Seminar Courses Spring 2020

Seminar Courses 2020 Spring School of Architecture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Seminar Courses Spring 2020

Anders Bergström: The Archive of Stockholm Public Library Catharina Gabrielsson: Housework 2 Elizabeth B Hatz: Recycling Rooms Erik Stenberg: Million Program Archives – Architect Jarl Bjurström Katja Grillner: Architecture and Gender: Feminist Writing Thordis Arrhenius: Making History – Postmodern Architecture Under Pressure 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.

Arkdes Collection

Housework 2 Catharina Gabrielsson The implications of work in 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) stands in a complex relationship to an ideology based on control. Through its multifarious ramifications, work offers an entryway into the hidden domains of architecture that although unspoken are of seminal importance for maintaining the discipline. This course employs “work” as a conceptual and pragmatic lens to explore architecture from various vantage points, with a particular focus on the ethics of care. Besides reading and discussing texts, students will be expected to carry out an individual investigation and write a short essay to be handed in at the end of the course.

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

Recycling Rooms Elizabeth B Hatz Architectural culture is a palimpsest of re-use, re-appreciation and re-interpretation. Unique and long-lasting powers of architecture often lie in quite fundamental but yet totally sophisticated architectu­ ral qualities, associated with the ability to use daylight as well as darkness, and handle matter to order mass as well as detail into a consistent work. The object of this study is a series of intense study visits to unique and sometimes half-hidden rooms in and around Stockholm. These are places formed by their users as much as by their knowing architects and where the latter have had to rely on deep knowledge and experience of daylight, shades, spatial propor­ tion, craft, relief, order, art, history, nuance and detail. The course aims towards developing participants own sensitivities to such architectural tools by in-depth study of space and drawing. Scheduled dates are usually full days.

Gransäter, Home of Margareta Böttiger. Architect Agi Lindegren, 1886+1896.

Million Program Archives – Architect Jarl Bjurström Erik Stenberg Contemporary architectural archives from the Million Program Era (1965-1974) are contested spaces. They have been subjected to the same conflicts, revisions, and neglect as the era (and it’s complicated reputation) itself. By starting from archival source material from the Million Program Era, this seminar will follow one personal history through the Post-War period and try to present new perspectives, reflections, and interpretations to understand the Million Program Era. The first archive to be studied is Architect Jarl Bjurström (19152004), who was born in Finland and worked briefly for Alvar Aalto and JS Sirén before emigrating to Sweden after World War II. From 1946 until his retirement in the mid-1970’s he worked for HSB, Sweden’s largest cooperative housing association. He designed mass housing all over Sweden, most notably in Vällingby, but also in Gävle, Landskrona, Oxelösund, Skellefteå, Västerås, and Östersund.

Architecture and Gender: Feminist Writing Katja Grillner 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.

Making History – Postmodern Architecture under Pressure Thordis Arrhenius After strong protests Snøhettas proposal for restoring AT&T Headquarters by Philip Johnson was stopped. The hashtag SAVEATT brought together the architectural community from Robert Stern and Terry Farrell to Sir Norman Foster in a plea to save an icon building of postmodernism. As a result, in July 2018 AT&T’s former headquarters (built 1984) was designated the status as an individual landmark and protected; the youngest monument on Manhattan. Was the 2018 protection of the foremost post-modern icon on Manhattans a sign of the end of postmodernism or a beginning of a new monumental history postmodernism? With postmodernism as our case this seminar course will explore how architecture relate to its recent past. By re-reading central pomo-texts the seminar will focus on the entangled relationship between the architect, the image, and the building. We will explore how narratives of precedence, influence and media generate monumental histories and discourses.

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 essay is to be presented at the end of the semester.

MalmĂśhus under restoration.

Courses: A42SEH, A52SEH