Theory of Architecture : contemporary issues

lbarc2141  2024-2025  Bruxelles Saint-Gilles

Theory of Architecture : contemporary issues
3.00 credits
30.0 h
Q2
> Schedule
Teacher(s)
Claeys Damien;
Language
French
Main themes
  • Critical review of recent theories
  • Demonstration and testing of sequencing and materiality for conceptual ideas relating to architectural procedures
  • Siting contemporary work in relation to the classical tradition, modern and post-modern approaches
Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

1 Specific learning outcomes
By the end of this course, students will be able to
  • recall the concepts covered during the first years of study and deepen their thinking on architecture in relation to current society.
  • analyse the theoretical and spatial issued raised by contemporary architecture since 1950.
  • place this analysis in the framework of different schools of thinking which have contributed, since the post war period, to a critical reinterpretation of modern language and its theoretical foundation.
  • develop architectural criticism and self criticism to understand architectural works, particularly contemporary ones.
Contribution to the learning outcomes reference network:
Build knowledge of architecture
  • Be familiar with and analyse the discipline's basic references
  • Develop knowledge and become an active participant in the learning process
Make use of other subjects
  • Seek out other approaches, exchanges of views and ways of enhancing thinking about architecture
  • Bring all this back to the original discipline
Use the technical dimension
  • Observe and assess the main construction principles that give architecture a formal, material and temporal dimension
Make committed choices
  • Make links between different methodological and epistemological perspectives
 
Content
1. The invention of myths or The origins of three contemporary issues
2. From mythos to logos or From nourishing earth to the scale of beings
3. The fixism of a closed world or The autonomy of creation
4. The world as organism or Neoplatonism, naturalism and vitalism
5. The fall of the giants or The world is a theatre
6. The Century of Reason or The Birth of Modern Science
7. The Age of Enlightenment or Encyclopaedias and Taxonomies
8. The industrial revolutions or Romanticism and the theory of evolution
9. Machines for living or Mechanisation and early cybernetics
10. Linking ecology, society and digital technology or The architecture of the Fun Palace
11. From tree to network or Ecology and second cybernetics
12. Sustainable architectures? or Autopoiesis, hybridisation and digitalisation
Teaching methods
Lectures of 2 hours, each week.
Evaluation methods
A written exam including:
  1. multiple-choice questions: general assessment of passive knowledge acquisition
  2. matching questions: assessing the ability to link building plans, references, periods and sites
  3. an open-ended question: assessment of active understanding of knowledge
Teaching materials
  • Tous les supports de cours sont sur Moodle
Faculty or entity
> LOCI


Programmes / formations proposant cette unité d'enseignement (UE)

Title of the programme
Sigle
Credits
Prerequisites
Learning outcomes
Master [120] in Architecture (Bruxelles)
ARCB2M
3