4.647
Technopolitics, Culture, Intervention
Examines the manner in which key theories of technology have influenced architectural and art production in terms of their "humanizing" claims. Students test theories of technology on the grounds of whether technology is good or bad for humans. Limited to 15; preference to MArch students.
Fall 2014
Topics
- Technology / Technique / Tectonics
- Territory
- Governmentality
- Biopolitics
- Body
- Systems
- Organicism
- Synthetics
- Labor
- Cyborg
- Environment
Readings
- Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology.” In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays . Translated by William Lovitt. Harper and Row, 1977, pp. 3–35.
- Frampton, Kenneth. “The Status of Man and the Status of his Objects: A Reading of the Human Condition.” In Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World . Edited by Melvyn A. Hill. St. Martin’s Press, 1979. ISBN: 9780312360726.
- ———. “Industrialization and the Crisis of Architecture.” In Oppositions 1: September 1973 . Institute for Architecture, 1973.
- Otero–Pailos, Jorge. “Surplus Experience: Kenneth Frampton and the Subterfuges of Bourgeois Taste.” In Architecture’s Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern. University of Minnesota Press, 2010, pp. 183–249. ISBN: 9780816666034.
- Lefebvre, Henri. “Social Space.” In The Production of Space . Translated by Donald Nicholson–Smith. Blackwell Publishers, 1991. ISBN: 9780631140481.
- Brenner, Neil. “Theses on Urbanization.” In Implosions / Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization . Jovis, 2014. ISBN: 9783868593174.
- Liberti, Stefano. “Geneva: The Financiers of Arable Land.” In Land Grabbing: Journeys in the New Colonialism. Translated by Enda Flannelly. Verso, 2013. ISBN: 9781781681176.
- Picon, Antoine. “What has Happened to Territory.” In Territory: Architecture Beyond Environment. Edited by David Gissen. Academy Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780470721650.
- Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. “Treatise on Nomadology: The War Machine.” In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia . University of Minnesota Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780816614028.
- Virilio, Paul. “World War II bunker architecture.” Bunker Archaeology. Histoire and Collections, 1998. ISBN: 9782907757492.
- Foucault, Michel. “Governmentality,” “Space, Knowledge, and Power,” and “The Political Technology of Individuals.” In Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984. Vol. 3. Edited by James D. Faubion. The New Press, 2000, pp. 201–22, 349–64, and 403–14. ISBN: 9781565842571.
- Agamben, Giorgio. “What is an Apparatus?” In What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays . Translated by David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780804762298.
- Corbin, Alain. “The Stench of the Poor” and “Domestic Atmospheres: 142–75. ” Chapter 9 and 10 in The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination . Harvard University Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780674311756.
- Chua, Beng–Huat. “Public Housing and Political Legitimacy.” In Political Legitimacy and Housing: Singapore’s Stakeholder Society . Routledge, 1997. ISBN: 9780415166904.
- Evans, Robin. “Rookeries and Model Dwellings: English Housing Reform and the Moralities of Private Space.” In Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays . MIT Press, 1997, pp. 92–117. ISBN: 9780262550277.
- Ross, Andrew. Chapters 4, 9, and 10 in The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney’s New Town . Ballantine Books, 1999. ISBN: 9780345417510.
- Foucault, Michel. Chapters 7–9 in The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception . Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. Vinatge Books, 1994. ISBN: 9780679753346.
- Colomina, Beatriz. “The Medical Body in Architecture.” In AnyBody . Edited by Cynthia Davidson. MIT Press, 1997, pp. 228–38. ISBN: 9780262540889.
- Lupton, Ellen, and J. Abbott Miller. The Bathroom, the Kitchen and the Aesthetics of Waste: A Process of Elimination . Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780938437420.
- [WJ] Boyce, James. “What is the Systems Approach? (1969).” pp. 67–82.
- Maldonado, Tomas. “Environment, Nature, Alienation,” “Human Ecology and the Dialectic of the Concrete,” “The Idea of a System,” and “Revolution and Strategy of Innovation.” In Design, Nature and Revolution: Toward a Critical Ecology. Harper and Row, 1972, pp. 1–5, 6–12, 50–53, and 54–56. ISBN: 9780060127770.
- Jones, Caroline. “Hans Haacke 1967.” In Hans Haacke 1967 . MIT List Visual Art Center, 2012. ISBN: 9780938437772.
- Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. Chapters 2, 6, and 8 in General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. Braziller, 1969.
- Ritterbush, Philip. “Organic Form: Aesthetics and Objectivity in the Study of Form in the Life Sciences.” In Organic Form: The Life of an Idea . Edited by G. S. Rousseau. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972. ISBN: 9780710072467.
- [WJ] Wright, Frank Lloyd. “The Art and Craft of the Machine. (1901)”
- [WJ] Haring, Hugo. “The House as an Organic Structure. (1932)”
- [WJ] Mumford, Lewis. “Technical Syncretism and Toward an Organic Ideology. (1934)”
- [WJ] Honzik, Karel. “Biotechnics: Functional Design and the Vegetable World. (1937)”
- [WJ] Kiesler, Frederick J. “On Correalism and Biotechnique: A Definition and Test of a New Approach to Building Design. (1939)”
- [WJ] Collins, Peter. “The Biological Analogy. (1959)”
- [WJ] Katavolos, William. “Organics. (1960)”
- [WJ] FernándezGaliano, Luis. “Organisms and Mechanisms Metaphors of Architecture Mechanical, Thermal, and Cybernatic Machines versus the Living and the Built. (1982)”
- [WJ] Yeang, Ken. “A Theory of Ecological Design. (1999)”
- Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. “Introduction: Rhizome.” In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia . University of Minnesota Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780816614028.
- Bell, Michael, and Craig Buckley, eds. Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture and Engineering . Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781616891664.
- Lavin, Sylvia. “Neither: Plastic as Concept, Plastic as Material.” In Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture and Engineering . Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781616891664.
- Colomina, Beatriz. “Plastic Atmospheres, 1956 and 2008.” In Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture and Engineering . Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781616891664.
- Scott, Felicity D. “Plastic Man Strikes, Again (and Again).” In Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture and Engineering . Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781616891664.
- Wigley, Mark. “The Plastic Line.” In Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture and Engineering . Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781616891664.
- Lynn, Greg. “‘Good–Bye Tectonics, Hello Composites.” In Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture and Engineering . Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781616891664.
- Marx, Karl. “Wage Labor and Capital.” In Karl Marx, Selected Writings . Edited by David McLellan. Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780198782659.
- Canguilheim, Georges. “Machine and Organism.” In Incorporations . Edited by Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter. Zone Books, 1992, pp. 44–69. ISBN: 9780942299304.
- Vidler, Anthony. “Homes for Cyborgs.” In Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture . Edited by Christopher Reed. Thames and Hudson, 1996. ISBN: 9780500016923.
- [WJ] Latour, Bruno. “Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door–Closer. (1988)”
- [WJ] Rykwert, Joseph. “Organic and Mechanical. (1992)”
- [WJ] Guattari, Felix. “Machinic Heterogenesis. (1995)”
- Architecture: Le Corbusier. Le Modulor and Modulor 2 . Birkhäuser Architecture, 2000. ISBN: 9783764361884.
- Neufert, Ernst. Neufert Architects’ Data. Wiley Blackwell, 2000. ISBN: 9780632037766.
- Meadows, Donella H., et al. “Growth in the World System.” Chapter 3 in The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome on the Predicament of Mankind . Universe Publisher, 1972. ISBN: 9780876632222. (A team of MIT scientists, with the aid of a giant computer).
- Golub, Robert, and Joe Townsend. “Malthus, Multinationals and the Club of Rome.” Social Studies of Science 7, no. 2 (1977): 201–22.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: 4.645 or permission of instructor Acad Year 2027-2028: G (Fall) Acad Year 2028-2029: Not offered Units arranged
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2014
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.