Syllabus
The course will consist of the mutually interconnected yet consecutive lectures and case studies, interpreting the vast visual material (urban plans, building designs, architectural sketches, utopian visions, urban situations etc.). We will read and interpret selected excerpts of the relevant philosophical texts as well. The course will naturally focus on a historical development as well. The topics include:
* the Victorian greenhouse architecture as the visionary language of the future
* Russian constructivist architecture as the inspiration for the contemporary architecture of non-places (Koolhaas, Hadid)
* Le Corbusier and the desert(ed) cities of death
* city as a time-table
* the “megastructures” and modular architecture of the 60’s and 70’s
* Prager’s visionary plans to rebuild (and raze) Prague
* cosmic architecture
* war architecture
* house as a fort, house as a ship
* urban exile and loneliness
* digital city and the public space
* landing, expedition, isolation: transient architecture of danger
These topics will nevertheless lead us back to Prague, which will eventually serve as an imaginary laboratory; in this regard, the course will analyze the futuristic visions of Prague, from the modernist attempts to cure the “diseased tissue” of the city through the Nazi attempts to militarize the layout of the streets or the communist proposals of an urban revolution to the layouts presenting the possibilities and limits of Prague as the “city of the cosmic age”.
On the background of these case studies, the course will help to understand the real architectural situations of the cities we live in.
Annotation
The course will analyze an extraordinary feature that keeps on infiltrating and shaping the contemporary cities: the fact that the design of the buildings or even of the whole districts is based on the logic of an expedition. Whether public or private, the contemporary projects are - with an increasing rate - inspired by the design of the space stations, spacecrafts or landing modules and the architecture in general follows the examples of nomadic or expeditionary solutions.
Yet these structures, from an igloo to an orbital complex, serve a purpose than is even antithetical to a public space: far from being designed for the life in the cities, they present the "high-functioning sociopaths" of a sort, the ingenious projects that enable the survival beyond the frontiers of the habitable, human world. So what happens when such a strategic and strict architecture invades the towns? How it influences our lives and our understanding of the urban life itself? How these architectural “visitors” (surprisingly: especially the town and concert halls, museums and other public and administrative buildings) dramatically change the affability of the cities? The course will pose and answer these questions.