The Para-site
In the context of architecture and urban design, the figure of the parasite (from Philosopher Michel Serres) can be used to understand how people can appropriate and repurpose existing sites and buildings as a political practice. In this way, Serres is suggesting that spatial practitioners and communities have the ability to take existing structures and spaces, and by repurposing them, to actively shift the operation, functionality, and meaning to them.
This seminar, Para-site, explores the use and misuse of space or architecture. By examining the repurposing of sites and practices through a lens of intention, agency, and power, the seminar aims to investigate how architects can be active agents within institutional and architectural frameworks. The seminar will also explore the inner logic of specific projects and sites and how they operate in relation to the outside domains such as space, discourse, economy, and politics. This will be used to examine the siloing of the architecture discipline.
Through case studies of repurposed sites or systems and diagramming practices, students will have the opportunity to understand the complex ethical questions at the heart of architecture and its relationship to society by examining and how this type of engagement unfolds through practice.
Termine
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Introduction
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Final presentation and submission