Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 3 hours / session

Course Overview

This seminar engages in the notion of space from various points of departure. The goal is first of all to engage in the term and secondly to examine possibilities of art, architecture within urban settings in order to produce what is your interpretation of space.

Today's lack of public spaces due to privatization leaves little room for truly public discourse. How can art and architecture renegotiate the "res publica" - a space for a multitude of voices - the fundament for democracy? Texts by theoreticians such as Bachelard, Lefebvre, Bataille, Foucault, Harvey, Fraser, Hayden, Hollier, Bourdieu, Klein just to name a few will be intertwined with lectures by practitioners from various fields from outside and within MIT.

While there have been many points of confluence historically between art and architecture, the specificity of these relationships and how they are "embedded" in the urban fabric often remains unacknowledged within the discourses of both disciplines. This course will introduce discourses in architecture and urbanism with a focus on the notion of space seeking how they could act complicit. Such potential points of contact and their differin discourses will be introduced through a series of public discussions around heterogeneous approaches to re-engage in the need of a public sphere.

The seminar is organized around external input considered as lab time on the Monday nights@VAP, a mix of lectures, screenings and debates that are open to the public. Wednesdays are for course students only. Here we debate and deepen questions arising out of the Monday night events and go through additional material such as texts and background material on the topic of the course including historical references. The project of the course intends to form small teams to develop various spaces of communication and exchange, and last but not least to experience what is your interpretation of space. The students will be asked to develop and test possibilities of how to create with limited means a variety of spatial narratives.

The Wednesday classes will be broken in to two parts:

1. Lecture and debate
2. Group work

At mid term the groups will introduce their proposal and at the finals the groups are expected to present their "spaces" to a public. Class attendance and participation is mandatory on both days.

Grading Policy

Calendar

Note: There are a number of books and articles that the student may want to become familiar with as background to these discourses.