ARTH 400 Advanced Seminar in Art and Architecture: Critical Craft Studies

• Dr. Susan Surette

Sandra Alfoldy argued for understanding the relationship between post-war Canadian craft and architecture in terms of five categories: materials, scale, form, ornament, and identity.  Using Alfoldy’s analysis as a springboard, this seminar critically explores if and how, as Alfoldy suggests, “craft is at a pivotal point that may allow itself to move away from the traditional constraints of a single medium, and toward a fuller relationship with architecture.”  It will also question if modern and contemporary craft as ornament can critically engage with the social and political spaces of architecture and consider the possible critical limits. Consequently, students will be introduced to the history and theory of Canadian allied arts from the last seventy-five years, taking into consideration their emersion from the studio craft movement, their integration into public and corporate spaces with their shifting political, social and cultural contexts and their adaptation to changing aesthetics and materialities. The course will question gender, ethnicity, race, and class as factors impacting makers, commissioners, and audience and explore the studio craft objects through site encounters as part of an extensive material, social, economic and political network. Students will engage with this material through readings, fieldtrips, discussions and primary research while evaluations will include reading reflections, class participation and an original research paper.