The house as a coffer to protect the secrets of intimacy from the metropolitan tempest, the house as the basic commodity that builds the great factory of the modern city, the house as representation of the modernist revolution, the house as the public face of their inhabitants.

Those are some of the dimensions which architects througout more than one century of modernization were dealing with. Houses as manifests. These will be the topics examined in this course.

Our purpose is to understand the complexity of thoughts, actions, actors, and matter which is impied in the actual making of architecture as an institution adressed to modify reality.

We will dedicate each lecture to deeply examine each time two different houses by analysing the many layers that determine their existence: the clients, the ideas of their architects, the site, the processo of design and building, the materials, its role on the cultural debates of its time, the obstacles that it construction had to overcome, the unique characteristics that make the canonical masterpieces.

An introduction on the significance of the house in modernity will be presented in order to contribute to the conceptualization of the topic. Twentiy eight classic examples of the tewntieth century were chosen to be examined: Scheu (Adolf Loos), maison de verre (Pierre Chareau), Savoye (Le Corbusier), Tugendhat (Mies van der Rohe), Mairea (Alvar Aalto), Malaparte (Adalberto Libera), house over the brook (Amancio Williams), Canoas (Oscar Niemeyer), Barragán (Luis Barragán), house in New Gourma (Hassan Fathy), hpuse pf the future (Allison and Peter Smithson), Eames (CHarles and Ray Eames), Robie (Frank Lloyd Wright), Jaoul (Le Corbusier), Farnsworth (Mies van der Rohe), Fallingwater (Frank Lloyd Wright), Dymaxion (Buckminster Fuller), Planchart (Gio Ponti), Atelier Melikov (Konstantin Melnikov), tropical house (Jean Prouvè), Sky house (Kiyonori Kikutake), endless house (Frederik Kiesler), Schminke (Hans Scharoun), Schroeder (Gerrit Rietveld), Cirell (Lina Bo Bardi), Bavinger (Bruce Goff), Baldi (Paolo Portoghesi), maison suspendue (Paul Nelson), electric house (Figgini, Pollini).

All the students have to read the four general texts and six studies of cases.

An optional bibliography to complete the remaining cases examined in the course will be presented and discussed with the students.

Presentations of contemporary cases will be assigned to groups of students to be presented in a seminar form. 

Visits to some of the mentioned examples will be organized according to the number of students and the available resources.

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

All the students have to take part of, at least,  one of the group presentations mentioned in the Program of the course.

The participation of the students in the debates will be considered as a factor to improve the grades.

Students will have two possibilities for their final evalluation, wich will be the main component for their grades. One will be a writen examination consisting in questions related to the topics developed by the professor in his lectures and to the obligatory texts. The other will be the writing of a paper on one of the contemporary cases that will be examined in the seminar.