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Nothing Special: On Greatness and the Ordinary in Architectural History
Last Updated: 2026-06-03 00:13:59
Abstract
What makes an architect great, and who decides what counts as a masterpiece? Through readings, discussions, and archival visits this seminar explores how ideals of genius and singular authorship have shaped architectural history and how collective, feminist, and everyday practices challenge these narratives foregrounding architectures of care, informality, and even failure.
Objective
- What makes an architect “great”? - Who decides what counts as a masterpiece? - And what happens to the buildings, authors, and ideas that fall outside the canon, those deemed ordinary, derivative, or even mediocre? This seminar investigates how the history of architecture has been organized around ideals of greatness, genius, and exceptionality, and how alternative approaches have sought to challenge these narratives. Beginning with the emergence of the “architect as author” in the Renaissance and tracing the consolidation of canons in early modern and modern historiography, we examine how biographical and stylistic models have reinforced notions of mastery, originality, and hierarchy. Against this tradition, the course explores counter-histories that foreground anonymity, co-authorship, collectivity, repetition, and failure. Readings range from Vasari to the Annales School, from feminist and queer critiques to contemporary theories of maintenance, care and repair. Through lectures, seminar discussions, collective writing, and a visit to the gta Archives, students will analyze how value, authorship, and historical visibility are constructed, and will experiment with alternative ways of writing architectural history. We will consider how architectural labor, often structured through bureaucracy, collaboration, and technical administration, complicates the myth of solitary genius. Attention will be given to collective practices and platforms such as We-aggregate and The Architecture Lobby, which propose shared authorship and critical solidarity as alternatives to individual design authorship. By the end of the semester, students will have developed conceptual and methodological tools to question inherited categories of greatness and to recognize the historical, material, and ethical significance of what has often been overlooked, uncelebrated, or simply... nothing special.
General Information
- Language
- English
- Levels
- BSC
- Frequency
- Yearly recurring
Examination
- Type
- ungraded semester performance
Course Components
| Type | Title | Time & Place | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| seminar |
Nothing Special: On Greatness and the Ordinary in Architectural History
No course on 20.3.2026 (seminar week) and in the last two weeks of the semester.
|
|
2 h weekly |