ARC3720H F
Instructor: Vanessa Grossman
Meeting Section: L0101
Wednesday, 12:00 - 3:00pm
Location: TBD

Concrete's power to transform the environment drives its global dissemination. From its ancient Roman origins to its reinvention in the modern period, concrete paved the way for the Industrial Revolution, and gave form to the first urban and social utopias at the turn of the nineteenth century.The history of this complex material's modernization is the very history of the twentieth century. While reinforced concrete connected entire regions through public works, housing and infrastructure, either via high-tech patented standardized constructive systems or low-techmethods, it also shaped enclaves and materialized segregation, from war bunkers and the Atlantic Wall, to the divide between east and west: the Berlin Wall was made of concrete. This is a hybrid history seminar tracking such routes and processes of technology transfer. It does so both as a chronological survey of milestone case studies of concrete designs, and as a modelmaking workshop where philosophies and material properties of concrete design are explored. This course comprises readings in the history of architecture and science, and in philosophy, literary criticism and engineering. It includes vivid analyses of exemplary architectural, engineering and design works, and even material ruins, either envisioned or built in concrete, from a range of historical contexts, functions and scales.

This course introduces students to the material properties, technologies and infrastructures of concrete through which designs—from elements of architecture like panels to projects, buildings and urban masterplans—move globally across social, political, cultural, and geographic boundaries. It entails patent, casting, standardization, reproduction, transformation, circulation, and meaning. Students will be provided information allowing them to understand key terminology, as well as an overview of the industry of concrete and the history of concrete design.