F 9:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Anderson Hall, Room 154
To think about origins is to think about sources, materials and places of provenance: natural or artificial, physical or virtual. The question about origins, is however bound to the question about their alterations. It is only when something changes, that we’re left with the question of where it came from. Transformations, in all scales and temporalities have always been present in architecture: from the slow degradation of ancient ruins, to the immediate repetitions of digital images. Architecture and its objects are not only inevitably bound to face alterations, but architectural practices have also incorporated them at the core of their methodologies, mixing old traditional processes and new technological tools in different gradients and conditions. Mass and digital production and dissemination methods are making for fast changing conditions in architecture, taking a particular interest in replicating and reproducing objects, processes and experiences. As technical and technological tools evolve, so do the forces that objects undergo, changing media, shape, location, temporality and meaning.
The seminar will examine physical and conceptual transformations as tools to sustain contemporary architectural discourse and practice. With a range of theoretical texts and in specific historical examples, we will assess the status, definition and use of transformative actions in architecture, architectural history, and other architecture media practices. We will review different processes and tools as forms to alter, change, trace, intervene, digitize, degrade, transfer, subvert or replicate natural and artificial objects; surveying the range of methodologies, experiments and approaches that have served to define, demarcate, or redirect the discipline over the last decades. We will analyze practical study cases of emerging practitioners and develop the conceptual structure for future experiments and alterations, interrogating the theory, as well as its application and utility in architecture.