ARC3316H F
Instructor: Erica Allen-Kim
Meeting Section: L0101
Monday, 9:00am - 12:00pm
Location: TBD

In debates about architecture’s role and meaning within late-capitalist systems, architectural agency continues to be a source of anxiety. Through techniques such as representation and the manifesto, architects make claims about the future value of their work. They respond to political, social, and economic contexts by producing architectural effects and modes of practice that draw upon financial models, building regulations, program, and other sources of limits and inventiveness. This seminar examines historical and contemporary values of architecture—from symbolic to instrumental—by analyzing writings about the discipline’s capacity for speculation.

Through course readings drawn from architectural history, theory, sociology, and criticism, we will construct a history of architecture as an agent of urban transformation. We begin with the study of property, in particular its material and symbolic valuation, and the architectural fictions projected on the North American landscape since the the early 19th c. The development of architecture and urbanism is viewed through the lens of the discipline’s professionalization. Each week’s readings, lecture, and discussion will focus on a case study drawn from the history of architectural modernism (e.g. Plan Voisin, Seagram Building, John Portman’s atrium buildings, Pyramide du Louvre, etc.). These case studies will serve as the starting point for independent research, with students producing a 3,500-4,500 word essay that analyzes a building/plan and articulates a position on architectural value.