77859 - History of Contemporary Architecture

Learning outcomes

Provide a historical-critical knowledge of the principal experiences of architecture from the origins of modern architecture to nowadays. The fundamental episodes of the artistic production of the twentieth century are also discussed. Exercises on the subject of Architecture History, integrated with the teachings of the design and restoration, are done by the students.

Course contents

Structure, Space and Materials

This course intends to introduce students to the knowledge of contemporary architecture by analyzing significant works, personalities and issues. The study of the works will focus on the analysis of some topics such as the truth and the nature of the materials, the role and the forms of the structure and its relation to space. This course will also deal with works by artists whose creative process has contributed to focus on concepts often decisive for architecture.

By the end of this course, students will be able to evaluate architectures considering the connection between idea, conception, form and materials, and to understand the cultural, technical and artistic issues related to their realization. Studying the various architectural experiences will allow students to deal with some issues that may suggest their initiating personal research.

Course contents

1 - Fundamentals of Modernity

Gottfried Semper and the principle of cladding

Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, system of construction and system of structure

Exposed frame and curtain wall: from Jeames Bogardus to Louis Henri Sullivan

Order and truth of the cladding and Raumplan, from Otto Wagner to Adolf Loos

2 - Towards an Architecture

Frank Lloyd Wright, organic architecture and nature of materials

Auguste Perret, order and truth of the structure

Mies van der Rohe, search for absolute structure

Le Corbusier, from the ornamental composition to the ''espace indicible"

Louis Isadore Kahn, monumental structures and zero degree of matter

Metabolists visionary structures, from Kenzo Tange to Kiyonori Kikutake Design, construction site and archaism in Brazilian architecture, from João Vilanova Artigas to Lina Bo Bardi

Construction of Italian architecture, from Giuseppe Terragni to Giovanni Michelucci

3 - Seminar: Artistic and Radicals Visions

Space and materials in sculpture, from Rauschenberg to Födinger

From Pop Art to Robert Venturi's ordinary work

Radical architecture, from Archigram to Archizoom

4 – Seminar: Archipelago in the contemporary

Swiss experimentalism, from Herzog & de Meuron to Peter Zumthor

Jean Nouvel, Rem Koolhaas, e Lacaton & Vassal, Interface, New Sobriety, Économie Structurelle

From Toyo Ito's New Domino System to SANAA and Junya Ishigami’s sublimation of materials and structure

Seminar - (presentation of the students)

For additional information see: COURSE TIMETABLE 2017-18

Readings/Bibliography

1. Tests in progress

The bibliography required for the preparation of the test in progress will be drawn up by the student and will be evaluated.

2. Oral exam

SECTIONS 1 AND 2:

- A. Belluzzi, C. Conforti, Architettura italiana 1944-1994, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 1994 (chapters and paragraphs on the topics discussed in the course)

- W. J. R. Curtis, L'architettura moderna dal 1900, Phaidon, London, 2006 (chapters and paragraphs on the topics discussed in the course)

- G. Fanelli, R. Gargiani, Storia dell'architettura contemporanea. Spazio, struttura, involucro, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2006 (chapters and paragraphs on the topics discussed in the course)

- Mori Art Museum, Metabolism, the City of the Future. Dream and Visions of Reconstruction in Postwar and Present-Day Japan, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2011 (chapters and paragraphs on the topics discussed in the course)

- A. Rosellini, Le Corbusier e la superficie, dal rivestimento d’intonaco al “béton brut”, Aracne, Roma, 2013

- R. Gargiani, Louis I. Kahn, Exposed Concrete and Hollow Stones, 1949-1959, EPFL Press, Lausanne, 2014 (chapters and paragraphs on the topics discussed in the course)

- A. Rosellini, Louis Kahn, Toward the zero degree of concrete, 1960-1974, EPFL Press, Lausanne, 2014 (chapters and paragraphs on the topics discussed in the course)

Articles and essays (available in AMS Campus)

- M. Cometa, L’architettura italiana tra policromia e storicismo, in Id., Il Romanzo dell’Architettura. La Sicilia e il Grand Tour nell’età di Goethe, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1999, pp. 299-325

- R. Gargiani, ‘Der Stil’ di Gottfried Semper: Verso la costruzione incorporea, in “Quasar”, gennaio-giugno 1997, 17, pp. 155-168

- A. Rosellini, La Ville Contemporaine di Le Corbusier e Pierre Jeanneret, o del paesaggio svizzero sublimato in metropoli, in La Città Nuova. Oltre Sant’Elia. Cento anni di visioni urbane, Milano, Silvana Editoriale, 2013, pp. 67-79

- A. Rosellini, Unité d’Habitation in Marseille - Experimental Artistic Device, in Ruth Baumeister, What Moves Us? Le Corbusier and Asger Jorn in Art and Architecture, Zurich, Scheidegger & Spiess, 2015, pp. 38-45

- A. Rosellini, Joint, growth and ornament of Kahn’s cast-in-place concrete, in Studies in the History of Consctruction. The Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Construction History Society, Cambridge, the Construction History Society, 2015, pp. 297-307

SECTION 3:

- A. Rosellini, Il calcestruzzo secondo Uncini, Smithson e Kiefer: arte del costruire, natura geologica, materia in rovina, in “ARCHISTOR”, 2016, 5, pp. 70-105

- M. van Schaik, Exit Utopia. Architectural Provocations 1956-76, Prestel, London New York, 2005

SECTION 4:

- Christian Kerez 2010-2015. Junya Ishigami 2005-2015, “El Croquis”, 2015, 128

- Lacaton & Vassal 1993-2015, “El Croquis”, 2015, 177-178

- Jean Nouvel 1987-1998, “El Croquis”, 1998, 65-66

- SANAA 2008-2011, “El Croquis”, 2010, 155

- A. Maffei, Toyo Ito. Le opere i progetti gli scritti, Electa, Milano, 2001 (chapters and paragraphs on the topics discussed in the course)

- P. Ursprung, a cura di, Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History, Centre Canadien d'Architecture, Lars Müller, Montreal, Zürich, 2002, pp. 41-77

- P. Zumthor, Atmosfere. Ambienti architettonici. Le cose che ci circondano, Electa, Milano, 2007

Teaching methods

Lectures, seminars

Assessment methods

1. Test in progress

2. Written report

3. Oral examination on the report, the topics discussed during the course and the contents of the bibliography

1. Tests in progress

These tests consist of oral presentations by the students during the seminars.

Students will be given case studies from which they are expected to develop personal reflections to be expounded at the seminars. Students are expected to draw architectures, to write a bibliography, to develop reflections on the topics analyzed making use of the knowledge acquired from the lectures’ contents, and to find iconographic material to comment on the work. With this material, students shall prepare a presentation (power point, pdf) and expose their research results in the classroom.

General Subject: Habitat and Technology

Each group of students will have to choose one of the following topics:

• Archigram: network and capsules
• Reyner Banham:Architecture of Well-Tempered Environment
• Rem Koolhaas: from "Fantastic Technology" to "Fundamentals"
• Alejandro Aravena:Elemental, Incremental Housing and Participatory
• Toyo Ito: "Dwellings for the Tokyo Nomad Woman" and "New Domino System"
• Sou Fujimoto:Primitive Future

Students shall:

• learn and analyze in detail the case studies
• develop personal reflections
• find the iconographic material necessary to accompany their reflections
• write a bibliography
• participate actively during the seminar lectures

  Tests will be graded from 0 to 6 points. In order to pass, students shall achieve at least 4 or higher. The grades obtained will be considered for the outcome of the final examination.

  2. Written report

  A week before the examination, each student shall submit a written report, accompanied by images, on the case studies (text length: minimum 20’000 bars, spaces included, any number of images, each image must be accompanied by a caption).

  They also will be assessed the connection between text and image and the pagination.

  The structure of the report shall consist of:

• Index
• Introduction (summary description of the work and its purpose, presentation of the topic chosen)
• Central body (subject development), subdivided into paragraphs, if necessary
• Conclusions (concluding considerations clarifying the reflections and summarizing the work)
• Bibliography
• Index of images

The text shall include footnotes.

In preparing the report, please refer to the EDITING RULES for the preparation of the FINAL REPORT 

3. Oral examination 

To pass the oral examination, students are required to demonstrate that they have achieved a critical knowledge of the topics treated during the course, the bibliography and the architectures of the period dealt with. The analysis shall not be limited to the formal aspects of individual works; students are expected to break down the architectures, showing their understanding of all the aspects related to the central topics of the course and the aesthetic and formal reasons that guided certain architectural choices.

It will be assessed as excellent the performance of those students achieving an organic vision of the course contents, the use of a proper specific language, originality of reflection and familiarity with the tools of architecture analyze. It will be assessed as discrete the performance of those students showing mostly mechanical or mnemonic knowledge of the subject, disarticulated synthesis and analysis capabilities, or a correct but not always appropriate language, as well as a scholastic study of musical architecture analyze. It will be assessed as barely sufficient the performance of those students showing learning gaps, inappropriate language, lack of knowledge of the tools of architecture analyze. It will be assessed as insufficient the performance of those students showing learning gaps, inappropriate language, no orientation within the recommended bibliography and inability to analyze the architecture analyze.

Teaching tools

Students will be provided with the images projected in lesson and part of the bibliography

Links to further information

https://m.facebook.com/groups/HistoireArchitectureHistoireBeton/

Office hours

See the website of Giovanni Leoni

See the website of Anna Rosellini