ARCH 414: Cultural Criticism in Architecture
2 units
Fall 2017
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Watt ?
Professor: William Daryl Williams
Office: ?
Office Hours: By appointment
Methods of Critique
In this course, we will question the role, and impact of ideology, identity, and agency on architecture. We will treat architecture as a form of religion in order to understand its precepts, and use cultural criticism as a method of critique, that reveals the latent biases in the discipline. Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, states “ All religions are true, but none are literal”, concluding that all religions are really containers for the same essential truth, and the trick is to avoid mistaking the wrappings for the diamond.” The primary purpose of this course is to develop the tools necessary to unwrap the diamond, i.e, the discipline of architecture.
The course is divided into roughly three parts. The first part, or prolegomena, is the deep reading of critical text concerning ideology, culture, and agency. The second part of the course involves identifying methods of critique that have been extracted from the above text, to challenge latent assumptions within the discipline of architecture. These assumptions include how and why we draw, the public in public space, and the role of identity in the cultures of design and construction. The Final part of the course is dedicated to applying these methods of criticism to selected projects.
This course will be of interest to those who want to be introduced to cultural criticism as a discipline in architecture, as well as those who question the status quo, and want to become better design critics, and improve their verbal presentation skills.
This course will be in seminar format with the expectation of a short weekly response essays, and lively class participation.
Grading:
Attendance and Participation: 20%
Reading Responses: 50%
Class Presentations: 20%
Final Critique: 10%
Attendance and Participation:
Students are required to attend each class and to complete the required reading assigned before each class session. Readings will be available in the library or posted on Blackboard.
Reading Responses:
For each class session, students will be expected to submit a brief (1-2 page) commentary that responds to the required readings. This should take the form of an analytical summary that briefly summarizes the main point of each reading. The reading responses are to be submitted electronically on Blackboard, and are due no later than midnight on the day before each class meeting. No late reading responses will be accepted.
In-class Presentation
Each student will be responsible for an in-class cultural critique of an architects work. Students will choose a case study for critique before the 5th week of class.
Final Critiques
Students will be expected apply techniques of cultural criticism in a jury like setting, with guest.
No late work is accepted--i.e. no partial credit will be given for work that is turned in late. Being absent on a day that an exam, presentation, paper, or final is held or due can lead to a student receiving an "F" for that assignment.
The School of Architecture's attendance policy allows a student to miss the equivalent of one week of class sessions (in our case, that means one class session) without penalty. If additional absences are required for medical reasons or a family emergency, a pre-approved academic reason, or religious observance, the situation should be discussed, in advance if possible, with me. For each absence above this number, the final grade may be lowered by 1/3 point (i.e. from A to A- for one unexcused absence, from A- to B+ for two; from B+ to B for three, etc.).
Any student not in class after the first 10 minutes is considered to be tardy. Three tardys constitute one unexcused absence. Students who are physically present but mentally absent (whether because they are asleep, or distracted by technology) will be marked as absent. Leaving class before it ends, or taking an extended bathroom or water break that lasts 1/3 of the class time or longer, will be considered an unexcused absence.
Course Overview
The Prolegomena:Week 1 / An Introduction to Cultural Criticism
Week 2 / Definitions of Culture
Week 3 / Ideology and the State
Week 4 / Identity and Agency
Week 5 / Commodification and Dissent
Call and Response:
Week 6 / Representation
Week 7 / Programmatic Bias
Week 8 / Design Aesthetics and Ethics: A Kantian View
Week 9 / Making and Meaning
Spring Break
Week 10 / Case Study Critiques
Week 11 / Case Study Critiques
Week 12 / Case Study Critiques
Week 13 / Case Study Critiques
Week 14 / Case Study Critiques
Week 15 / Case Study Critiques
Weekly Topics and Assignments
Week 1 / Introduction: What is Cultural Criticism in ArchitectureWeek 2 / Definitions of Culture
Culture and Society, Raymond Williams (1961).
The Origins of Cultural Studies, (Stuart Hall)
James Clifford, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography “Partial Truths”.
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures “Ideology As a Cultural System” (New York, 1973) Basic Books
Week 3 / Ideology and the State
Althusser, Louis(1971)."Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses".Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays. pp.121–176.ISBN0-902308-89-0.Translated from the French by Ben Brewster.
Adolf Loos, "Ornament and Crime" [1908] in Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971): 19-24
The Naysayers: Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and the critique of pop culture.
Week 4 / Identity and AgencyFreire “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”
Edward Said, Orientalism NY. Vintage Books 1978.
Toni Morrison, Out There “The Site of Memory”
Mark Wigley, Sexuality and Space, “Untitled: The Housing of Gender”
Week 5 / Commodification and Dissent
Frank “Commodify your Dissent”
Goode “Celebration of Heroes: prestige as a control system”
Week 6 / Representation
Turnbull, “Maps are Territories”
Pines, Willemsen, “Questions of Third Cinema”
Week 7 / Programmatic Bias
Vale, “Architecture politics and national Identity”
Edward Said, The Anti-Aesthetic “Opponents, Audiences and Constituencies and Community”
Week 8 / Design Aesthetics and Ethics: A Kantian View
Architectural Design and Ethics1st Edition
byThomas Fisher
Immanuel Kant'sCritique of Judgment
Week 9 / Making and Meaning
Tom Peters, An American Culture of Construction, Perspecta
Vol. 25 (1989), pp. 142-161
Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete [1928], Introduction by Sokratis Georgiadis, translation by J. Duncan Berry (Santa Monica: The Getty Center, 1995): 85-169
Ed Ford, Five Houses, Ten Details, Princeton Press [2009]
Weeks 10-15 / Final Case Study CritiquesAcademic Conduct
USC seeks to maintain an optimal learning environment. General principles of academic honesty include the concept of respect for the intellectual property of others, the expectation that individual work will be submitted unless otherwise allowed by an instructor, and the obligations both to protect one’s own academic work from misuse by others as well as to avoid using another’s work as one’s own. All students are expected to understand and abide by these principles. Plagiarism – presenting someone else’s ideas as your own, either verbatim or recast in your own words – is a serious academic offense with serious consequences. Please familiarize yourself with the discussion of plagiarism in SCampus in Section 11, Behavior Violating University Standards. https://scampus.usc.edu/b/11-00-behavior-violating-university-standards-and-appropriate-sanctions/. Other forms of academic dishonesty are equally unacceptable. See additional information in SCampus and university policies on scientific misconduct.
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Support Systems
A number of USC’s schools provide support for students who need help with scholarly writing. Check with your advisor or program staff to find out more. Students whose primary language is not English should check with the American Language Institute http://dornsife.usc.edu/ali, which sponsors courses and workshops specifically for international graduate students. The Office of Disability Services and Programs http://sait.usc.edu/academicsupport/centerprograms/dsp/home_index.htmlprovides certification for students with disabilities and helps arrange the relevant accommodations. If an officiallydeclared emergency makes travel to campus infeasible, USC Emergency Information http://emergency.usc.edu/will provide safety and other updates, including ways in which instruction will be continued by means of blackboard, teleconferencing, and other technology.
Religious Holidays
The University recognizes the diversity of our community and the potential for conflicts involving academic activities and personal religious observation. The university provides a guide to such observances for reference and suggests that any concerns about lack of attendance or inability to participate fully in the course activity be fully aired at the start of the term. As a general principle students should be excused from class for these events if properly documented and if provisions can be made to accommodate the absence and make up the lost work. Constraints on participation that conflict with adequate participation in the course and cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of the faculty and the student need to be identified prior to the drop add date for registration. After the drop add date the University and the School of Architecture shall be the sole arbiter of what constitutes appropriate attendance and participation in a given course. Any student concerned about missing class for a recognized religious holiday should bring this matter up with your instructor at the start of the semester. A list of recognized religious holidays may be found at: http://www.usc.edu/programs/religious_life/calendar/.
Course Bibliography:
01.) Cornel West, On Architecture: Lecture, Graduate School of Design at Harvard.
02.) Diane Ghirado, Out of Site (Bay Press) Introduction.
03.) William J. Goode, The Celebration of Heroes: Prestige as a control system, “Social Control through prestige Processes” (1-16).
04.) Margaret Crawford, “Can Architects Be Socially Responsible” Out of Site (Bay Press) 27-44.
05.) Michel DeCerteau, “Believing and Making People Believe” The Practice of Everday Life.
06.) Edward Said, Orientalism NY. Vintage Books 1978.
07.) Edward Said, The Anti-Aesthetic “Opponents, Audiences and Constituencies and Community”
08.) Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures “Ideology As a Cultural System” (New York, 1973) Basic Books.
09.) Hemi k. Bhabba, Out There, “The Other Question: Difference, Discrimination, and the Discourse of Colonialism”
10.) James Clifford, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography “Partial Truths”.
11.) James Clifford, Out There, “On Collecting Art and Culture”
12.) Stephen Greenblatt, The New Historicism “Towards a Poetics of Culture”
13.) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The New Historicism “The new Historicism: Political Commitment and the Postmodern Critic”
14.) Hayden White, The New Historicism “New Historicism: A Comment”
15.) Jean Franco, The New Historicism “The Nation as Imagined Community”
16.) Cornel West, Out There, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference”
17.) Henry Louis Gates, Loose Canons Canon Confidential: A Sam Slade Caper
18.) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Out There, “Explanation and Culture: Marginalia”
19.) Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style “From Culture to Hegemony”
20.) Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer ______Industry: Englightenment as Mass Deception”
21.) Toni Morrison, Out There “The Site of Memory”
22.) Monique Wittig, Out There “The Straight Mind”
23.) Michel Foucault, “Space, Power and Knowledge” Interview with Paul Rabinow.
24.) Darell W. Fields, Appendix “A Black Manifesto””
25.) Darell W. Fields, Appendix, “Living a Slow Death…or Porch Monkeys in the Dust”
26.) bell hooks, Out There, “Talking Back”
27.) Edward Said, Out There, “Reflections on Exile”
28.) Martha Gever, Out There, “The Name We Give Ourselves”
29.) Kobena Mercer, Out There, “Black Hair/Style Politcs”
30.) Richard Rodriguez, Out There, “Complexion”
31.) Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought Knowledge, Consciousness & The Politics of Empowerment, “Mammies, Matriarchs and Other Controlling Images”
32.) Kim Anne Salvson, Out There, “The Places of Feminist Criticism: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Space”
33.) Michele Wallace, “Negative Images: Towards a Black Feminist Cultural Criticism”
34.) Audre Lorde, Out There, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”
35.) Victor Burgin, Sexuality and Space, “Perverse Space”
36.) Elizabeth Grosz, Sexuality and Space, “Bodies-Cities”
37.) Craig Owens, The Anti-Aesthetic, “The Discourse of Others: Feminist and Postmodernism”
38.) Mark Wigley, Sexuality and Space, “Untitled: The Housing of Gender”
39.) Ed Soja, Postmodern Geographies, “It All Comes Together in Los Angeles” and “Taking Los Angeles Apart”
40.) Meaghan Morris, Sexuality and Space, “Things to do with Shopping Centers”
41.) Mike Davis, City of Quartz, “The Hammer and the Rock”
42.) Edward Soja and Barbara Hooper, “The Spaces that Difference Makes: Some Notes on The Geographical Margins of the New Cultural Politics”
43.) Ed Soja, “History, Geography, Modernity” Postmodern Geographies
44.) Lynn Spigel, Sexuality and Space, “The Suburban Home Companion: Television and the Neighborhood Ideal in Postwar America”
45.) Alan Wald, Theorizing Cultural Difference, “A Critique of The Ethnicity School”