Units
Contemporary Architectural Culture
Unit code: DAN125
Credit points: 12
Information about fees and unit costs
This unit provides the opportunity for the students to become aware of and to debate the innovative and advanced projects and critical thinking in the international field of architecture of the contemporary time. It provides the framework in which the student can locate individual research and design activities. It prepares the student to make informed and creative decisions in professional life. Teaching and learning takes place through three forms of structured activity: lectures, tutorials, and online.
Availability
| Semester | Available |
|---|---|
| 2013 Semester 1 | Yes |
Sample subject outline - Semester 1 2013
Note: Subject outlines often change before the semester begins. Below is a sample outline.
Rationale
This class explores the rise of theoretical discourses that stimulated critical architectural debates, since Modernism and the late 1960s, specifically as they emerged from the social and political fabric of modern and contemporary war and its development. Architectural theory is understood not as an abstraction or severance from concrete architectural production, but as an active agent through which architecture responds to radical politics and a broader cultural dialogue, in order to transform the real of design practice and the architecture studio alike.
Aims
By this excursion into late architectural theory, criticism and debate, you will acquire the ability and desire to read seminal architectural texts in your final year of architecture school, and the facility to properly theorise your own design projects, to produce rigorous concepts in the design studio; and, to engage with the architectural debates which form the lining of global architecture today.
Objectives
On completion of this unit, you will be able to:
1.Produce written and oral exposition of concepts, arguments, and theories through close reading and comprehension of architecture texts and their influence on architectural production.
2.Produce your own analysis, interpretation and arguments around seminal theoretical texts
3.Theorise and contextualise architectural works or projects, especially your own work, within the wider international architectural debate.
Content
Three open student discussions will be staged in parallel with a close reading of six seminal texts relevant to the theoretical paradigms to be presented in the lectures: modernism to postmodernism, critical architecture, deconstruction and différance, surface debates, simulation and war, and violent urbanism.
Approaches to Teaching and Learning
Teaching mode:
Hours per week:
Lectures: 1 hr (over 6 weeks)
Student discussions held in lecture (over 3 weeks)
Tutorials: 1hr (over 7 weeks)
Your learning in this unit will be promoted through:
the weekly reading and theory, three weeks of live student debates, and self-directed study. Other texts for further reading will be provided if you wish to read more than the requisite texts.
Assessment
Summative assessment:
There are two assessments for this unit:
1. A five-minute oral presentation and subsequent submission of a 1000-word text and bibliography which builds an argument for your essay topic presented to the class for feedback. It will allow you to explore and deliver an argument, in person, providing the basic premise argument or topic for your proposed essay thereby showing your comprehension of architectural arguments and ideas and building your intellectual and rhetorical skills in preparation for the second written assessment.
2. A 2,500-word essay, plus endnotes, based on the original abstract, which exhibits capabilities of enquiry, discrimination and command over one architectural theory, problem or debate.
LATE ASSIGNMENTS
An assignment submitted after the due date without an approved extension will not be marked. If you are unable to complete your assignment on time, you should submit on time whatever work you have done.
Faculty Assessment Information
To access the Creative Industries Faculty Assessment Information please refer to the Blackboard site for this unit.For assessment 1 you will receive peer and lecturer feedback on your working topic (title or question), a brief abstract, and bibliography. For assessment 2, you may optionally submit to your tutor a draft essay no later than one week before the final submission for substantive feedback.
Assessment name:
Literature Review
Description:
Five minute talk which pitches to the class your essay topic and the primary argument that is its premise, accompanied by a 1000 word abstract, and a bibliography.
Assessment: Week 7 (written component) weeks 2,3,4,5 (oral component)
Relates to objectives:
1,2,3
Weight:
40%
Internal or external:
Internal
Group or individual:
Individual
Due date:
Mid-semester
Assessment name:
Essay
Description:
Submission of a 2,500 word essay including citations on one of the set topics provided.
Relates to objectives:
1,2,3
Weight:
60%
Internal or external:
Internal
Group or individual:
Individual
Due date:
Late semester
Academic Honesty
QUT is committed to maintaining high academic standards to protect the value of its qualifications. To assist you in assuring the academic integrity of your assessment you are encouraged to make use of the support materials and services available to help you consider and check your assessment items. Important information about the university's approach to academic integrity of assessment is on your unit Blackboard site.
A breach of academic integrity is regarded as Student Misconduct and can lead to the imposition of penalties.
Resource materials
Texts
The assigned essays pertaining to the lectures will be made available in the Course Materials Database via Blackboard. In addition to the prescribed weekly readings, the following seminal, edited collection of essays is recommended and may provide a source of further essays for those who have the inclination to read beyond the basic texts:
Hays, K. Michael. 1998. Architecture theory since 1968. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Numerous books by authors discussed have also been placed on the library course reserve to further help you select and explore an essay topic.
Academic writing:
A short and helpful book on style is: Strunk, William, White, E. B. 2000. The Elements of Style. 4th ed. ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, available on the course reserve.
You are required to use the The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS). 2003. 15th ed. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; for the style, typography and citation of all submitted work, available in the library course reserve, and online at:
You will also be able to download Endnote, which will be made freely available to you via the library website, in order to assemble your notes and 'endnote library' set to 'Chicago 15th' the prescribed style for the unit.
Additional Costs
None.
Risk assessment statement
There are no unusual risks associated with this unit with regard to its delivery on campus. You are reminded of your obligation to make yourself aware of your responsibilities under the Workplace Health and Safety Act and the health and safety requirements and evacuation procedures operating in the buildings in which you attend classes or undertake associated study.
Disclaimer - Offer of some units is subject to viability, and information in these Unit Outlines is subject to change prior to commencement of semester.
Last modified: 05-Oct-2012
