The 12-month programme in History and Critical Thinking is a unique platform for enquiry into history, theoretical arguments and forms of architectural practice. The aim is three-fold: to connect contemporary debates and projects with a wider historical, cultural and political context; to produce knowledge that relates to design and public cultures in architecture; to explore writings of history as well as new forms of research, communication and practice.
The course is organised around lectures, seminars, debates, writing sessions and workshops which offer students opportunities to expand disciplinary knowledge in a broad cultural arena and within a variety of viewpoints.
Writing as a practice of thinking is central to the course, and different modes such as essays, reviews, short commentaries, publications and interviews, allow students to engage a diverse line of questioning to articulate the various aspects of their study. Seminars with distinguished designers, critics, journalists, writers and curators introduce diverse perspectives and skills.
This year, a Term 1 workshop ‘Design by Words’, which focused on books and writing, enabled students to explore the relationship between text, image and design. In Term 2 the one-week workshop ‘Architecture in Translation’ helped students develop a critical view of architecture’s translatability in light of institutional, legal and economic constraints, cultural specificities and political ideologies.
As part of the research seminar in Term 3, the unit ventured to Bologna and the Emilia-Romagna Region to develop the final thesis while participating in daily seminars and architectural visits.
Vertical connections in the school were reinforced by collaborations with AA Design Units and participation in juries, joint seminars with PhD students and the HCT Term 2 Debates on Architecture Politics with visiting speakers, creating a venue for debate within the School and a point of interaction with the broader academic and architectural community.
Tim Benton
Fabrizio Gallanti
Siri Nergaard
Manuel Orazi
Pedro Alonso
Mario Carpo
Tina Di Carlo
Alejandra Celedon
Jackie Cooper
David Cunningham
Adrian Lahoud
Louis Moreno
Benjamin Noys
Sophia Psarra
Anthony Vidler
Alexandra Vougia
Thanos Zartaloudis
The programme again drew a wide variety of students from Australia, Chile, China, Cyprus, Kuwait, Mexico, Romania, India and the US .
Amina Al-Failakawi
Rajeel Arab
Shengze Chen
Melissa Hollis
Elena Palacios
Savia Palate
Stefan Popa
Daniela Puga
Rachel Serfling
Sunaina Shah
Davi Weber
Amina Al-Failakawi, Re-establishing Local Vernacular as a Contemporary Interface of the Gulf City - Cultivating the local vernacular in architecture in the Arabian Gulf is not a call to resurrect its traditional aesthetic elements, rather it is a pursuit to revive the fundamental components that have endured under harsh climatic conditions, yet neglected to be accommodated for in today’s structures. A close view will be taken in terms
Rajeel Arab, Territories of Anxiety - The thesis investigates the Muslim ghettos in Indian cities, which have been the outcome of recent religious and political conflicts and constitute urban enclaves of anxiety, fear and insecurity. Considering that contention, resistance and dissent among communities discourage co-existence, the question here concerns the ways in which these pockets negotiate their presence in the city and how these multiple negotiations affect the whole of the city at a socio-economic, political and cultural level.
Shengze Chen, Market Economy and the Disposable Architect - The thesis is an attempt to understand the relationship between market economy and the postmodern space production since the 1970s. In particular, it investigates the changing role of state policies over social projects to challenge the architect’s disposability in the market economy.
Melissa Hollis, Textural Cartographies of the City and Self - The thesis is concerned with the textual cartography of both the ‘imaginary’ and the ‘real’ in contemporary ‘urban fiction’, and the specific forms of spatial organisation that demonstrate contemporary subjectivities that have been produced out of the material conditions of metropolitan experience that are deeply inscribed within the architectural structures of the city.
Elena Palacios, The Interior is not a Room - we normally identify the notion of interior within a room or some sort of enclosure. However what makes us recognise an image or three-dimensional space as an interior is not its potential quality as a room but the iconography of the objects contained within it. The interior is always looking to expand while the room to contain .
Savia Palate, The DIY Nation - What is the form of a nation- In times of crisis, several historical examples have shown a tendency for individuals to build communities from scratch. Nowadays, nation’s loss of credibility along with the delusion of proliferating rights at a (digital) global scale demands architecture to redefine once more its boundaries.
Stefan Popa, Traces in the Snow: the Sustainability dilemma of Winter Sports - The thesis interrogates to what extent the concept of movement informs the design and implementation of the Winter Olympic Games as an event and as an urban phenomenon. The question concerning the ways in which the concept of ‘movement organisation’ informed the spatial distribution of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, will be posed by commenting upon concepts of environmental impact, efficiency and effort with the aim of understating what can be called the ‘sustainability dilemma’ of winter sports.
Daniela Puga, Building by Collecting - The thesis explores the act of collecting as a critical way of engaging with the existing, which mediates between the particular and the universal and has the potential of defining or transforming boundaries. This is discussed through the creation of the collection of Aby Warburg (1866-1929).
Rachel Serfling, The Continued Rise of the Architectural Rendering: The Slow Death of ‘Archi-speak ’ - The thesis explores the politics of the aesthetics of photorealistic renderings and their larger effect on the discipline, including how the current deficit of architectural language is a consequence of this ascendancy of this very particular type of visual. Not another cultural critique, it will instead be scrutinised through tracing historical usage of images in architecture contrasted with an analysis of the contemporary image.
Sunaina Shah, Technology as a Rhetoric for Human Progress -For a long time, the idea of using new technology has been seen as a sign of progress. This thesis studies the notion through the works of the German-Jewish graphic artist, gynaecologist and writer Fritz Kahn (1888 -1968), with special consideration to Gilbert Simondon’s (1924 -1989) philosophical discourse on technology and ontology as the framework . Both figures bring together the areas of technology and biology or ontology, which is then discussed within modernist discourse on architecture.
Davi Weber, Body in Suspense - Rather than measurements and datum of physical relations, this study explores cultural and perceptual accounts of space: the content that escapes drawings. It is concerned with spaces between as the architectural material - dense, palpable, charged, ductile, and unquantifiable.
Marina Lathouri studied architecture and philosophy of art and aesthetics. She teaches at the AA and Cambridge University. She has previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently she co-authored the book Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City and published several articles.
Mark Cousins directs the AA's History and Theory Studies at the undergraduate level. He has been Visiting Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and is a founding member of the Graduate School at the London Consortium.
John Palmesino has been Head of Research at ETH Studio Basel and is currently Research Advisor at the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht and Diploma 4 Unit Master at the AA. He also teaches at the Research Architecture Centre, Goldsmiths in London. He established Territorial Agency with Ann-Sofi Rönnskog.
Douglas Spencer has studied architectural history, cultural studies and critical theory. His recent writings include contributions to The Missed Encounter of Architecture with Philosophy, Architecture Against the Post-Political and New Geographies 6: Grounding Metabolism. He is currently writing a book titled The Architecture of Neoliberalism.
Tim Benton taught for 40 years at the Open University and has been Visiting Professor at numerous places. His research in the history of architecture and design between the wars and Le Corbusier has achieved international renown. His book The Rhetoric of Modernism, Le Corbusier as Lecturer (2007) was awarded the Grand Prix du Livre sur l'Architecture by the Académie de l'Architecture in Paris.
Pedro Ignacio Alonso directs the MA in History and Design at the Universidad Católica de Chile. He is the co-author of Panel (2014), which explores the role large concrete panel systems played in architecture's modernisation. Along with Hugo Palmarola he was awarded the Silver Lion at the 2014 Venice Biennale.
Fabrizio Gallanti has wide-ranging experience in architectural design, education, publication and exhibitions. He was the associate director of programmes at the Canadian Centre of Architecture in Montreal and is currently the first fellow of the Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism and Humanities, for which he will teach in Princeton.
Manuel Orazi eaches at the University of Bologna and Ferrara and works for the publishing house Quodlibet. He is a regular contributor to the magazine Log and recently completed The Erratic Universe of Yona Friedman to be published in 2014.
