Modern Architecture and Urban Planning --Syllabus

ARTH 372-01 MODERN ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING Department of Art and Art History College of William and Mary Fall 2012 M, W: 2:00 – 3:20 in 201 Andrews Prof. Sibel Z. Sayek Office: 109C Andrews Hall Hours: M, W 3:30 – 4:30 (and by appointment) E-mail: [e-mail] Phone: [phone] Course site: http://blackboard.wm.edu COURSE DESCRIPTION This course offers an overview of influential ideas and paradigmatic developments in the architecture and urbanism of the modern era from the Enlightenment (c.1750) to the 1960s. Using buildings, sites, projects, models, and exhibitions, as well as theoretical writings and manifestoes, we will examine how architects have responded to, and participated in, the broader social, technological, and aesthetic changes of the time. The focus will be on Europe and North America with references to related developments in the colonial and post-colonial worlds. A central objective of the course is to unpack what “modern” means in the context architectural and urban studies. In the first part of the course, we will address the notion of “modernity,” which encompasses all the major cultural and philosophical transformations rooted in the Enlightenment ideals of progress, scientific rationality and historical consciousness. Next, we will concentrate on the related notion of “modernization,” which covers the phenomenal social, urban and technological transformation of the world, stemming from the 19th century Industrial Revolution. Thirdly, we will examine how these developments informed “modernism,” the radical artistic and architectural currents unfolding at the turn of the century into the 20th whereby all traditional notions of aesthetics, program and production were challenged in an unprecedented way. In discussing these interwoven strands of the “modern,” the course provides a historically informed and critical understanding of modernity and its architectural/ urban expressions—a legacy that still continues to shape much of the built