On Seeing and Being - Spring 2025 Elective Architectural Theory and Critique Through Design
The ways we see (or are taught to see) the world are inseparable from the ways we choose to live in it. Acting upon this proposition, this course examines how we produce and represent the built environment through media, science, and technology, specifically through techniques such as perspectival drawing, measuring, photography, and satellite-imaging.
From whose perspective is a perspective? What is seen and what is omitted by technologized vision? Do objects, things, even artificial intelligence have agency? And what spatial knowledges are being (re)produced through processes of scientific objectivity? The course bridges three modes of critical investigation: study of texts, visual analysis, and spatial design. Weekly meetings will introduce key debates on building and world-making, with a focus on feminist, post-humanist, and post-colonial discourse. Close analysis of maps, photographs, and moving images will complement discussions of theoretical and literary texts. A semester-long assignment will ultimately ask students to develop and exhibit a spatial installation that produces critique through design.
On Seeing and Being: Architectural Theory and Critique through Design
Spring 2025 Elective | ARC 599
Thursdays 9:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.