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052-0851-20L 2 Credits BSC D-ARCH

Topical Questions in History and Theory of Architecture: Thinking Territory (Guest)

Lecturers & Examiners: Prof. Dr. Laurent Stalder, Dr. Holly Amber Kennedy
VVZ CR n/a

Last Updated: 2026-02-05 15:36:02

Abstract

The seminar is always given by a guest lecturer at the institute gta and deals with topics ranging from the history of architecture through the history of the city to the history of the landscape from the early modern period to today.In HS20 the seminar explores the history of modern architecture and planning as a medium of territorial thought and transformation since the1880s.

Objective

The seminar introduces students to new topics and interdisciplinary research methodologies that are currently reshaping the field of history. One of the aims of this course is to provide students with an advanced and conceptually rich understanding of the distinctions between land, terrain, territory and territoriality, with a focus on how the latter two (territory and territoriality) have been understood and enacted in different historical and geographical contexts. The primary objective is to grasp how architectural practices have helped to produce territory, and to understand the stakes of that production.

Content

The seminar deals with topics ranging from the history of architecture to the history of the landscape through the 19th and 20th centuries around the world. This course, conducted as a research and reading seminar, will introduce the students to topics and methodologies focused on the question of 'territory' that advance our current understanding of the forces that have shaped architecture's modernity. In HS20 the research seminar explores the history of modern architecture and planning as a medium of territorial thought and transformation since the1880s, when the discipline began to encounter the question of the hinterlands as a large-scale design problem. Analyzing the institutional stakes of architecture’s shift to the global scale, framed by a set of forces that helped define architecture’s modernity, we will examine the changing relationship between architecture, resources, labor, and territory through the 19th and 20th centuries. Tracing this development across time and space, this course asks how modern nations, emerging empires, and newly independent states came to understand themselves on the planetary scale through large-scale modernization projects and territorial pacification schemes.

General Information

Language
English
Levels
BSC
Frequency
Semesterly recurring

Examination

Type
graded semester performance
Students will complete a short essay with a research component. Topics for the papers will be approved by mid-October. Class meets weekly via Zoom, in seminar format. Each student is asked to make a presentation of selected readings once in the semester, and each week students will be asked to post a short comment or question on Moodle related to the readings. Presentations should identify the issues and positions that are relevant to each theme, and include a detailed formal analysis of one illustrative object/project/space/event.

Course Components

Type Title Time & Place Hours
seminar Topical Questions in History and Theory of Architecture: Thinking Territory (Guest)
No course on 19.10. (seminar week) on as well as on 7. and 14.12. (before final critiques). The lecturers will communicate the exact lesson times of ONLINE courses.
  • Mon 10:00-12:00 (ON LI NE)
2 h weekly

Offered In