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- The course is open for students of architecture and landscape architecture.
- Returning Body & Space Morphologies students are prioritized.
- Students in their pre-diploma semester that never have been in a Body & Space Morphologies studio can not be acceptet.
INTRODUCTION:
Body & Space Morphologies: Content, Overall Aims and Methods
Body and Space Morphologies is a research-based teaching program placed in the field of Architecture & Culture studies. Dedicated to Phenomenology in Architecture, the program offers Trans-Disciplinary master studios and elective courses in explorative architectural and pre-architectural making, sensing and thinking.
From The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology (2012, Dan Zahavi, ed.):
“Phenomenology shares the conviction that the critical stance proper to philosophy requires a move away from a straightforward metaphysical or empirical investigation of objects to an investigation of the very framework of meaning and intelligibility that makes any such straightforward investigation possible in the first place. It precisely asks how something like objectivity is possible in the first place.”
Our attempt is to partake in the discourse on the Phenomenology of Architecture by working and studying Architectural Phenomenology outside of the Conventions of Architecture. In theory, this can mean a free-thinking, and to some degree also a “free-making” and/or “free-looking”, yet in the realm of our studios it means the making of a dedicated Artistic Research which is looking for the Creation of a Material Practice in which the student can gain a certain expertise in and through which the discourse on the Phenomenology of Architecture can be tried on – if it not already is embodied by the material itself.
We aim at preparing and enabling students to conduct their own investigation into Architectural Phenomenology understood as a Research Creation; a working mode creating an inspired Material Practice “attuned to process rather than the communication of outputs or products” (https://thepedagogicalimpulse.com/research-methodologies/). We consider this to be the Artistic Parallel to both Traditional Scholarly Research and Common Architectural Design Practice.
The Body & Space Morphologies Master Studios for autumn 2020:
- CATHARSIS – Acting and The Collective #X (24 ects)
- LISTA Field-Studio #III (24 ects) - see separate course description
Elective Course for autumn 2020:
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ARCHITECTURE & FILM - any Boarded Stories #V (6 ects) - see separate course description
SPECIFICS FOR AUTUMN 2020:
The CATHARSIS Studio on Acting and The Collective (#X in the series – 24ect):
Based on performativity and affordance theories, performance and performance studies, disability and neurodiversity studies as well as phenomenology and perception theories, the Catharsis studio works and investigates primal pre-architectural material/processes/phenomena/conditions and develops or performs a series of experienced distinct objects that behave relational, that inspire imagination, that provide new knowledge, architectural interests and/or architectural identities.
Instead of mediating architecture through a thought process that works with abstraction, illustration and representation, and that is intentional and argumentative involving the use or development of concepts, ideas and strategies, our design process focuses on the acting, sensing and thinking with objects, and the craft of our hands in the making of them.
Students individually study the performance of and with materials of their choice. The studio emphasizes reiterated acting with a material body and gains experience and confidence in the making as a “becoming or being architecture”. Lectures, individual reviews and an extensive reading list enable the students to enter the discourse on the phenomenology in architecture on the base of their own material practice, and to furthermore collectively and critically reflect on theories and research related to perception, affordance, behavior, performativity and performance in architecture and/or environments.
The Body and Space Morphologies program develops full master study programs for students interested in spending all or most of their master studies in our courses. The work and study will end in a diploma thesis making and demonstrating a material practice in architectural phenomenology that potentially can roam (and conclude) all of the works made in our master courses.
For the CATHARSIS Studio:
The Catharsis Studio students learn how to develop strong initiatives for an explorative working process that acts on impulse and that creates visual/haptic experience that again stimulates, or re-states/re-news, architectural content. As a student in the Catharsis studio one is asked to submit to performativity as the instance in which to act a material or event - hence the individual act, or the acting and making, makes also the discursive space of the social(ly) employed collective phenomenology in architecture: the three forms of creativity that in Norwegian language are skaperglede, skapertrang and skaperkraft, make in sum again that what could be named as “skaperkunnskap” – the Creative Knowledge about this which is created.
After completing the course, the student should have:
Knowledge of
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the basics in phenomenology of architecture and the various practices that exist within (and that can become part of) architectural phenomenology
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the basics in affordance theory and the theories concerning objecthood and/or object relations as means to fuel and reflect upon a material practice and/or artistic research in the field of architecture
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the basics in performance and performance studies that make body & space morphologies: ways of making, looking at, discussing and seeing/understanding qualia and perception in the working of architecture
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the basics in disability studies and neurodiversity studies as the necessary activist movements working and re-defining the human condition from “all the world’s a stage” (Shakespeare) towards for all of the human spectrum with its diverse behavior
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the basics of performativity, language and speech acts as the tools that can add value to the making and a work – but that not necessarily must seek to replace the issues at stake in a work or a thing
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the foundational preparations for an advanced haptic visual and experimental artistic research leading to a material practice and/or architectural phenomenology
Skills in
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finding, developing and/or embracing initiatives for the making of an inspired, explorative and imaginative artistic research
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manufacturing physical and/or visual (or otherwise sensible/perceptible) works and gaining a unique expertise in the craft(s) deployed in the making of these artifacts
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conducting this artistic research with the desire to make or pursue a material practice containing, or inviting for, reflections in phenomenology of architecture / architectural phenomenology
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deploying complementary ways of working and means of creative investigations that make, demonstrate or narrate a dialogue between the works inherent qualities and how this connects to (or can become) issues, phenomena and/or subjects in the world
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maintaining a personal diary of the making that can be worked into documents of the making aiming at a third-party readability
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approaching environments, situations and discussions phenomenological and applying and recognizing performativity in speech and action as productive means from which to provoke and receive social employed knowing in trans-disciplinary teams
Competence in
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developing distinct initiatives and choosing the craft in which to act or work them so as to partake in the discourse on the phenomenology of architecture
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approaching and acting on impulse with all sorts of material, objects, environments and/or events and gaining valuable experience, artefacts and/or documents from this
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conceiving of and presenting/communicating unique architectural content/research through a haptic visual material and the phenomena or conditions contained and experienced in it
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understanding the mechanisms and rhetoric of systems of oppression, learned behavior, eugenics and stigma that are un-productive and unsustainable (in the field of architecture as well as in the systems we call architecture)
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developing and/or pursuing life-long initiatives for a material practice in architectural phenomenology that is independent of, and/or adaptable to, any kind of professional commission
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not knowing a thing, but having the passion, dedication, endurance and imagination to wanting to get to know it
Gerstlauer, Dind, Pilskog, Skjeldsøy, Xu - AHO, April 2020
Organization, Workload and Activities
Depending on weather AHO still wil be in a covid-19 lockdown or not, the course is either taught entirely online thorugh video-meetings on zoom where everybody (teachers and students alike) works at home, or, in the case the lockdown is made obsolete, it will be organized as a studio in which each student has a designated working area for the whole semester (usually we are assigned to “tegnesal” S12 or S13).
The working week for Catharsis studio students goes like this: Mondays are silent working days where the teachers focus on the diploma-thesis candidates. Tuesdays are reserved for the studies in the elective courses (6ect). Wednesday and Thursday from 10 to 17: lectures, screenings, reviews and work-table talks. Friday screens from 13-15 events that provide a social content (online or in-studio).
We have five public mid-term reviews and prepare at the end of the semester a work display for the AHO WORKS Exhibition (physical or digital - depending on whether AHO is still in lockdown or not). The exhibition allows for the students to display their complete works (all objects and artefacts – found or made) together with a book (and/or film or video) containing a written and/or otherwise illustrated experience of their making and that what the making had connected to. An external sensor team will study the exhibition and books (and/or video/films) and then give feedback and critique on the individual work but also on the studio as a whole.
The Body & Space Morphologies diploma thesis candidates are integrated in the studio and work in the same space (physical or digital - depending on whether AHO is still in lockdown or not). We recommend the Catharsis course students to attend the diploma mid-term reviews (between four or five in the course of the semester).
Excursion / Study trip:
As a joint venture between all the Body & Space Morphologies studios, we aim for a collaborative work-week together with the French artists Magali Daniaux and Cedric Pigot (www.daniauxpigot.com). Together we explore and travel text and poetry in the speculative of a bodily archeology… ending in a pamphlet… making a cocktail. This either will take place online or - if possible - as a real physical & digital journey involving travels to the Lista peninsula.
The Body and Space Morphologies studios collaborate with capacities in other fields of the Humanities (and the Science) providing us with the Trans-Disciplinary syllabus (lectures, readings and field-studies / excursions) necessary to individually and collectively ponder and reflect on Phenomenology in Architecture; the Human Condition and the Creative Act it is to make and conceive of Relational Objects or Architectural Phenomenology.
Teachers
Rolf Gerstlauer, professor, architect and multimedia artist/researcher at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, AHO. Head of the Body and Space Morphologies research and teaching program. Maintains an artistic practice together with Dind and collaborates with her in implementing aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity Studies into the teachings of the Body and Space Morphologies studios. Teaches the Catharsis studio autumn 2020.
Julie Valentine Dind, performer/artist/phd-student, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown University, Providence/USA. Dind’s scholarly work provides all the Body and Space Morphologies studios with an updated syllabus on Performance and Performance Studies, Disability Studies and the Neurodiversity Movement. The Body and Space Morphologies studios serve as laboratory in which this work is sought to be implemented into architectural education – and architecture per se.
Jan Gunar Skjeldsøy & Anders Eik Pilskog, architects, Stiv Kuling AS, Farsund/Norway. Skjeldsøy and Pilskog, both former AHO students, are long-term collaborators to the studios and since 2019 also our teaching assistants. Together they sign responsible to run and teach the LISTA Field-Studio for autumn 2020 - see separate course description.
Wenkai Xu, did her Catharsis studio diploma thesis "A House for me and my animals" in January 2019. She is the Catharsis studio teaching assistant for autumn 2020 and works as alumnus with the continuation of her project, inspires the studio and together with Gerstlauer co-supervises the diploma works.
Recommended Literature and Mandatory Readings
At the start of the semester, a detailed "recommended reading list" is handed out. Most of those readings are for the semester made available in the course book-shelf in the AHO library. Additional readings, most of Dind's papers and other relevant texts that make the course syllabus / mandatory curriculum, are handed out as pdf's in the Moodle platform of the course.
| Form of assessment | Grouping | Grading scale | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project assignment | Individual | Pass / fail | Attendance & participation – individual studio work: 20 weeks full-time study. The work has to be conducted and performed in the studio (or in case of an AHO lockdown; at home but made available on the moodle-platform) - the working material is present at any time. Presence & participation - collective studio discussion: Weekly talks, lectures and studio discussions (in-situ in the Studio - or online in video meetings). Frequent work reviews. Workshop. Book making. Final exhibition. Final review with invited guests-critics. |