PhD Teaching: Petrographies - Geological Thinking and Architecture

Abstract

This course will examine the relevance of geological thought and methodology for the understanding of the built environment.

Objective

WHY (Course Goals) By critically examining material specimens and their manifestations in practices of drawing and analysis, students will be exposed to the impact of material processes as they unfold in time. Acquiring an understanding of fundamental geologic principles, the seminar will expand the students’ knowledge beyond typical architectural understandings of matter and space. Ultimately, the seminar will shift the discussion beyond formal resemblances that currently prevail in architectural design. By doing so it aims to provoke a more expansive and complex analysis of the relationship between architecture and the material earth, one that engages the interrelatedness between different scales, times and matters.

Content

WHAT (topic) This course will examine the relevance of geological thought and methodology for the understanding of the built environment. Students will be introduced to key geological concepts. They will then bring this knowledge into the analysis of built artefacts through the reading of texts, discussion of definitions, understanding of field discoveries, and investigation of specimen. For the geologist James Hutton, “The crucial material link between human life and the earth is the soil” . The earth and its rocks have been a source of knowledge for the science of geology. Today we notice a proliferation of buildings resembling rocks, caves, geological formations and earthly excavations. Meanwhile environmental and philosophical discussions focus on the earth’s new epoch, one that is marked by human presence, activities and their after-effects. HOW (methodology) Methodologically, the seminar will discuss terms such as rocks, fossils, minerals, aggregates as well as modes of representations such as stratigraphy, geosections and petrography. Concurrently we will read historic and contemporary geological texts paired with select texts from the fields of philosophy, anthropology and geography. The discussion will aim in a collective writing of field questions: how does the knowledge gathered relates to the making of the built environment? If we take on Joan Tronto’s suggestion to “instead of thinking of buildings as things, can we think of them in relationships—with ongoing environments, people, flora and fauna, that exist through time as well as in space”- then how does this new understanding of earthly time writings and processes affects our thinking? WHERE (Teaching approach) Besides the classroom, the seminar will be partly be conducted in the field. We will visit select sites: there, we will graft our own field recordings of individual and collective observations. These will form the basis of a group field guide. Finally, each student will compose a text, and an experimental drawing. These will form their own petrography, a writing through stone that addresses select questions, issues and directions prompted from the collective writing exercise, field questions and field guide.

Resources