In the last several years, a crisis of capitalist development has redefined our understanding of cities in terms of international policy making, political constituencies and individual and collective political expressions in the urban realm. Inter Unit 8 has been experimenting with possible new scenarios for this political readjustment at a global scale, departing from its most basic expressions in the city. As a result, students have constructed innovative political arguments by experimenting with the relationship between everyday material activities–such as waiting for a bus, dancing, chatting in the streets, or wheeling and dealing in the city squares–and a particular material organization. In these common everyday practices, students have found the materials from which to reconstruct the political experience in the city. Manifested in public and constructed as a physical material expression, these everyday practices acquire a political value — understanding the political as what Hannah Arendt described as action in public — and redefine new models of the interaction between the individual and the collective in the public arena.

26.2.10

Brief 05 W1

W7 Materiality
01-05 Mar

Throughout this phase, concepts will acquire more accurate material expressions. Students will work with models and material structures for their explorations in relation to their Technical Studies work.

Seminar by Mehran Gharleghi and Amin Sadeghy. 26 Feb

Readings
Farshid Mousavi and Michael Kubo, The Function of Ornament, Barcelona: Actar, 2008.
Brooke Hodge, Patricia Mears and Susan Sidlauskas (eds.): Skin+Bones, Thames & Hudson, 2006.
Surface Consciousness, AD Magazine, Academy Press, 2003

Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Design and research work of Intermediate Unit 8 Architectural Association School of Architecture London UK