Omnipolitan architecture is architecture conceived of in an atmosphere of planetary urbanization. Singapore is, at this point, the most developed exemplar we have of planetary urbanization: an urbanization that assumes a global condition as its prerequisite.
Planetary urbanization departs from the intercontinental internationalization of the metropolis, and it leaps beyond the slow tectonic drifts of the megalopolis with its migrating and multiplying centers of gravity. It drives a stake into the shifting sands of capital and roots it to the spot. In this context, cities construct the conditions requisite to harnessing the fickle currents of our highly-mediated ecological and political-economic consciousness.
This global workshop seeks to evaluate the heterogeneous field of late-twentieth- and twenty-first-century architectural production as manifold engagements with the distributed material, political, economic, and media ecologies of our global polis. It is at once an effort to survey recent architecture and a critical attempt to calibrate the contemporary architectural imagination with our extant situation.
Primarily, this is a course in architectural criticism. We will make judgments about contemporary architectural practices. Secondarily, it is a course in architectural theory. We will make critical judgments on the basis of a theoretical orientation: the asserted existence of the omnipolis and its disciplinary and extra-disciplinary consequences. And, tertiarily, it is a course in architectural history that pivots on the conceptual and material practices of recent architectural production as ineluctable points of leverage. Figuring our city planet, we will sketch our immediate past and draft our immediate future.
To do so, the travel seminar will use Singapore as a datum in an otherwise fluid condition, against which we evaluate various omnipolitan architectural practices. We will visit the buildings, landscapes, and urban complexes that have made Singapore an object of emulation from Shanghai to Sydney, Dubai, and Seattle, making the city a landmark at a global crossroads.