07507 - History of Contemporary Architecture

Learning outcomes

Critical reading of contemporary architecture under the following key-words: - understanding of the formal, technical, cultural components of a building - awareness of the most significant historiographical tools - awareness of the current research projects - presentation ability

Course contents

The objective of this course is to explore the domain of twentieth-century architecture between the early 1930s and the first decade of the 21st century. No conceptual break rather a continuity with the development of the avant-garde discourse of the first quarter of the century will mark the narrative of the course.
The teaching focuses on the definition of a general frame that includes some paradigmatic approaches to issues of language, aesthetic, and style. The course is not exclusively based on a chronological sequence of events; it is rather based on the idea of the network and the connections between the so called "masters" of modern architecture and the development of a more ordinary discourse. The authorship is not any longer a paradigm in contemporay, globalized architecture.
In the Fall term (2009) the course wishes to open on topics such as the historiography of modernism, national architecture and national identities, modernism-postmodernism-neo modernism. In the Spring term (2010) the focus is on thematic chapters. One of the chapters will focus on the contemporary city as well as on the environmental transfortation of urban tissues.

Readings/Bibliography

Fall Term. 2009
•    F. Dal Co (a cura di), Il secondo Novecento, Electa, Milano 1997
•    K. Frampton, Storia dell'architettura moderna, Zanichelli, Bologna 1997
•    C. Olmo (a cura di), Dizionario dell'architettura del XX secolo, Allemandi, Torino 2000
•    S. Williams Goldhagen, Louis Kahn's Situated Modernism, Yale University Press, New Haven 2001
•    A. Colquhoun, Modern Architecture, Oxford University Press, London 2002
•    J.-L. Cohen, Le Corbusier, 1887-1965: un lirismo per l'architettura dell'era meccanicista, Taschen, Koln 2005
•    W. Curtis, L'architettura moderna dal 1900, Phaidon, London 2006


Spring Term, 2010
•    G. Ciucci, F. dal Co, M. Manieri Elia, M. Tafuri, La città americana dalla guerra civile al New Deal, Laterza, Bari 1973
•    R. Venturi, D. Scott Brown, S. Izenour, Imparando Las Vegas. Il simbolismo dimenticato della forma architettonica, Cluva, Venezia 1985
•    J. M. Findlay, Magic Lands. Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1992
•    J. Jacobs, Vita e morte delle grandi città: saggio sulle metropoli americane, prefazione di Carlo Olmo, Edizioni Comunità, Torino 2000
•    R. Koolhaas, Delirious New York. A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (Thames and Hudson, London 1978), Electa, Milano 2001
•    V. Patteeuw (a cura di), What is OMA. Considering Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, NAi, Rotterdam 2003
•    L. Mumford, La cultura delle città (The City in History. Its origins, Its Transfornations, and its Prospects, Hartcourt, New York 1961) Einaudi, Torino 2007

Students will receive detailed suggestions to widen his/her knowledge of some of the topics introduced during the class. 

Teaching methods

The teaching methods are directly referred to: - bibliographical research - archival reasearch - writing of short entries - software knowledge (data base and bank data) in the filed of the history of architecture.

Assessment methods

Mid-term exam on the topics introduced during the Fall term. The mid-term exam will be scheduled between the two terms, January-February 2010. Power-point presentation of a research paper.

Teaching tools

Text books and selected readings. Web sites and data base. Films and videos.

Office hours

See the website of Maristella Casciato