Rem Koolhaas: The city of the captive globe (New York 1972)

»Architecture or Revolution«
Architecture as a democratic emancipation****

»Architecture or Revolution« ¿ this is the famous sentence, with which Le Corbusier ended his book Towards a new Architecture ¿ not forgetting to add: »Revolution can be avoided«. However, Le Corbusier emphasized that he was solely concerned with technical, not with political issues.

Ninety years have passed since Le Corbusier claimed that a better architecture would suffice to prevent social unrest. In the meantime, Europe went through the most dreadful of dictatorships imaginable. Today, the picture has entirely changed: not only do europeans live under the rule of constitutional democraties, also, it has become a model of success in many parts of the world. On the other hand, other forms of democratic articulations have risen, many of them on the street and through social networks. What, one we might ask, can be the role of architecture within all those forms of democratic articulation?

This will be the main question of the seminar. Research questions will be detailed in collaboration with the advisors. Students will also be introduced to principles of argumentation and of scientific research and writing. They will write a bachelor thesis or a scientific paper.

The course is bilingual (German/English) and subdivided into three main parts. The units will be detailed further at the beginning of the semester.

a) Supervised research and formulation of a research question
b) Independent research and writing of an academic abstract
c) Oral presentation of the state of the art, construction of the argument and writing of the final paper

Wednesday 11.03.2015 10:30 am - first unit, seminar room at architecture theory

Written academic paper. Due at the end of July 2015.