Theories and Critics

larcb2132  2025-2026  Bruxelles Saint-Gilles

Theories and Critics
5.00 credits
40.0 h + 15.0 h
Q2
> Schedule
Teacher(s)
Chanvillard Cécile;
Language
French
Main themes
This course provides a critical exploration of contemporary architecture through transveral themes such as sustainability, ecology, and the digitalization of reality.
Learning outcomes

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

  • Understand, compare, and critique the intellectual frameworks that have shaped critical reinterpretations of modern architecture and its theoretical foundations,
  • Trace the history of key ecological and digital theories in relation to architecture, including their origins, development, and reception,
  • Analyze and evaluate the interactions between architecture, ecology, and digital technologies,
  • Critique contemporary architectural projects by integrating theoretical and ethical perspectives explored in the course.

General Learning Outcomes

In line with the program’s learning outcomes (LOs), this course contributes to the development and acquisition of the following LOs:
  • LO1.1 Prioritize the parameters and issues of a given situation.
  • LO1.2 Justify the intentions and choices of an architectural project at different intervention scales.
  • LO2.1 Inventively master and apply the conventions of representation in two and three dimensions.
  • LO3.1 Understand and apply the physical and physiological principles related to architecture.
  • LO3.2 Understand and apply the construction and technical processes related to architecture.
  • LO3.4 Understand and assess the environmental, social, and economic consequences of construction and technical choices.
  • LO4.1 Understand and mobilise the concepts and methods of scientific disciplines.
  • LO4.4 Understand and assess the environmental, social, and economic consequences of architectural choices.
  • LO6.1 Acquire and rigorously apply disciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary methods of scientific research.
  • LO6.2 Formulate a research question and define a research subject in and on architecture. 
 
 
Content
LARCB2132 and LARCI2131 will be taught together in English & French - Friendly, in the field of history and theory by mobilizing our cross-expertises as professors-practitioners-researchers of architecture.
 
This course unit is the place to acquire a solid knowledge base relating to the built but also written production of the discipline and/or aimed at the discipline.

Based on bibliographic and iconographic material from available collections (archives and libraries), students are invited to study manifest buildings whose typological and morphological transformations bear witness to political, economic, societal, demographic and health upheavals, etc. 

Breaking down these edifices into constituent elements arranged according to specific architectural logic allows us to understand the positions taken by the authors of the projects, who were aware of the way in which architecture can truly act in response to the political, economic, societal, demographic and health context in which it is set.
 
This collective (graphic and written) production will go hand in hand with a scientific article in the field of contemporary critical theory of architecture by an author who will collaborate in the EU as an Erasmus expert guest from our research network.
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
5