, pp. 5-22. ISBN: 9780226306179.
    Listed reading
  • Stirner, Max. The Ego and His Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority . New York, NY: Dover, 2005, excerpts. ISBN: 9780486445816.
    Listed reading
  • Vischer, Robert. “On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics.” In Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893 . Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art, 1994, pp. 92-98. ISBN: 9780892362592.
    Listed reading
  • Arnheim, Rudolf. The Dynamics of Architectural Form . 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009, pp. 258-259 and 262-274. ISBN: 9780520261259.
    Listed reading
  • Husserl, Edmund. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology . Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson. New York, NY: Collier, 1969, pp. 45-55, 171-179, and 242-243.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Philosophy as Rigorous Science.” In Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy . Translated by Quentin Lauer. New York, NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1965, pp. 71-75, 98-109, 136-137, and 142-143. ISBN: 9780061311703.
    Listed reading
  • Heidegger, Martin. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” In Poetry, Language, Thought . Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2001. ISBN: 9780060937287.
    Listed reading
  • Norberg-Schultz, Christian. Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture . New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1991, selected pages. ISBN: 9780847802876.
    Listed reading
  • SES #: 13 · TOPICS: Course wrap-up · READINGS: Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System . New York, NY: Touchstone, 1992, pp. 26-33, 38-39, 51-59, 64-65, 80-81, 90-93, 162-163, and 194-197. ISBN: 9780671792251.
    Reading assignment

Prerequisites & course information

Prereq: 4.645 or permission of instructor Acad Year 2027-2028: Not offered Acad Year 2028-2029: G (Fall) Units arranged

Sources