Seminar Courses Autumn 2019

Seminar Courses 2019 Autumn School of Architecture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Seminar Courses Autumn 2019

Anders Bergstrรถm: The Archive of Stockholm Public Library Catharina Gabrielsson: Housework Christina Bodin Danielsson: Phenomenology Elizabeth B Hatz: Architecture in the Anthropocene Jennifer Mack: From Suburbia with Love Katja Grillner & Sepideh Karami: Architecture and Gender Meike Schalk: Sweden and The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopaedia of Women in Architecture Victor Edman: Restoration: Bringing History to Life

Seminar courses

The Archive of Stockholm Public Library Anders Bergström Sweden’s most referred building in an international context serves here as a case study for a critical historiography. Ever since Stockholm Public Library was completed in 1928, its reception has changed over the years. At an early stage, the library was overshadowed by the Stockholm exhibition of 1930, and it was first included in the canon of modern architecture about 1960. The reception was based on a limited knowledge of the project as a whole, given the character of a primary material that can be referred to as the “archive”. The course highlights this material, consisting of drawings, photographs, documents and printed texts, as well as the building itself.

Housework Catharina Gabrielsson The implications of working architecture range from labour and practice to art and aesthetics; from the labour of others, to what architects do, to the identity and legitimacy of the artwork. Moreover, how buildings work(and what happens to them after they’re built) add complexity to their status as architecture. Conceptually and practically, the ramifications of work offer multiple entryways into the hidden domains of architecture that although unspoken are of seminal importance for propping up the discipline. This course employs work as a conceptual lens to explore architecture from various vantage points, with a particular focus on questions of care and maintenance.

Students will be expected to pursue individual fieldwork as part of a writing assignment to be handed in at the end of the course.

Arkdes Collection

Martha Rosler, ”Semiotics of the kitchen” (1975)

Phenomenology – A Philosophy, But also a View on Architecture Christina Bodin Danielsson The course investigates the phenomenological approach to architecture, an approach that combines the fields of architecture, philosophy and environmental psychology. This interdisciplinary approach focuses on the experiencing of architecture, a perception process that operates at an existential level. Hereby the course aims to awake a dimension often forgotten in modern architecture and the book Poetics of space by Bachelard. To the reading of the book are then lectures, exercises that involves own writing on the subject as well as oral presentations by the students in the seminars. The course consists of following pedagogical methods: individual reading, literature seminars, lectures in seminar form, exercises of writing and oral presentation of own conclusions based on own architectural experiences related to the text of Poetics of space. Final exam is an individual presentation based on a text and visual presentation of personal thought and experiences related to Poetics of space.

Architecture in the Anthropocene Elizabeth B Hatz Architectural culture is at the centre of this course. It presents a set of possible stances facing Architectural thinking and practice in the Anthropocene through a speculating lecture series.

A selection of course literature is offered. The outcome shall be a short reflective text (300-700 words) by each participant relating to the themes, readings and stances presented. Images are welcome but must be by own hand or own photographs and black-and -white.

The material shall be gathered into a A5 book by the participants, finalized in its physical form on the 10/4 and presented to the Course Leader. The participants ensure the publishing through BOD order, with ISBN number, under the supervision of the course leader.

From Suburbia with Love: Rethinking Center and Periphery in the American “Middle Landscape” Jennifer Mack Since the 1950s, North American suburbia has been portrayed as prototypically generic: a place where benignly simplified architecture meets white, middle-class nuclear families. In such views, suburbs are peripheral to the centers of economic and political power, generators of social conformity, or mere “bedroom communities.” in this course, we will instead examine North American suburbia as a critical site for the negotiation of both forms and norms. For example, we will read about how monolithic suburban designs glossed over the complexities of postwar family life; African-American suburbanization; migration, remittances, and new suburban aesthetics; and the effects of foreclosure after the 2008 economic crisis. The suburb as a homogeneous built and social environment now appears to be a fiction. Maybe it always was.

Terry Evans: Backyard pools, Frankfort Square, Will County, Illinois, September 17, 2003

Architecture and Gender: Positionings, Intersections, Specificities, Materialities Katja Grillner and Sepideh Karami This seminar course provides an introduction to architecture and gender, and develops tools for pursuing feminist articulations and interpretations of architecture as discipline and profession. In the course we will study contemporary feminist theory and architectural practices and investigate how architecture and other built structures relate to them. The course is divided into nine seminars structured around four modules, a study visit and a final presentation. Each module consists of two seminars with introductions, discussions and written reflections on presented readings and projects. The modules are thematically organised addressing in order positionings, intersections, specificities and materialities.

Seminar courses

Sweden and The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopaedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2015 Meike Schalk The forthcoming Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 19602015 (2021) is an international project which brings together 1200 entries on women active in architecture and adjacent fields to map the ways in which they have shaped the built environment over the last five decades. The project is committed to the representation of areas and women who are often invisible in architectural history and media. The course will discuss ethics and politics behind encyclopedic projects (who to include/exclude?), produce a concept for the representation of Sweden, as well as entries for the project. It includes an introduction into archival research, common research sessions and the organization collaborative writing workshops.

Restoration: Bringing History to Life Victor Edman Architectural restoration is a professional field that has evolved mainly over the last two hundred years. The seminar addresses historical and theoretical perspectives on this development, with a focus on the Swedish context. The objective is to provide an overview of the history and theory of architectural restoration and to initiate a critical discussion of the subject. The seminar also aims at an understanding of how the historic buildings we meet today have been transformed by later interventions, often intended to make them more ‘historical’.

The seminar includes short lectures and discussions of relevant texts. An individual case study is to be presented at the end of the semester.

Malmöhus under restoration.

Courses: A42SEH, A52SEH