ARTH 355 - Studies in Architecture: Informal Architecture

• M&W - 12:15-14:45
• EV-1.615
• INSTRUCTOR: STEFAN JOVANOVIC

Description: This course will examine the history and the relations of the built environment, informal architectural structures and contemporary social and political critique and activism. Beginning with some of the key statements on spatial practices and theories of resistance from Henri Lefebvre’s productivist theories of space and architecture to Michel de Certeau’s conception of everyday resistance and Foucault’s writings on the ‘heterotopia,’ we will consider the role of space and architecture within emancipatory political and cultural projects from the 20thcentury to the present. Our survey will look at examples of informal architecture from the point-of-view of postwar avant-garde practice, including the creation of ephemeral structures and performances within the city (the Utopie group, the Situationist practices of dérive and détournement), up to the contemporary understanding of ‘relational aesthetics’ as a politicized mode of artmaking (as in the makeshift pavilions of Thomas Hirschhorn). In addition to works of architecture and critical public art, we will also examine the importance of vernacular constructions as well as instances of semi-permanent protest and settlement including the Greenham Common Womens’ Peace Camp, the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong and the Torre David community in Caracas. We will analyze and discuss the various designs and infrastructural features and practices of illegal occupation and informal settlement throughout the twentieth century and up to the large-scale protest encampments of Occupy Wall Street in New York City’s Zuccotti Park and the global spread of similar protest camps. Among the key issues to be addressed in this context are questions of community, autonomy and self-governance within these movements and spaces.