After successful completion of the course, students are able to engage in the task of writing an academic paper. In order to achieve this, they will engage with bodies of discourse and works that range across different disciplines which, together; this cross-reading will allow to develop a broader understanding of architecture as a practice of thinking that concerns and connects both material and ‘immaterial’ domains of articulation. In addition they will able to work with texts (writing and research), and distinguish between academic and journalistic writing.They will also become aware of the correct handling of quotation and bibliography, basic principles of library and internet research, as well as primary forms of argumentation. Participants are be able to perceive, structure, and organize a specific topic in such a way that it can be thoroughly discussed in a seminar paper.

So What?

Daydreaming at the Crossroad of Architecture and Music

What? A proposal for daydreaming at the point of “So what?” where nothing–at a conceptual level–could only be itself. A polycentric seminar rethinking the boundaries of aurality and spatiality… Dwelling on the metaphor of orbital movement, it allows participants to follow interdisciplinary paths through philosophy, architecture, and music in which the path never remains the same and the continuous questioning becomes a perpetuum mobile.

As the relation once of a physical reality, audial and spatial, rushes to gain a complexity it evolves into music and architecture. To be able to deal with this complexity we need to dwell on overarching concepts and mobilize them.

Within this polycentric setting a question rises like a mountain in the midst: How could we generate an articulate thinking in a sophisticated, yet humble and novel manner?

How? The seminar dwells on the tripartite structure of thinking, reading, and expressing. Accompanied by reading and presenting text clusters, participants are expected to raise individual questions laying the foundations of a structured research process. A non-physical displacement through brain-and-ear-storming online meetings with guests to discuss novel ways of understanding the relation between the aural and spatial awaits participants.

Submission of a seminar paper is required.

Why? Outcomes of this seminar could be set forth as a set of "awareness," starting by perceiving the overarching importance of theory. As active contributors to the seminar participants get accustomed to theory in a-temporally and contextually-polycentric layout. On the one hand, confronting clusters of ideas and learning how to mobilize them throughout the process of research, on the other hand, being able to transform this process of critical thinking to a novel synthesis without compromising creativity. Scheduled fieldtrips and meeting guest scholars aim participants to become aware of the importance of intellectual and spatial surroundings as inputs. Through a selected reader list and its group presentations participants get the opportunity to practice individual and group-working skills.

First meeting: Tuesday, March 9th, 2020, 4 pm.

Scheduled for Tuesdays, 4-6pm Online.

https://tuwien.zoom.us/rec/share/MXLSMWvhwNjfORDp3T-n-dECmy-6O4Q2aCSeKxRemggKd8TiEurJ5jH8s-6a-EgV.Xi3MfdpQJyB0V_OJ?startTime=1613119549000

The course will be alternate between lectures, followed by discussions, and articulated to a preparatory exercise, and readings of selected excerpts from the seminar literature (around 30 pages/session). The work in preparation for the research paper will be discussed at intervals, and participants will present it in a collective session, in the manner of a symposium.

All the texts will be made available on TISS in advance.

The course will be provided in English and so is the preferred language for all other communications.

At the end of the seminar, participants will be asked to produce an academic paper on a topic related to the themes discussed in class. The paper will have to be written in English. Examples of previous seminar papers can be found at the following link:

http://www.attp.tuwien.ac.at/wahlseminar-architekturtheorie-ss2018

Only participants attending the course and delivering the scheduled exercises will be admitted to final evaluation. Attendance and participation are therefore mandatory.

A reader and a list of literature will be made available during the course.

No previous knowledge of music is required. Participants are required to possess a good knowledge of English and be able to read and write in such language with a sufficient degree of orthography and comprehensibility.

ATTENTION: requirement 259.268 Ringvorlesung Methodologie der Architekturforschung