Master Meetings

30.11.2021

MA in Storia e teoria dell'arte e dell'architettura

Modern and Political Architecture: Berlin
Prof. Sonja Hildebrand

Capital of Imperial Germany, cultural and artistic melting pot of the Roaring Twenties, capital of the Nazi regime striving for world domination, front city in the Cold War and popular epitome of a (seemingly) regained unity of the world after 1989: with its eventful political history, Berlin is the city of the 20th century. In this course, we will analyse Berlin's architectural history over the past 120 years as an expression of the city's changing and sometimes competing role models in the focus of world historical developments through key buildings, building programmes, debates, actors, and politics. One focus will be on building policy since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and on attempts to regain the city's architectural history.

The course is envisaged as an introduction to the 20th-century architectural heritage. The first part of the course provides a cultural, theoretical and critical framework for understanding the recent heritage as a historical, symbolic and aesthetic resource, and/or as possessing functional, technical, social, economic and ecological values. It also introduces the history of conservation theories and practices and the terminology used to define such practices. The exercise guides students through the construction of a “monographic study of the work” for a given building. In providing the building under study with a historical-critical allocation in relation to the above parameters, the architect contributes to the “making of the heritage”: this is considered an intrinsic part of an architect’s design work. Through a broad range of case studies, the second part of the course provides a methodology for devising criteria of intervention and tailored solutions for each specific case.

History of Contemporary Art - Guest Lecture: Daniel Baumann (Kunsthalle Zurich)
Dr Tobia Bezzola

Historical avant-garde art movements such as Dadaism, Futurism, Constructivism, Surrealism etc. already saw themselves not merely as communities of artists with shared aesthetic interests but sought to overcome isolated artistic subjectivity in collective works and collaborative production. These tendencies were intensified in the Neo-Avantgarde movements of the post-war decades (1950-1980) where new art forms (Media Art, Happening and Performance Art, Environmental and Installation Art) further redefined the relationship between the individual artist and the artwork. In contemporary artistic practice a widespread methodological concept of a “promiscuity of collaborations”, goes even beyond the postwar idea of the “artist's collective” integrating numerous individual artists. Art Collectives today frequently invite, include and integrate non-artistic actors, such as scientists, socially engaged activist groups, ecological initiatives etc. into the process of artistic creation.

Il corso tratta una serie di “concetti fondamentali” ritenuti di particolare rilevanza per il loro uso sia nella critica architettonica, sia nella didattica teorica e negli atelier di progettazione. Scopo del corso è di favorire la connessione tra il repertorio linguistico usato nel dibattito disciplinare e le “parole” che accompagnano lo studente nell’apprendimento della competenza progettuale. Tra le “parole chiave” figurano: arte, autore, opera, moderno, morfologia, tipologia, progetto, spazio, modello, stile, funzione, struttura, paesaggio... A partire da un nucleo di circa venti concetti fondamentali, il corso sviluppa un’interpretazione ispirata ai metodi della storia delle idee, volta a chiarire per ogni voce i significati architettonici e le relazioni con altri ambiti disciplinari.