History and Critical Thinking in Architecture

The programme's ambition is three-fold: to connect contemporary debates and projects with a wider historical, cultural and political context; to explore writings of history and the ways in which, social, political and cultural aspirations become effective arguments in particular accounts of architectural and urban modernity; to investigate technologies of production and distribution of knowledge in the context of recent cultural and geo-political changes that relate to practices and public cultures in architecture. Term 1 lectures and seminars focus on the philosophy and writing of history and the ways in which constructs of the past relate to architectural and visual practices. Modernity is interrogated through a critical reading of histories of modernism and reappraisal of the modern field of aesthetics. Term 2 is concerned with the historical process of the formation of the discipline, its techniques, conventions, procedures and innovative practices in relation to contemporary architectural and urban thinking.