Engineering > Architecture > Dialogue in Art, Architecture, and Urbanism

Dialogue in Art, Architecture, and Urbanism posted by duggu on 11/29/2007

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Course Highlights

This class deals with interventions in the urban environment of Boston's Big Dig, and has a complete set of student projects displaying the work of the semester.

Course Description

In this class we will examine how the idea of the city has been "translated" by artists, architects, and other diverse disciplines. We will consider how collaborations between artists and architects might provide opportunities for rethinking / redesigning urban spaces. The class will look specifically at planned cities like Brasilia, Las Vegas, Canberra, and Celebration and compare such tabula rasa designs with the redesign of recyclable urban spaces demonstrated in projects such as Ground Zero, Barcelona 2004, and Boston's Rose Kennedy Greenway. While the course will involve some reading and discussion, coursework will focus largely on the students' own projects / interventions that should evolve over the course of the semester. Of the two weekly class meetings, one will be a group discussion or lecture with the whole class and visiting guests, and the other will be an individual meeting between the student and the instructor to discuss his or her work for the class, including the final project.

Special Features

Student projects

*Some translations represent previous versions of courses.

Syllabus

The class will make two field trips during the semester. First, a trip to Yale University to hear Kenneth Frampton speak will coincide with the New York City trip of the 4.123 Level 1 Studio. Then later in the semester, the class will make a trip to Brasilia to research it as a case study, documenting their trip. Visiting artists and architects will make presentations of their work, as well as offering background on the Rose Kennedy Greenway and the history of the project and the city of Boston. Visitors will include Hubert Murray, local architect and former planner for the Central Artery project, Kelly Dobson, local artist and former MIT Visual Arts student, and Wendy Jacob, Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Department.

The final project will be developed over the course of the semester, and will focus on a discussion surrounding the issues relevant to the Rose Kennedy Greenway, and the spaces that will come into being once the Boston Central Artery Project is complete. These as-yet undefined spaces will no doubt be hotly contested and fought over. The final projects should seek to design new ways of looking at and thinking about these spaces.

Calendar

WEEK #	TOPICS
1	Introduction, Slideshow of examples of Public Artworks and Muntadas' own work
2-3	Students show their previous work
4	Slideshow of Artist/Architect Collaborations, e.g.: Acconci + Holl's Storefront for Art and Architecture; Barbara Kruger's Collaboration with Smith-Miller and Hawkinson; Silvia Kolbowski; Introduction to the Big Dig/Central Artery Project: Videotapes from PBS Documentary on the Project
5	Hubert Murray, Architect/Planner for Boston's Central Artery Project speaks to class, presents history of the Central Artery
6	Field Trip to Yale University to attend lecture by Kenneth Frampton and Arjun Appadurai on Critical Regionalism Revisited
7	Visiting Artist: Kelly Dobson
8	Pin-up of Students' Proposals for their Big Dig Interventions
9	Introduction to Brasilia, Discussion of Planned Cities and their deployments of Public Art and Architecture
10	Field Trip to Brasilia
11	Discussion of Brasilia Trip; Students present photographs and film footage from trip
12	Film: Sans Soleil
13	Film: Berlin Babylon
14	Final Critique of Students' Projects with Visiting Critics Wendy Jacob, Hubert Murray, and Laurie Palmer

Course Pedagogy

This section describes the pedagogy and logistics of the course, and describes the background of the instructor.

Pedagogy

This subject engages a dialogue with architecture and urbanism from the perspective of the visual artist. Initially, a historical overview of artistic and urbanistic work and themes is undertaken, from early modernist practices to the most recent examples of contemporary production. Art making as an adjunct and assistant to the design process is challenged by both synthetic and critical models of production. Visual art practice is examined as a conceptual prologue to architectural and urbanistic thinking, as an integrated part of the design process, and as a critical epilogue.

This semester, the course was required of all first year architecture students at MIT, and was taught in conjunction with their studio, which also dealt with issues of urbanism, mapping, and territory. The field trips were held in conjunction with the studio, to emphasize similar topics of discussion. Lectures, in-class critiques, visiting artists, and the study of film and other works lead to the development of realized projects, coordinated with the architectural studio. The final project took advantage of this in-depth study to produce innovative and clever design proposals related to the soon to be open space of the Rose Kennedy Greenway, the space beneath the former elevated highway in Boston. The use of this space has been a subject of much debate, and this class proposes solutions for it that are thought-provoking.

Logistics

In order to fully study the range of urban conditions, this class makes two field trips during the semester, to two urban locales that are very different in nature. The first trip is to New York City, to attend lectures given at Yale on Urbanism and to visit two modern art museums (in conjunction with the architecture studio). More importantly, the urban condition of New York City is studied, to serve as a counterpoint to the second and longer field trip, which is to Brasilia, the capital city of Brazil. Sketches, photographs, and film are taken in both cities, and the results are discussed in class as they relate to art and urbanism in general and the final project of the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

The other classes throughout the semester will serve as discussion of the general topics. Visiting artists will be invited, to discuss their work and art in general. Other visitors will discuss the history of Boston and the history of the Central Artery project, and the possibilities for the Greenway. The last few classes will serve as discussion and critique of the final projects, with an emphasis on developing them and their final production (media, display, and content). The last class will include all of the previous guests, invited back to critique the final projects.

Instructor

Antonio Muntadas, born in Barcelona, Spain in 1942, has lived and worked in New York since 1971. His work addresses social, political and communications issues, the relationship between public and private space within social frameworks, and investigations of channels of information and the ways they may be used to censor central information or promulgate ideas. He works in different media such as photography, video, publications, internet and multi-media installations.

He studied at the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales in Barcelona and the Pratt Graphic Center in New York. He has taught and directed seminars at the University of California in San Diego, the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Bordeaux and Grenoble, the CAVS at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris, the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, Cooper Union in New York and many other institutions.

He has created works commissioned by the Centre Nationale des Arts Plastiques in Paris, the Fonds d'Arts Publiques in Marseille, the Public Art Fund in New York, and he has been resident artist and consulting advisor in several research and education centers including the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, the Banff Center in Canada, Arteleku in San Sebastian, Spain and the University of Western Sydney in Australia.