Submissions

As we discussed in the last session, please make sure that all your blogs on all sessions are up on your sites by Friday 18th December.

Your final submission includes your extended blog of approx 1600 words which discusses some aspect of the program in more depth, this is to be up by the first Friday of next term, with a hard copy of your complete blog, including the extension, submitted to the school office by 2pm that day.

Session 4th December

Our final reading for this course will be the segments 'Tin Lizzie' p769, 'The Bitter Drink' p806 and 'Architect' p1076 from the above. We will also discuss it's general approach and position with regard to the developing metropolis in the latter part of the C19th. Do not be afraid of the size of this book, just dip in. 

We shall also, if there is time, take a melancholic look at the career of Louis Sullivan.  

Session 27th November

Rory will be loading this film up for you this coming Friday as I am unavailable. We agreed you'd try and start the session at 12.30pm straight after Peter's Theory One. I hope you enjoy it and blog about it, and we shall discuss it the following Friday. 

Session Friday 20th November

The first chapter and following discussions of the legend of Faust are essential to you. I realize this once more after so many years. I encourage you to buy the book. All of the things we talk about will make sense to you eventually, sometimes too late. It will be a tricky task to say the least to abbreviate it next week- the language is very subtle. But hell! That's art right! Being smart with words!

The following weeks session will engage with the film 'The Fountainhead'. If Julie can get almost anything off the internet I expect you to do it standing on your heads. It's another classic and will serve you well further on down the line. 

Session 13th November

This is the text for the next session. I'd like you to read the whole book if possible, it's not very long, and you should have no difficulty in finding it in your local library. We shall be looking at the character of Le Corbusier in this session, using Waugh's Prof Silenus as a starting point. 

Session 6th Nov

This is Robert Venturi having fun in Las Vegas. I suppose because I feel very close to the work read today, you might ask the question on your blog- 'If Paul likes this stuff on Vegas so much, what do I make of it?' 
The poem Howl is the text for this session. It is readily downloadable. I would also like students to spend a little time looking at the work of JG Ballard and William Burroughs to help us with what is potentially an unusual reading of the work of Archigram.

 

Session5

The text for our reading on 30th October is Tom Wolfe's 'Las Vegas (Too Noisy.......etc)' published in 1966. 

There is a companion text by Dave Hickey 'At Home In The Neon' published in his marvelous book 'Air Guitar' in 1997. In 'Air Guitar', Hickey obviously postulates the role of art critic as 'air guitarist', an extremely perceptive move I would say. He also begins the book with a quote you may enjoy, from Keith Richards: 

"Let me be clear about this, I don't have a drug problem, I have a police problem'. 

Due to our photocopying frenzy on Friday, I hope you already have copies. If you do not, I am once more available in the office an hour either side of lunch on Monday 26th. 

Session Four 23rd Oct

The reading from Henri Lefebvre's 'The Production of Space' pages 68-85 is miraculously available as a photocopy from my office before or after lunch on Monday 19th. The only downside is half of it is printed upside down. 

Blogs

kellyburgesstheorytwo.blogspot.com

valeenepreddietheorytwo.blogspot.com

theorytwoarchitecturejoannajones.blogspot.com

kariskina.blogspot.com

borjalsbu.blogspot.com

ajtheory2.blogspot.com

krystelrousseltheory2.blogspot.com

rosarioredtheorytwolsbu.blogspot.com

mandip-theory-2-lsbu-200910-meadesonzaha.html

alrileytheory2lsbu.blogspot.com

ianfloodtheorytwo.blogspot.com

soniawalley.blogspot.com

learning2plaster.blogspot.com

thearchitectical.blogspot.com

melisavillar.blogspot.com

roryleggett.blogspot.com

awtheorytwoarchitecturelsbu.blogspot.com

nextpagetheory.blogspot.com

theorytwoarchitecturelsbufollower.blogspot.com

suzannebirdtheory2.blogspot.com

theorytwols.blogspot.com

yangtheorytwolsbu.blogspot.com

theory2andras.blogspot.com

theorytwoarchitecturelsbu-kgosi.blogspot.com

Session Three

The first chapter, 'The Politics of Amnesia'. You can view the first six pages on preview via Amazon.co.uk.

Session Two 9th Oct

The issues we discussed today in relation to Dubai were:

1 Hallucination/Phantasmagoria

2 Giganticism: The Edifice Complex

3 Global marketing, the contemporary nomad and the difficulty in appending sophistication instead of understanding historical process (Trotsky)

4 Global Finance: Oil and War

5 Feudalism

6 Terrorism: Fear as a gift to oil producers

7 Flipping for profit- but what about the flop?

8 Women

9 Slavery

10 Comparisons to Germania (Albert Speer)

Session Two

This is the reading for Session Two Friday 9th October:

Mike Davis on (Sand) Fear and Money in Dubai

Session 2nd Oct

When we were looking at Jonathan Meades on Zaha today, the ten points were:

1. The structure of working practice

2. The use of the computer beyond being a tool

3. The importance or not of physical context

4. Historicism vs ambition

5. Gender

6. Jargon as language

7.    Time; the dispensable and the eternal

8.    Britain

9.    The refusal of simile

10. Mortality

I hope you will set up your blog and for next weeks session have something to say on it about what you have learnt from today. I want you to do this each week as part of your assessment for this module. I'm suggesting you write blog sized and blog style comfortable pieces, below 200 words each time. I am hoping you will enjoy it also.  

Theory, as I have begun to understand, perhaps suddenly to understand, after years and years of relative incomprehension simply for it's apparent complexity, is THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH. It took a very clever plasterer who has become a very good friend of mine for me to understand this and it has taken a lot of time. There seems no book he has not read, few texts he has not assimilated. He loves maths, literature, film and philosophy, and beer and girls. He couldn't  bare university because WE WERE TOO STUPID. 

I'm looking to enjoy this course, just as I enjoy my drinks with Scott the plasterer, even if he gives me headaches with thinking occasionally. If we can always ask the question 'Well is this true?' we might get somewhere.

Feel free make comments on this blog throughout the course. 

First Session 1.pm 2.10.2009

http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/zaha-hadid