ARC3325H S
Instructor: Mary Lou Lobsinger
Meeting Section: L0101
Wednesday 3:00PM - 6:00PM

Architecture mediates. Thinking architecture as a medium among media asks that we step away from the metaphors that occlude and ground essentialist thinking about our built environments. It asks that we decouple conventional understandings of, for example, inside and outside, nature and culture, with specific intention. Thinking architecture as a medium shifts our focus from purely formal aesthetic or technical attributes, or as a discrete object, to consider the dynamic environments within which it participates. The forward slash or virgule within the course title signals the inclusive “and/or,” an approach that ‘holds all terms in tension and apart while exploring their mutual constitution within various contexts’. This asks seminar participants to engage with the ‘spatial or temporal techniques –clock, door, ship, architecture, infrastructure and climate, for example– that may be taken to count as a medium as they structure our sense of environment’. One of the broad aims of the seminar is to grapple with architecture and environmental degradation brought about by humans and technological transformation. The seminar draws upon media theoretical methods, and importantly, engages with a cultural techniques mode of analysis to think through specific material practices. The seminar is participatory, and as an advanced seminar is structure around the discussion of readings, presentations, research, and workshops. The course is a further refinement of ARC 3325, most recently listed as Architecture, Infrastructures of Global Imaginaries.