THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE 1: ARCHITECTURAL MEDIA AND THE PRODUCTION OF THEORIES

General Foundation

Understanding of the relationship between the way we create architecture and the way we understand the world Understanding of the way the creative action is developed and its dependence from the broader ideological and cultural environment. Understanding of the design process and the way it is structured following the dominant conceptions of architecture. Development of capacity to make abstructions and to reveal the essential aspect of a design question. Development of the students' ability to be expressed through architecture.

During the last 20 years the ways and methods of architectural production went through a process of transformation and change – a result of the new media – that maybe can be compared to similar transformational processes that took place during the Renaissance – where, again, it was technological innovations, like the use of paper and pencil, the invention of projective geometry and the perspective, that set the wheel of change in motion. Of course, that transformation is not something exclusive to architecture. On the contrary, it is the reflection of the broader conditions of contemporary societies: The dominance of networks and the omnipresent connectivity, a condition where new modes of control, and therefore power, are being established. It is within this new condition that architecture students and future architects need to operate in order to be able to bring a breath of fresh air in the body of the creative process. The course therefore, offers the necessary theoretical tools that will aid the students to understand that condition, based on the principle that the evolution of architectural thinking is a continuum where ideas are constantly modulated and the new is the result of the mutations of the old. Therefore, the key for an understanding of the current condition in architecture lies in the understanding of the evolution of architectural thinking during modernity – starting from the Renaissance and reaching the present day – and more importantly, in the understanding of the connections between points in time and periods that might appear unconnected on the surface. The approach of the course, while following a loose chronological order that begins with Alberti, is in fact, not a historical approach. On the contrary, it deals with the points of this continuum as events that in many cases transcend temporal succession and create connections that ignore linear time. Ultimate goal of the course is to provide the students with the necessary framework that will help them understand the different instances of the theory of architecture and their principles, but maybe more importantly, will help them expand and enrich their design processes.

architectural design, design process, theories of architecture

25-09-2018