Architecture IV

Craft and (Radical) Architecture

Craft

Architecture IV

Studio Tom Emerson
Tuesdays 8:15am
HIL E3

The first four lectures are a quartet providing the thematic introduction to the rest of the course. They draw upon diverse sources — from architecture, anthropology, history and culture — and serve as reflections on design, skill, craftsmanship and nature: broadly the context in which we practice architecture today.

The six lectures that follow are a series of more in-depth case studies from the long twentieth century. They focus on particular architects and places, exploring how the making of the city can be described in making and construction, just as much as by the history of urban design. The final lecture on the Picturesque — and ultimately our place within nature — brings the series to a close.

It may quite simply be an anthropology of architecture. But in this case, one not written by anthropologists but by architects. It is about being modern and pre-modern. It is about being local and globalized. It is about material, culture and skill. As a whole, the series will make you reflect on larger issues to do with how we construct the world.

Course Schedule

I: What is Design?
Tuesday 17th February

II: Craft
Tuesday 24th February

III. Mies Makes
Tuesday 3rd March

IV: Bricolage
Tuesday 10th March

V: Plecnik in Ljubliana
Tuesday 24th March

VI: Stirling's Arrows
Prof Dr Laurent Stalder
Tuesday 31st March

VII: Crafting Design in Post-war Italy
Dr Catharine Rossi
Tuesday 14th April

VIII: Real Estate Opportunities: Frank Gehry & LA
Tuesday 21st April

IX: Dirty Old River: London (Part I)
Tuesday 28th April

X: Lina Bo Bardi
Nicholas Lobo Brennan
Tuesday 12th May

XI: Dirty Old River: London (Part II)
Tuesday 19th May

Dr. Catharine Rossi is a Senior Lecturer in Design History at Kingston University, London where her research specialisms include 20th and 21st century Italian design, the relationship between design and craft and ethically engaged approaches to design past and present.

The curator of Space Electronic: Then and Now at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, she has co-edited The Italian Avant-Garde: 1968–1976 (Sternberg Press, 2013), contributed to publications including the V&A's Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990 (2011) and La Moda: The Glamour of Italian Fashion 1945–2014 (2014), is the author of Crafting Design in Italy: From Post-War to Postmodernism (Manchester University Press, forthcoming) and is a regular contributor to magazines including Crafts, Disegno and Domus.

Tom Emerson on craft, the pilgrim fathers, square cuts, Gehry and why things shouldn’t be done too well.

Architecture viii
Studio Tom Emerson
22 February 2011, hil E6, 8–10am