ARCH 572, Section 1

What are the sufficient qualities of a building? Is it sturdy? Is it beautiful? Does it represent society? What are its costs, both financial and planetary, and what does it afford in terms of access and opportunity? Building problems (formal, material, social, and environmental) are an ever-changing set of dilemmas and possibilities, and architecture, as a practice, arises not as a specific set of static formulations but as an emergent epistemology whose agency is neither complete nor totally absent. The criticism and theory of Architecture both document and project these conditions of possibility (its means and ends). Drawing on key texts of architectural criticism and theory as well as a range of other discourses (philosophical, cultural, economic, and political), this course establishes a framework for conceptualizing architectural production through both internal (disciplinary) concerns and external (constitutive) conditions.