PERSPECTIVES ON (THE HISTORY OF) CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

Mainly focusing on the 20th century design culture, the course will reflect on the trajectory of modernity in architecture.

Lectures will debate issues and case studies considered as emblematic of a period or of a condition. Contemporary architecture will be observed in a historical perspective pointing out its connections with other realms (as arts or technique) and with cultural, social, political and economical changes as well. Special attention will be devoted to the dialectics betwen practices and theories and to the different scales of design culture, observed in their evolution in time.

Thus, the sequence of the lectures will provide a series of perspectives looking at different periods by different points of view.

Similarly to the approach used to prepare lectures, students will be asked to write a short paper, complete with references, adopting one of these perspectives.

According with the number of students, part of the available time will be spent in presentations, seminars and visits.

Specific bibliographical references will be provided during each lecture in order to integrate basic readings and as a possible starting point for papers. Actually, one of the aim of the course is to briefly introduce students to the literature on the history of contemporary architecture and to encourage them to "build" their own reading list. Hence, the following lines have to be intended as a sort of preliminary map:

- at least one history of 20th century architecture is necessary, I suggest the ones by Doordan (2001), Colquhoun (2002) and Cohen (2012);

- the essay by Frampton (1999) provides a very effective sequence of case studies to those who are interested in tectonics;

- for what concerns the themes and issues referred to late 18th and 19th century, I recommend the history by Bergdoll (2000);

- postwar years have been observed by different perspectives in the last 20 years: sometimes looking at general tendencies (Ghirardo 2006), sometimes focusing on case studies (Blundell Jones and Canniffe 2007). Edited volumes often focus on particular perspectives, sometimes extendending their attention to the prewar period (see for instance Goldhagen & Legault 2000 or Swenarton, Avermaete & van der Heuvel 2015)

A visual memory of each lesson will be upload on BeEP.

Grades will be the result of the evaluation of students' papers (to be submitted via BeEP and possibly as an hard copy) and of the active participation to the course