ARC 500: Four Workshops on Architectural Problems (Asst. Prof. Kyle Miller)
“Architecture Itself” is an occasion to draw out and highlight core issues within the discipline of architecture. Conceived of as a series of intensive design workshops, this course will problematize [the] fundamental elements of architecture - not doors, windows, walls, balconies and toilets, but form, space, and order. In scrutinizing architecture’s interrelationships, the output of these design workshops will make explicit links between formal composition (part-to-whole), spatial relationships (typology), aesthetic qualities (affects and effects), tectonics (assembly and detail), and, ultimately, the continuity of architectural discourse across generations (precedent).
Rather than widen the gap between competing identities of architecture - autonomous versus contingent, or self-sufficient versus reliant - these workshops will seek to answer two questions: “What is architecture?” and “What can architecture do?” And rather than searching for justification for architecture by defining its relationship to politics, economics, social good, etc. these events will elucidate how architecture performs within its own critical context, operating on itself to strengthen its disciplinary legibility and define its cultural efficacy. In doing so, this series is comfortable with bracketing out extra-disciplinary territories and identifying architecture itself as the primary problem of architecture.
Alex Maymind
Alex Maymind was born in Riga, Latvia. He is currently pursuing a PhD in history and theory of architecture at UCLA. Alex has taught architecture in various capacities at UCLA, Michigan, Cornell, and Yale; previously he studied architecture at Yale University (M.Arch) and Ohio State University (BS. Arch). Since 2002, he has been studying, writing, talking, drawing, thinking, perusing, observing, making, performing, and engaging architecture in a variety of formats, venues, and mediums.
