After successful completion of the course, students are able to identify architecture as a site where 'world pictures' and 'world models' manifest and express themselves. Through the two VOs Architekturtheorie 1 and 2, they have been introduced to think about technology from a philosophical point of view and have learnt to relate critically to architecture. They have acquired knowledge of a broad spectrum of stances and approaches to architecture theory throughout history as well in the contemporary condition. They are introduced to the key concepts and instruments (language and mathematics) at work in architecture theory. With this, students are capable of grasping and relating critically to the complex entanglement between theory, technics, knowledge, skill and power. They learn to recognise analog situations throughout different domains, and how to locate and contextualise them respectively. They are familiar with the fact that, and in a basic sense also with how, different theoretical stances entail different implications and effects upon a the respective practice .

The lecture courses Architecture Theory 1 + 2 are concerned with architecture with respect to anthropological, social, cultural, political, economical, technical, mathematical, theories of science, technology, and communications, as well as aesthetic, religious (both history and practice), and gender related discourses and disciplines. 

 VO Architecture Theory 1 guides the students through a broad historical spectrum (with respect to developments in science, culture, and architecture). It introduces conceptual and mathematical instruments at work in architecture theory, and it learns to distinguish a variety of 'theoretical gestures' in how these abstract instruments have been and are being 'played' by architects.

 VO Architecture Theory 2 builds upon the first lecture course, and attends mainly to more recent and contemporary architecture and architecture theory. 

Program

 11 October 2019: Einführung. Was sind architektonische Modelle, abstrakte Instrumente und theoretische Gesten? Text: Jacques Le Goff, Geschichte ohne Epochen (Philipp von Zabern Verlag, 2014) (Auszüge).

 18 October 2019: Robert Doran, The Theory of the Sublime (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2015), Chapter 2, "Longinus five sources of sublimity".

 25 October 2019: Kengo Kuma, The Anti-Object (Auszüge, ch1 "making a connection" and ch2, "flowing out")

 1. November 2019.          ** KEINE VORLESUNG: FEIERTAG (ALLERHEILIGEN)

 8. November 2019: Gilles Clément, "Planetary Gardens" (2015)  

 15. November 2019          ** KEINE VORLESUNG – ATTP SOPHISTICATION CONFERENCE

 22. November 2019: Massimo Cacciari, “Project”, in The Unpolitical: On the Radical Critique of Political Reason (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 122-145.

 29 November 2019: Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Toward the Archipelago”, in The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (2011)

 6 December 2019: Valerio Olgiati, Markus Breitschmid, Nicht-Referenzielle Architektur, (2018), S. 13-50.

 13 December 2019: Rem Koolhaas, “Bigness,” in S, M, L, XL (1995) & J.L. Hersey, Pythagorean Palaces (1976), S. 19-27.

 20. December 2019           ** KEINE VORLESUNG – CHRISTMAS BREAK

Discussion of key texts in contemporary architecture theory in the weekly lectures; individual reading and preparing of the texts, including further research to better grasp these texts in their larger contexts under the guidance of the lectures.

Handwritten exam (no multiple choice)  

There will be a reader and a catalog of questions with which you can learn, in addition to your presence in the lectures. In the exam you will be presented with 8 questions out of this catalog, and you are expected to answer and discuss each question on 1 A4 page. 

251.057 VO Architekturtheorie I
As well as the VOs Kunst- und Architekturgeschichte I & II