Philosophies

MODULE ONE March 13-15, 2013, School of Architecture, KTH, Stockholm

RELATIONALITY Critical and Participatory Philosophies 

Location: 9.45am for 10.00am start, KTH Library, Osquars backe 31, Seminar Room: Hjärne

see map: http://www.kth.se/kthb/om/adresser-och-telefonnummer-1.181700

(Please note that there are THREE activities that we ask you to prepare for Module One.)

WEDNESDAY March 13: Introduction and Conceptual Mapping Workshop

10.00     Introduction to the course, and general (re)introduction and (re)positioning of collected research projects of participants.

12.00     Lunch

13.30   Presentation: Renata Tyszczek, The Atlas Project (Atlas: Geography, Architecture, and Change in an Interdependent World, Black Dog, 2012)

14.30 Collaborative mapping exercise of 20^th and 21^st Century architectural theory anthologies (see pre-course activity below)

16.30    Concluding the day

19.30    Dinner at Syster o Bror

ACTIVITY 01 (pre-course assignment)

Based on the contents pages of pre-assigned architectural theory anthologies, and including other anthologies deemed relevant to your ongoing research agendas as well as your own current research bibliographies, we ask you to arrive at this first meeting with a constructed ‘contents page’ that describes a reinvented anthology, which may also be composed as a wish list of essays you would like to collaboratively read (please do this exercise on an A3 page, portrait). You can also simply base your invented contents page on your current research project ‘literature review.’ In groups we will collaboratively recompose a collection of new ‘contents pages’ as a series of posters for discussion. NOTE: This exercise DOES NOT assume that you have read the full contents of all the listed anthologies, merely that you have perused the contents pages!!!

READING preparation

To assist you in preparing for the pre-course assignment (assignment 01), we ask you to survey the contents pages of a number of architectural theory anthologies listed below, and consider the ways in which these have been thematically curated or organised.

–K. Michael Hays , ed., Architecture Theory since 1968, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998.

– C. Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns, Hilde Heynen, eds. The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, London: SAGE Publications, 2012.

–Neil Leach, ed., Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, London: Routledge, 1997.

–Kate Nesbitt, ed., Theorising a New Agenda For Architectural Theory: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

–Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, Iain Borden, eds., Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, London: Routledge, 2000.

-Jane Rendell, Jonathan Hill, Murray Fraser, Mark Dorrian, eds., Critical Architecture, London: Routledge, 2008.

–Krista Sykes, ed., Constructing a New Agenda: Architectural Theory 1993-2009, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.

-We encourage you to add to this list of anthologies in relation to your current research projects.

THURSDAY March 14: Seminar 1: Participation and Relationality 

10.00     Workshop: Led Karen Bradley, Future Feminisms and Urban Caring

12.00     Lunch

13.00     Seminar 1: Participation and Relationality (Discussion of Blog Posts)

16.30     Concluding the day

19.30     Dinner at Buco Nero http://www.nerostockholm.se/ (basement restaurant…not cafe)

ACTIVITY 02: Upload a Blog post in response to one of the Conceptual Clusters below. Include an image and text response.

READING preparation for Seminar 1: Choose ONE Conceptual Cluster

Conceptual Cluster 1: Relations and Agency

• Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture, edited by Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider, Jeremy Till, London: Routledge, 2011. (Excerpt).
• Doina Petrescu, ‘Relationscapes: Mapping Agencies of relational practice in Architecture’, in City, Culture, Society, 3, 2012, pp. 135-140
• David Harvey, ‘Right to the City’, in New Left Review 53, September/October 2008, pp. 23-40.

Conceptual Cluster 2: Disagreement and Agonism

• Jacques Rancière , ‘Introducing Disagreement’, in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2004, pp. 3-9.
• Chantal Mouffe, ‘Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces’, in Art and Research, vol. 1, no. 2, Summer 2007.
• Claire Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’ in October, vol. 110, Autumn 2004.

Conceptual Cluster 3: Ecologies of Practice

• Isabelle Stengers , ‘Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Practices’, in Cultural Studies Review, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2005.
• Félix Guattari , The Three Ecologies, London: Athlone Press, 2000, (excerpt).
• Nicolas Bourriaud, ‘The Aesthetic Paradigm (Felix Guattari and Art)’, in Relational Aesthetics, Les Presses des Réel, 2002.

Conceptual Cluster OPEN: You have a choice to frame your own cluster

FRIDAY March 15: Seminar 2 – Crisis and Creativity in Critical Thinking-Doing

10.00     Guest Lecture: Teresa Stoppani: On the Frankfurt School and Walter Benjamin 

12.00     Lunch

13.00     Seminar 2: Conceptual Crisis (Discussion of Blog Posts)

15.30     Guest Lecture: Lori Brown, Feminist Practices

16.30     Brief Introduction to Module Two

17.00     Departure

ACTIVITY 03: Upload a Blog post in response to one of the Conceptual Clusters below. Include an image and text response.

READING Preparation Seminar 2: Choose ONE Conceptual Cluster

Conceptual Cluster 4: The Theory Tool Box

• Jane Rendell, ‘Introduction: A Place Between’, in Art and Architecture: A Place Between, London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. (Alternative reading: Jane Rendell, ‘Critical Spatial Practices: Setting Out a Feminist Approach to some Modes and what Matters in Architecture’ in Lori Brown, ed., Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2011.)
• Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault , ‘Intellectuals and Power,’ in Language, Memory, Counter-Practice, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977.
• Eyal Weizman, ‘Lethal Theory’, in Log 7, Winter/Spring 2006.

Conceptual Cluster 5: Conceptual Crisis

• Bruno Latour, ‘Why has critique run out of steam?’ in Critical Inquiry, 30, Winter 2004
• Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting, ‘Notes Around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism’ in Perspecta 33, 2002
• Sven-Olov Wallenstein, ‘Noopolitics, Life and Architecture’ in Deborah Hauptman and Warren Neidlich, eds, Cognitive Architecture. From Biopolitics to Noopolitics. Architecture & Mind in the Age of Communication and Information, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2010

Conceptual Cluster OPEN: You have a choice to frame your own cluster