VSA2250

Current architecture

Proposed to be offered next in 1999

Conrad Hamann

8 points
* 3 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton
* Prerequisites: Two visual arts subjects at first-year level

Objectives Students are introduced to major contemporary developments in architecture and urban form, and encouraged to examine, critically, the range of recent manifestos, appeals to history and to national or regional identity, as well as the arguments and persuasion surrounding different approaches to architecture.

Synopsis This subject examines current architecture and its move away from orthodox modernism. Seminars will concentrate on architects' attempts to enrich design by the use of historical reference, political ideology, humour, symbol, the consideration of surroundings, and other methods. Current architecture is often presented as a recent and capricious reaction to the Modern Movement. However, this subject will emphasise how the latest architecture has evolved from sources in early twentieth-century design. The subject will explore how this tradition has been developed by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown, Charles Moore and others in America. The `opposing' European design that has developed around the Krier brothers and Aldo Rossi will also be studied. Several seminars will consider work by architects such as Rem Koolhaas and Michael Graves. Later seminars will consider developments since 1985, particularly the architectural `deconstructivism' of Frank Gehry, Bernard Tschumi and others, and the recasting of corporate and Neoclassical architecture. Australian design will be considered as integral throughout the study.

Assessment Written (5000 words): 75%
* Visual test (1 hour): 25%

Prescribed texts

Jencks C The language of post-modern architecture 3rd edn, Academy, 1981, 1991
Venturi R Complexity and contradiction in architecture Museum of Modern Art, 1981

Recommended texts

Jencks C Modern movements in architecture Penguin, 1981
Portoghesi P Architecture 1980. The presence of the past Rizzoli, 1980
Papadakis A Deconstruction I, II, III, A D Profiles, 72, 77, 87, 1988- 1990