The Faculty of Architecture / Architecture (English taught)
3rd Year, sem 2, 2024-2025

IT-61E | Modern and Contemporary Architectural Theories (2)

Compulsory Course | Hours/Week: 1C | ECTS Credits: 2

Syllabus

Department:

History & Theory of Architecture and Heritage Conservation

Course Leader:

prof.dr.arh. Celia Ghyka

Teaching Staff:

lect.dr.arh. Ilinca Păun Constantinescu

Teaching language:

English

Learning outcomes:

Semester II is oriented around the question concerning the relationship between universal and particular in architecture and the place of this theme in contemporary discourse. The course investigates how architecture of the last decades of the 20th century and early 21st century negotiates this tension between the universal principles of modernism and responses to particular conditions of place, local culture, and experience. Incursions into architectural history contribute to nuancing this understanding.
The course aims to provide students with tools for critical interrogation of issues such as authenticity, cultural identity, and architectural meaning. Beyond simplistic binaries such as global or local, modern or traditional, universal or particular, the course relies on more sophisticated and nuanced theoretical frameworks that offer possible responses to this complexity. Four major approaches guide this exploration, providing analytical and interpretive tools: contextualism, critical regionalism, revisiting the idea of monumentality and its relationship with democracy, and the influence of phenomenology in architecture.

Content:

The course progression follows how architectural discourse evolved from the solutions of 1980s postmodern scenography through increasingly sophisticated approaches to place, materiality, and experience. In this regard, an important moment (which must itself be understood in a nuanced way) is the 1980 Venice Biennale and the polemics that accompanied it. The problem of architecture as scenography (the direction of stylistic postmodernism) is central also to the critical regionalism debate, developed by Kenneth Frampton, following the line opened by Alexander Tzonis and Diane Lefaivre. These directions are extensively commented upon in the course, starting from Frampton's examples but also considering the limitations of this theory.
The course refers to examples from Romania and Southeast Europe, alongside canonical cases of Western architecture and examples from distant cultures, demonstrating how these apparently "international" theories require regional interpretation and application. The goal is to prepare students so that in their future professional practice they can contribute significantly to Romanian architectural culture while engaging critically in global professional discourse.

Teaching Method:

Lectures with image slides and videos.

Assessment:

Final written exam.

Bibliography:

o Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture. A Critical History, Thames & Hudson, any edition
o Jean Louis Cohen, L'architecture au futur depuis 1889, Phaidon
o Kate Nesbitt, Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996
o Michael Hays, Architectural Theory since 1968, MIT Press, 2000
o Stylianos Giamarelos, Resisting Postmodern Architecture. Critical Regionalism before Globalisation, University College London, 2022
o Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, MIT Press
o Kenneth Frampton, "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance." Perspecta 20 (1983)
o Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lefaivre, "The Grid and the Pathway: An Introduction to the Work of Dimitris and Suzana Antonakakis." Architecture in Greece 15 (1981)
o Louis Kahn, Essential Texts (ed. by Robert Twombly), Norton & Company, 2003: MONUMENTALITY (1944)
o Christian Norberg-Schulz, The Phenomenon of Place, Architectural Association Quarterly 8, no.4 (1976)