The seminar will consist of a series of collective readings of selected texts.

The seminar will consist of a series of collective readings of selected texts.

Advanced Research Methods in the History and Theory of Art and Architecture

Corrective historiographies for architectural research

Advanced Research Methods in the History and Theory of Art and Architecture

Advanced Research Methods in the History and Theory of Art and Architecture

Corrective historiographies for architectural research

The seminar will consist of a series of collective readings of selected texts.

This seminar avails itself of the complexities and richness of pre-1850 literary sources on architecture to explore and discuss some fundamental methodological questions: who writes about architecture and art, and why? What is a legitimate historical source? How can we gain access to it? How do we develop an at once historical and critical approach? How does mediation generate interpretation? Etc.

Some say that there are two ways to write about architecture: to look at ‘discourses full of objects’ or, conversely, at ‘objects full of discourses’. This doctoral seminar course radically explores the second approach by focussing on the ordinary ‘things’ that buildings are made of (e.g. toilets, elevators, but also bricks, or carpets) and extrapolating general concepts from them.

What new readings of architecture emerge when the objects of research are not the ever-changing «heroes», «pioneers» or the «key buildings», but instead a series of «things» like the various network of expertise, systems, and objects that at the same time shaped our built environment? The seminar will focus on the overlooked «anonymous» objects of history.

The seminar explores the relations etween architecture and ideas about national identity in the 19th century. Through weekly readings and class debates, it will identify new institutions, publications, artists and architectural styles in connection with national ideologies as well as movements aiming to destabilise artis.

Most religions assign certain spaces and objects a degree of sacrality. The actions surrounding sacrality reflect social and political hierarchies, gender codes, material practices, and economic realities. This seminar aims to critically understand the roles and functions assigned to architecture within the complex and often conflictual context of the sacred.

This course introduces computational methods for architectural history, combining source criticism with data- and machine-learning-driven analysis. Through digital tools, students work with cultural heritage data and knowledge graphs, developing their own research questions while acquiring skills in analysing and visualising historical data and critically reflecting on computational research.

This course is an introduction to the use of computational methods in the Humanities, and more specifically to its applications to Architecture History. Using a corpus from the ETH library, its purpose is to expose students to a range of approaches and methods which could appear in a digital project.