MIT School of Architecture and Planning

4.228: Contemporary Urbanism Proseminar

Fall 2020. Wednesday 2–5. Class meets online.

Level and units: G 12 (3-0-9) or 9 (3-0-6) /credits.

Instructor: Roi Salgueiro Barrio, PhD. rsalguei@mit.edu

TA: Qaianqian Wan, SMarchS ’21. qianqwan@mit.edu

Proseminar in Contemporary Urbanism: Theory and Representation.

Rudolf Steiger, Wilhelm Hess, and George Schmidt. Historical Chart of Urbanism (1934-35).

1. Course description: Class contents.

This critical introduction to the theories and forms of representation of urbanism is structured as a series of weekly analysis

of notions and elements that can allow us to intervene in contemporary processes of spatial production. The course will

begin with a session dedicated to the concept of urbanization—which we will read as a socio-spatial process of territorial

structuring ultimately shaping the world at large—and then we will mobilize this planetary framework to investigate how

the urban process has radically transformed previous spatial concepts and challenged our disciplinary means of praxis,

thus creating new spaces for action, but also new disciplinary responsibilities and uncertainties. With that purpose, instead

of relying on an inherited, static vocabulary of spatial levels (such as city, metropolis, or region), the seminar opts for

discussing a set of categories that can help us to portray the urban as a multilayered, dynamic and transcalar phenomenon,

affecting environments and artifacts, humans and non-humans alike. A phenomenon where the construction of

agglomerations is a crucial component of the production of territorial and global regimes of production, circulation, and

governance.

Together with: 1) the concept of urbanization, the course will thus study the following dimensions of the urban:

2)geographies, 3)establishments; 4)scales; 5)networks; 6)dynamics; 7)human citizens; 8)non-human citizens; and

9)resources. These categories are intentionally transcalar. They are thought of as tools that can link different realms of

intervention or study to a broader conceptualization of the urban phenomenon as a terrestrial process. In this sense, they

seek to create a conceptual framework that is equally capable of addressing interventions happening within settlements or

vast territorial transformations, and of interrelating what happens inside agglomerations to the human and physical

geographies that sustain them. In other words, by conceptualizing the urban as a system of territorial structuring, the

course aims to produce instruments that capture with precision the many scales at which urban morphological and socio-

environmental processes take place, and the ways in which these scales are interlocked.

In order to accomplish this analysis of the urban as a process affecting diverse environmental, geographical, and political

layers, the seminar will complement urban theory with literature coming from allied fields such as anthropology, ecology,

geography, and political theory. Similarly, it will situate today’s urban praxis within a broader disciplinary history of projects

and theories that considered the urban in territorial or planetary terms. By analyzing this body of texts and designs, the

class ultimately seeks to foster a critical dialogue about the conditions of contemporary urbanism and to co-construct

theoretical and representational instruments that address, question, and challenge the environmental and social

transformations that accompany urbanization.

2. Course description: Your work.

The seminar is a collective exercise of dissection of key questions in contemporary urbanism. Participation thus requires

actively engaging in weekly discussions among students and faculty, and the development of an individual graphic and

textual research project that will also be shared and discussed in the class. In particular, the class requirements consist in

the following:

For the 12 credit track

− Weekly Responses. Every week students have to write a short response paper (250-300 words) to one of the texts,

and to upload the document to the class blog.

− Weekly Presentations and in-class discussions. Every week a team of 2-3 students will present the readings for that

session. On Monday prior to the class, the students in charge will meet the Teaching Assistant to refine the content

of the presentation. After this conversation, students will upload to the class Stellar site a pdf with their presentation,

including any additional material they want to discuss. For the presentation, it would be helpful to situate the authors

in context; extract short citations that synthesize the authors’ arguments and positions; identify urban projects that

highlight the spatial issues brought forth by the theme; draw on additional visual and spatial examples to illustrate the

discussion and raise questions to engage all participants.

While readings will be discussed collectively, the class will be divided in groups of 2 students, each of which will have

to lead the response to a particular text.

− Semester long research: The Terrestrial Project.

Russian philosopher Boris Groys has argued that in the domains of art and architecture processes of discipline

construction involve progressively incorporating to each field’s archive those elements that remained outside of it;

that is, a changing, outside reality that has been neglected, or considered off-limits and external to the discipline in

question. This process of incorporation not only allows updating a discipline’s social relevance by reconnecting it to

external transformations. It also fosters a process of self-interrogation and critique; a reevaluation of the tools of

intervention, means of representation, and theoretical frameworks that a discipline has used so far. In this sense,

Groys’s analysis counters formalist theories of artistic evolution, which tend to portray evolution as the result of

internal, autonomous processes of disciplinary self-reflexivity, rather than a derivative of the interrelation between art

practices and an external social sphere.

Primarily, the research project is an opportunity for you to start exploring an artifact / space / condition affecting

contemporary urbanism that you find relevant, and thus worthwhile incorporating to our discipline’s “archive” as a

catalyst for new possibilities of urbanity. Second, and in line with the theoretical agenda of the class, the exercise asks

you to understand these possible urbanities as part of a reframing of urbanization that equally comprises

agglomerations and the global geographies that sustain them. In that regard, the research exercise suggests two

interrelated, conceptual orientations: the terrestrial and the cosmopolitical. The terrestrial prioritizes engaging with

the geographical and environmental factors that are affected by urbanization, hence incorporating discourses about

ecology, metabolism and production as part of the urban vocabulary. The cosmopolitical mobilizes this geographic

understanding of urbanization to question the economic, demographic, and social transformations the urban process

entails in order to inquire possible forms of living in common.

Researches will be both textual and visual. The text must: a) articulate a clear topic of study, b)elaborate a clear thesis

statement explaining its relevance for contemporary urbanism; and c)mobilize the body of urban theory that is relevant

for your study. The selected topic must be analytically explored, unpacking the main problems it entails, the different

factors that have an impact on it, the central questions it raises for urban designers, and revealing the evidence that

supports your argument. The analyses have to be expanded by graphic means. That is, mechanisms of architectural

representation (such as plans, maps, sections, axonometrics, diagrams, etc.) should act as methods of investigation in

their own right (and not as mere appendix to the text) revealing factors as the components, materials, typologies,

forms of production, technologies or scales that constitute your object of study.

The research process is structured in multiple stages: a proposal, a mapping and visualization set, a draft, a class

presentation, and a finished version. This final document should be 3,500 words (not including bibliography and

footnotes) +10 original illustrations.

The following milestones structure the work:

9.9. Proposal: First drawing and caption

Produce one visualization illustrating how the how the urban question you are addressing is spatially manifested and

negotiated. Submit 1 pdf slide + 150 word caption.

09.30. Abstract and visualizations

Articulate your thesis and research question and develop 3 key drawings. Submit 500 words + annotated bibliography

with 10 entries + 3 drawings with captions. An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and

documents. Each citation is followed by a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the

annotation.

10.28. Visualizations

Develop visual representations (6) + 50 words captions for each.

11.25. Compiled draft

Present a second iteration of your abstract and bibliography, together with a compiled, improved version of your 10

visualizations and captions.

12.9. Final presentation

Final compiled document of 10 visualizations and captions.

12.16. Final submission

Research paper and visualizations.

These different phases are further indicated in the class schedule.

For the 9 credit track (doctoral students)

Students in this track will complete the same weekly assignments than the other students. The specific format and content

of the semester long research project will be individually discussed between each student and the instructor.

Attendance.

Work in the class will build sequentially. Therefore, student commitment to incremental development on a weekly basis is

of great importance. The demanding nature and pace of this class necessitates regular attendance and requires that

deadlines are consistently met. Attendance in class and for the duration of all formal reviews is mandatory. Greater than

two absences from class without medical excuse supported by a doctor’s note or verifiable personal emergency could result

in a failing grade or a NE for the course; those missing more than 3 classes during the semester will receive a fail or NE.

Persistent lateness will also contribute to a lowered grade for participation.

Evaluation Criteria.

25% Attendance and participation in discussions.

25% Seminar presentations.

50% Semester-long research project.

Grading Definition.

A. Exceptionally good performance demonstrating a superior understanding of the subject matter, a foundation of

extensive knowledge, and a skilful use of concepts and/or materials.

B. Good performance demonstrating capacity to use the appropriate concepts, a good understanding of the subject matter,

and an ability to handle the problems and materials encountered in the subject.

C. Adequate performance demonstrating an adequate understanding of the subject matter, an ability to handle relatively

simple problems, and adequate preparation for moving on to more advanced work in the field.

D. Minimally acceptable performance demonstrating at least partial familiarity with the subject matter and some capacity

to deal with relatively simple problems, but also demonstrating deficiencies serious enough to make it inadvisable to

proceed further in the field without additional work.

F. Failed. This grade also signifies that the student must repeat the subject to receive credit.

NE. No record will appear on the external transcript.

Academic Integrity and Honesty.

MIT's expectations and policies regarding academic integrity should be read carefully and adhered to diligently. Plagiarism

is a major academic offense. Read: http://integrity.mit.edu.

Writing and Communication Center.

The WCC at MIT (Writing and Communication Center) offers free one-on-one professional advice from communication

experts. The WCC is staffed completely by MIT lecturers. All have advanced degrees. All are experienced college classroom

teachers of communication. All are all are published scholars and writers. Not counting the WCC’s director’s years (he

started the WCC in 1982), the WCC lecturers have a combined 133 years’ worth of teaching here at MIT (ranging from 4

to 24 years). The WCC works with undergraduate, graduate students, post-docs, faculty, staff, alums, and spouses. The

WCC helps you strategize about all types of academic and professional writing as well as about all aspects of oral

presentations (including practicing classroom presentations & conference talks as well as designing slides). No matter what

department or discipline you are in, the WCC helps you think your way more deeply into your topic, helps you see new

implications in your data, research, and ideas. The WCC also helps with all English as Second Language issues, from

writing and grammar to pronunciation and conversation practice. The WCC is located in E18-233, 50 Ames Street). To

guarantee yourself a time, make an appointment. To register with our online scheduler and to make appointments, go to

https://mit.mywconline.com/. To access the WCC’s many pages of advice about writing and oral presentations, go to

http://cmsw.mit.edu/writing-and-communication-center/. Check the online scheduler for up-to-date hours and available

appointments.

Student Performance Criteria. NAAB.

Realm A: Critical Thinking and Representation

• A1. Communication Skills: Ability to read, write, speak and listen effectively• A2. Design Thinking Skills: Ability to raise

clear and precise questions, use abstract ideas to interpret information, consider diverse points of view, reach well-reasoned

conclusions, and test alternative outcomes against relevant criteria and standards.• A3. Visual Communication Skills:

Ability to use appropriate representational media, such as traditional graphic and digital technology skills, to convey

essential formal elements at each stage of the programming and design process.• A5. Investigative Skills: Ability to gather,

assess, record, apply, and comparatively evaluate relevant information within architectural coursework and design

processes.

Communication with the instructor.

I will reply to your emails promptly, usually within 24-48 hours, excluding weekends. Office hours are by appointment.

Please cc TA on all communication.

Course Schedule

Week Topic For Class In Class

W1. 09.2 Introduction Read texts. Presentation of the course.

W2. 09.9 Urbanization Read texts, submit response, present.

Research: Submit proposal (1 drawing).

Presentation & discussion.

Presentation of proposals.

W3. 09.16 Geographies Read texts, submit response, present.

Presentation & discussion.

W4. 09.23. Establishments Read texts, submit response, present.

Presentation & discussion.

W5. 09.30 Research project Research: Submit abstract+3 drawings. Presentation of research projects

W6. 10.7. Scales Read texts, submit response, present.

Presentation & discussion.

W7. 10.14. Networks Read texts, submit response, present.

Presentation & discussion.

W8. 10.21. Dynamics Read texts, submit response, present.

Presentation & discussion.

W9. 10.28. Research project Research: Submit 6 new drawings. Presentation of research projects

W10. 11.4. Human Citizens. Read texts, submit response, present.

Presentation & discussion.

W11. 11.11. Veterans Day.

No class.

W12. 11.18. Non-Human

Citizens.

Read texts, submit response, present.

Presentation & discussion.

W13. 11.25 Thanksgivings. Research: Submit full draft, with 10 drawings. No Class.

W14. 12.2 Resources. Read texts, submit response, present.

Presentation & discussion.

W15. 12.9 Research project Research: Submit final 10 drawings. Final presentation.

W16. 12.16 No class. Research: Submit 10 drawings + paper. No Class.

Weekly structure and readings

(note: the definitive list of readings will consist in a selection of the texts included in the “Read” category below, in response to the

conversations we have in class. The readings and projects included in the “Expand” categories are only references, not requirements).

Week 1. Introduction

Presentation of the overall course objectives, research methodology and assignments.

Read.

− Paola Vigano, “Introduction,” and “New Territories: A Meta-Description,” in Territories of Urbanism. The Project

as a Knowledge Producer (Lausanne: EPFL Press, 2016), 11-18, and 129-145.

− James Corner, “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention,” in Mappings, Dennis Cosgrove, ed.

(London: Reaktion Books, 1999): 214-25. or Rob Kitchin and Martin Dogde, “Rethinking Maps,” Progress in Human

Geography 31, no.3 (2007): 331-344.

− John May, Signal. Image. Architecture. (New York: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2019), 41-56.

− Adrian Forty, "Context," in Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture (London: Thames &

Hudson, 2000), 132-136.

Week 2. Urbanization.

The goal of this session is to historicize and unpack the notion of urbanization. We will analyze its roots, interrogate its

conditions, and explore the infrastructures that support it. Ultimately, this session studies urbanization as a sociospatial

process affecting the planet at large, and questions the relationship this notion maintains with other processes and concepts

describing the world scale.

Read:

− Ildefóns Cerdà, “Introduction,” General Theory of Urbanization (New York: Actar, 2018 [1867]), 35-70.

− Henri Lefebvre, “From the City to Urban Society” in The Urban Revolution (Minneapolis, MI: University of

Minnesota Press 2003 [1970]), 1-23.

− Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid, “Towards a New Epistemology of the Urban?” City 19, no.2-3 (2015): 151-182.

− Dona Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin,” Environmental

Humanities 6 (2015): 159-165.

− Cornelis Disco and Eda Kranakis, “Toward a Theory of Cosmopolitan Commons,” in Cosmopolitan Commons:

Sharing Resources and Risks across Borders (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 13-47.

− TJ Demos, “Welcome to the Anthropocene!,” in Against the Anthropocene. Visual Culture and Environment Today

(Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017), 7-22.

Expand Seeing:

− Rudolf Steiger, Wilhelm Hess, and George Schmidt. Historical Chart of Urbanism (1934-35).

− Erwin Anton Gutkind. The Colonization of Africa, The Colonization of North America, The Colonization of Australia (1951-52).

− Constantinos Doxiadis. Ecumenopolis (c.1967).

− Saverio Muratori. Study for an Operational History of Territory (1967-73).

− Joyce Hsiang and Bimal Mendis. City of 7 Billion (2016)

− Richard Weller. Atlas for the End of the World. (c.2018) https://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/

− Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Laura Kurgan, and Robert Gerard Pietrusko. In Plain Sight (2018). https://dsrny.com/project/in-plain-

sight

− BIG. Masterplanet (2020).

Expand Reading:

− Lewis Mumford, “The Natural History of Urbanization,” in Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, ed. Thomas, William

Leroy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 382-398.

− William Leroy Thomas, ed. Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).

− Kevin Lynch, "The City as Environment," Scientific American 213, no. 3 (1965): 209-21.

− Ross Exo Adams, Circulation and Urbanization (London: Sage Publications, 2018).

− John Harrison and Michael Hoyler, eds., Doing Global Urban Research, ed. (London: Sage, 2018).

− Richard Walker, “Building a Better Theory of the Urban: A Response to ‘Towards a New Epistemology of the Urban?’” City 19,

no. 2/3 (2015): 183-191.

− Kanishka Goonewardena, “Planetary Urbanization and Totality,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36, no. 3 (2018):

456–473

− Rajyashree N Reddy, “The Urban under Erasure: Toward a Postcolonial Critique of Planetary Urbanization,” Environment and

Planning D: Society and Space 36, no. 3 (2018): 529–539.

− Denis Cosgrove, Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2008).

− Jennifer Gabrys, Program Earth and The Making of a Computational Planet (Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press,

2016).

− Elizabeth DeLoughrey, “Satellite Planetarity and the Ends of the Earth,” Public Culture 26, no. 2 (2014): 257-280.

− Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2012).

− Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Planetarity,” in Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon, Barbara Cassin, ed.

(Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 2014).

− Doren Massey, For Space (London: Sage Publications, 2005).

− Benjamin Bratton, The Terraforming (Moscow: Strelka Press, 2019).

− Hashim Sarkis and Roi Salgueiro Barrio with Gabriel Kozlowski, The World as an Architectural Project (Cambridge, MA: The

MIT Press, 2020).

Week 3. Geographies

This section discusses possible relations between urbanization and its terrestrial, geographical substratum; focusing on

three main aspects: a) contrasting ways in which urbanists have conceptualized this relation; b) the challenges that are

affecting this relation in our current age of climate change; and c) the technologies of construction and representation that

mediate this relation.

Read:

− Volter M. Welter, “The Valley Region. From Figure of Thought to Figure on the Ground,” New Geographies 6,

Grounding Metabolism (2014): 78-87.

− Vittorio Gregotti, “Form of Territory,” OASE 80 (2009): 7-22. Originally published in Edilizia Moderna 87-88 (1966).

− Anne Spirn, “Ecological Urbanism: a Framework for the Design of Resilient Cities,” in The Ecological Design and

Planning Reader, ed. Forster Ndubisi (Island Press, 2014).

− Lizzie Yarina, “Toward Climate Form,” in Log 47, Overcoming Carbon Form (2019): 85-92.

− Holly Jean Buck, After Geoengineering. Climate Tragedy, Repair and Restoration (London: Verso, 2019), 143-156.

− Ann‐Sofi Rönnskog and John Palmesino, “Arraying Territories: Remote Sensing and Escalation in the North,”

Architectural Design 84, no.1 (2014): 32-39.

Expand Seeing:

− Johannes Gabriel Granö, Pure Geography (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997 [1929])

− Erle C. Ellis and Navin Ramankutti, "Putting People in the Map: Anthropogenic Biomes of the World." Frontiers in Ecology and

the Environment 6, no. 8 (2008): 439-447.

− Annemarie Schneider, Mark Friedl, and David Potere, “Mapping global urban areas using MODIS 500-m data: New methods and

datasets based on ‘urban ecoregions,’“ Remote Sensing of Environment 114, no. 8 (2010): 1733-1746.

− Jim Wescoat, LCAU and Sheila Kennedy. Gradients of relocation.

− Matur / Da Cunha. https://www.mathurdacunha.com

− Kelly Shannon and Bruno de Meulder, Water Urbanisms 2 – East (Park Books, 2014).

− Rebuild by Design. http://www.rebuildbydesign.org/our-work/sandy-projects\

− MIT Urban Risk Lab. https://urbanrisklab.org/work

− Territorial Agency. https://www.territorialagency.com/Home

− Design Earth. https://www.design-earth.org/projects/

− Kate Orff. Petrochemical America. https://www.scapestudio.com/projects/petrochemical-america-book/

− Marco Ferrari, Elisa Pasqual, and Andrea Bagnato, A Moving Border Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change (New York, NY:

Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2019).

Expand Reading

− Georges Canguilhem, “The Living and Its Milieu,” Grey Room 3 (2001): 7-31. Originally published in La Conaissance de la vie

(1952).

− Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (New York, NY: Swerve Editions, 2000).

− Nikos Katsikis, “On the Geographical Organization of World Urbanization,” MONU 20 (2014): 4-11.

− Erle C. Ellis and Navin Ramankutti, "Putting People in the Map: Anthropogenic Biomes of the World," Frontiers in Ecology and

the Environment 6, no. 8 (2008): 439-447.

− Annemarie Schneider, Mark Friedl, and David Potere, “Mapping global urban areas using MODIS 500-m data: New methods and

datasets based on ‘urban ecoregions,’“ Remote Sensing of Environment 114, no. 8 (2010): 1733-1746.

− Hashim Sarkis, “New Geographics: Notes on an Emerging Aesthetic,” New Geographies 0, Design, Agency, Territory (2009): 98-

109.

− Hashim Sarkis, “Geoarchitecture: A Prehistory for an Emerging Aesthetic,” Harvard Design Magazine 37 (2014).

− Roi Salgueiro Barrio and Gabriel Kozlowski, Cutting the World: Seven Cases of the Planet in Section, Log 51 (2021): forthcoming.

− Stephanie Wakefield and Bruce Braun, eds. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32, no. 1, special issue A New

Apparatus: Technology, Government and the Resilient City (2014).

− Kian Goh, A Political Ecology of Design: Contested Visions of Urban Climate Change Adaptation, Ph. D. dissertation in Urban

and Environmental Planning (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2015).

− James Graham, ed., Climates: Architecture and the Planetary Imaginary (New York: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City,

2016).

− Richard TT Forman, Urban Regions: Ecology and Planning beyond the City (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

− Kate Orff, Toward an Urban Ecology (Monacelli Press, 2016).

− Elizabeth Mossop, ed., Sustainable Coastal Design and Planning (London: Taylor and Francis, 2019).

− Bradley Cantrell and Justine Holzman, Responsive Landscapes: Strategies for Responsive Technologies in Landscape Architecture

(Routledge, 2015).

Week 4. Establishments

The goal of this class is to interrogate how the central, historic categories that urban theory used to describe settlements

and their surroundings (such as city, village, countryside) operate today. Said in another words, we will enquire how the

process of urbanization has challenged or hybridized previous (but still crucial) spatial categories, and how this has

motivated a reconsideration of our tools of spatial intervention.

Read:

− Viviana d’Auria, Kelly Shannon and Bruno de Meulder, “The Nebulous Notion of Human Settlement,” in Human

Settlements. Formulations and (re)Calibrations (Amsterdam: SUN Architecture Publishers, 2010), 8-27.

− Stefano Boeri, "Eclectic Atlases: Four Possible Ways of Seeing the City," Daidalos 69 (1998): 102-113.

− Paola Vigano. “The Horizontal Metropolis,” in Infinite Suburbia, ed. Alan Berger, Joel Kotkin, and Celina Balderas

Guzman (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2017), 553-569.

− Rafi Segal, and Els Verbakel, “Urbanism without Density,” Architectural Design 78, no. 1, special issue Cities of

Dispersal (2008): 6–11.

− Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Toward the Archipelago. Defining the Political and the Formal in Architecture,” in The

Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011), 1-46.

− David Grahame Shane, “Notes on Villages as a Global Condition,” Architectural Design 86, no.4, special issue

Designing the Rural. A Global Countryside in Flux (2016): 48-57.

Expand Seeing:

− Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas with Hans Kollhof, Peter Riemann and Arthur Ovaska, “Berlin: Green Archipelago”

(1975), in The City in the City: Berlin, a Green Archipelago (Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2013).

− John Hedjuk, Masques (1981-).

− Aldo Rossi. Fiera Catena Plan (1982), in Aldo Rossi: Architetture Padane (Modena: Panini, 1984).

− Jan Neutelings. Patchwork Metropolis. http://www.regionaldesignlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/07_Pisano-C._The-

scale-in-between-and-the-patchwork-metropolis.pdf (1989).

− Herzog and de Meuron, Eine Stadt im Werden? (1991-2), in Georges Mack ed., Herzog & de Meuron: Das Gesamtwerk, (Basel:

Birkhauser, 1994).

− Xaver de Geyteer, After Sprawl. Research on the Contemporary City (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002).

− Florian Beigel and Philip Christou, Architectural Research Unit. Saemangeum plan.

http://aru.londonmet.ac.uk/works/saemangeum.1.html (2008).

− Alan Berger and Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. The Future of Suburbia. http://lcau.mit.edu/project/future-

suburbia-2014-2016 (2016).

− Christopher Lee, Common Frameworks: Rethinking the Developmental City in China, (Cambridge, MA: Graduate School of

Design, 2016).

Expand Reading:

− Constantinos Doxiadis, Ekistics: An Introduction to the Science of Human Settlements (New York, Oxford University Press,

1968).

− Robert Lang and Paul K. Knox "The New Metropolis: Rethinking Megalopolis," Regional Studies 43, no. 6 (2009): 789-802.

− Richard Florida, Tim Gulden, and Charlotta Mellander, "The Rise of the Mega-Region," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy

and Society 1, no.3 (2008): 459-476.

− Antonio Font et al., The Explosion of the City: Morphologies, Observations and Motions within Recent Territorial

Transformations in the South Europe Urban Regions (Barcelona: COAC, 2004).

− Matthew Gandy, “Where Does the City End?,” in Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization, ed. Neil

Brenner (Berlin: Jovis, 2014), 86-89.

− Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1982 [1966]), excerpts.

− Aldo Rossi, “New Problems,” Ekistics, Review on The Problems and Science of Human Settlements 15, no.87 (1963): 101-105.

− Pier Vittorio Aureli, ed. The City as Project (Berlin: Ruby Press, 2013).

− Alexander Eisenchsmidt, ed. Architectural Design, Special Issue 82, no.5, “City Catalyst: Architecture in the Age of Extreme

Urbanisation” (2012).

− Rem Koolhaas, “Whatever happened to Urbanism?,” in S, M, L, XL (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1995): 958–971.

− Alexander d’Hooghe, The Liberal Monument: Urban Design and the Late Modern Project (New York, NY: Princeton

Architectural Press, 2010).

− Angelo Bucci, Sao Paulo. Reasons for Architecture (Texas, AU: The University of Texas, 2011).

− Donald McNeil, “Volumetric Urbanism: The Production and Extraction of Singaporean Territory,” Environment & Planning A

51, no.4 (2019): 849-868.

− Stefano Boeri, “Notes for a Research Program,” in Mutations (Bordeaux: Arc en Rêve Centre d'Architecture, 2001): 356-377

− Carlo Pisano, “Adieu Compact City. The Dutch Case Study,” in Proceedings of The Horizontal Metropolis: A Radical Project,

International Phd Seminar ‘Urbanism & Urbanization,’ EPFL 2015.

− Xaveer de Geyter, After Sprawl. Research on the Contemporary City (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002).

− Alvaro Sevilla Buitrago. “Urbs in Rure: Historical Enclosure and the Extended Urbanization of the Countryside,” in Implosions /

Explosions, ed. Neil Brenner (Berlin: Jovis, 2014), 236-259.

− Kelly Shannon, Bruno De Meulder, and Yanliu Lin, eds. Village in the City. Asian Variations of Urbanisms of Inclusion (Chicago:

The University of Chicago Press Books. 2014).

− Rural Urban Framework, Transforming the Chinese Countryside (Birkhauser Verlag, 2013).

− Rem Koolhaas. The Countryside, A Report (Cologne: Taschen, 2020).

Week 5. Presentation of Research Projects

Week 6. Scales

Here we will address existing and emerging scales of spatial articulation, treating them from a bio-political point of view.

That is, as forms of articulating political relations, but also of structuring life. In this regard, the session will delve into

two crucial categories of analysis: the elusive, scalarly indeterminate notion of “territory,” and the related notion of

“border.” The original meaning of territory referred the space outside the city. What can it mean now, if urbanization lacks

an outside? Can it help us to conceptualize and articulate spatial structures that exceed the metropolitan scale? Is the

consideration of different territorial possibilities also a way to reconfigure borders?

Read:

− Stuart Elden, “Introduction,” and “Coda: Territory as Political Technology,” in The Birth of Territory (Chicago:

The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 1-18, and 322-339, or "Land, Terrain, Territory," Progress in Human

Geography 34, no. 6 (2010): 799–817.

− Maria Sherezade Giudici and Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Barbarism Begins at Home. Territory and Primitive

Accumulation,” AA Diploma 14 Syllabus 2015 or Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria Sheherazade Giudici. “The Nomos

of the Earth: Rethinking the Architecture of the Territory,” Diploma Unit 14 Syllabus, AA School of Architecture

2016.

− Milica Topalovic, “Architecture of the Territory. Research and Design of Urbanizing Territories,” Inaugural Lecture

at the ETH, Zurich, November 2015. https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-a-010794553.

− Roberto Luis Mont-Mor, “Extended Urbanization and Settlement Patterns in Brazil: An Environmental Approach,”

in Implosions / Explosions, ed. Neil Brenner (Berlin: Jovis, 2014), 109-120.

− Christian Schmid. “Urbanization in Switzerland,” in Roger Diener, Jacques Herzog, Marcel Meili, Pierre De Meuron,

Christian Schmid, and ETH Studio Basel, Switzerland-an Urban Portrait: Vol. 1: Introduction (Berlin, Boston: DE

GRUYTER, 2005), 175-219.

− Sandro Mezzadra, and Brett Neilson, “Fabrica Mundi. Producing the World by Drawing Borders,” Scapegoat:

Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy 4 (2013): 3–18.

Expand Seeing:

− Le Corbusier, The Three Human Establishments (Chandigarh: Punjab Govt., Dept. of Town & Country Planning: 1979 [1945]).

− ETH Studio Basel, Territory: On the Development of Landscape and City. Nile Valley; Rome to Adriatic; Florida hinterlands;

Vietnam Red River Delta; northern Oman, Belo Horizonte and Minas Gerais (2009-2013).

− The Open Workshop. http://www.theopenworkshop.ca/Pages/A_Urbanism.html

− Lateral Office. http://lateraloffice.com/filter/Work

− Arctic Design Group. https://arcticdesigngroup.org/

− Laura Kurgan, Close up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2013).

− Gabriel Kozlowski and Brazillian Pavillion Venice Biennale. Walls of Air. Brazil Cartographies (2018).

https://issuu.com/murosdear_wallsofair/docs/16a-mia_catalogo_eng_low_completo

− Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman. “Nation Against Nature. From the Global Border to the Cross-borders common,” Architectural

Design volume 90 issue 1 (2020).

− Clara Oloriz, ed. Landscape As Territory (Barcelona: Actar, 2019).

Expand Reading:

− Jean Gottmann, The Significance of Territory (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1973).

− Robert Sack, Human Territoriality: its Theory and History (Cambridge, UK: 1986)

− Michel Foucault, Security, territory, population: lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

− Alvaro Sevilla-Buitrago, “Territory and the governmentalisation of social reproduction,” Journal of Historical Geography 38

(2012): 209-219.

− Claude Raffestin, “Space, Territory and Territoriality,” Society and Space 30 (2012): 121-141.

− Kimberley Peters, Philip Steinberg, Elain Stratford, Jason Dittmer, and Ian Klinke, Territory Beyond Terra (GB: Rowman &

Littlefield International, 2018).

− Elizabeth Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

− Antoine Picon, French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

− Antoine Picon, “What Has Happened to Territory?,” Architectural Design 80, no. 3 (2010): 94-99.

− Marie Lou Lobsinger, “La nuova dimensione: Symptom as Organic Development,” in Antinomies of Realism in Postwar Italian

Architecture (Harvard University, PhD dissertation, 2013), 203-271.

− Carlo Aymonino, ed. La citta territorio: problemi della nuova dimensione (Bari: Leonardo da Vinci, 1964).

− Marina Lathouri, “A History of Territories, Movements and Borders: Politics of Inhabitation”, in Architectural Design Special

Issue 04, System City: Infrastructure and the Space of Flows (2013): 32.

− David Gissen, ed., Architectural Design, Special Issue 80, no. 3. "Territory: Architecture Beyond Environment," (2010): 8-13.

− Kerb 24, “Territory” (2020).

− Alessandra Ponte, “Maps and Territories,” in The House of Light and Entropy (London: AA Publications, 2014), 169-216.

− Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Border as Method, Or, the Multiplication of Labor (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013).

− Paulina Ochoa Espejo, On Borders. Territories, Legitimacy, and the Rights of Place (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

− Paulina Ochoa Espejo, People, Territory, and Legitimacy in Democratic States, American Journal of Political Science 58, no. 2,

(2014): 466–478.

− C.J. Alvarez, Border Land, Border Water. A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (University of Texas Press, 2020).

Week 7. Networks

Spatialized as infrastructures, networks constitute central, structuring elements of the urban; orchestrating its different

modes of production, circulation, and metabolism. More broadly, the notion of network has become an intellectual tool

helping to rethink other conceptualizations of the urban. The goal of this section is to explore key urban networks, and to

analyze the relation they maintain with other instruments of sociospatial articulation.

Read:

− Erik Swyngedouw, Nik Heynen, and Maria Kaika, "Metabolic Urbanization: The Making of Cyborg Cities," in In the

Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism, ed. Erik Swyngedouw, Nike Heynen,

and Maria Kaika. (London: Routledge, 2006).

− Stan Allen, “Infrastructural Urbanism,” in Points + Lines : Diagrams and Projects for the City (New York: Princeton

Architectural Press, 1999), 46-57.

− Clare Lyster, “Urbanism after Geography: The Network is the Content.” MONU 20 (2014): 108-113.

− Pierre Belanger, "Is Landscape Infrastructure?" in Is Landscape ...? Essays on the Identity of Landscape, ed. Gareth

Doherty and Charles Waldheim (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016).

− Neil Brenner, David Madden, and David Wachsmuth, "Assemblage Urbanism and the Challenges of Critical Urban

Theory," City 15, no. 2 (2011): 225-40.

− Matthew Gandy, Rethinking Urban Metabolism, City 8, no.3 (2004): 363-379.

Expand Seeing:

− Alison and Peter Smithson, Golden Lane Study (1952-57), and Berlin Hauptstadt (1957).

− Takis Zenetos. Electronic Urbanism (1963-74).

− Cedric Price. Potteries Think Belt (1964-66).

− Fritz Haller. integral urban, a global model (1968-75).

− H+N+S Landscape. http://www.hnsland.nl/en/projects/

− TVK. Architecture of the Ground. http://www.tvk.fr/architecture/infrastructures

− OMA. Delta Metropool. https://oma.eu/projects/delta-metropool

− Organization for Permanent Modernity. http://orgpermod.com/projects/

− MIT Urban Metabolism Lab. www.urbanmetabolism.org/

− Michel Desvigne. http://micheldesvignepaysagiste.com/

Expand Reading:

− Stephen Graham, and Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban

Condition (London: Routledge, 2001).

− Hillary Brown, and Byron Stigge, Infrastructural Ecologies. Alternative Developments for Emerging Economies (Cambridge, MA:

The MIT Press, 2017).

− Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Brooklyn: Verso, 2014).

− Keller Easterling, Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways, and Houses in America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).

− Ross Exo Adams, "Natura Urbans, Natura Urbanata: Ecological Urbanism, Circulation, and the Immunization of Nature,"

Environment and Planning D. Society and Space 32, no. 1 (2014): 12–29.

− Peer Schouten, Fin Stepputat, and Jan Bachmann, eds. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 37, no.5, special issue:

States of Circulation: The Co-production of Logistical and Political Orders (2019).

− Stan Allen, Meredith Baber, and MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism, Infrastructural Monument (New York: Princeton

Architectural Press, 2016).

− Sonja Beeck, Meredith Baber, and MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism, Scaling Infrastructure (New York: Princeton Architectural

Press, 2016).

− Kelly Shannon, and Marcel Smets, The Landscapes of Contemporary Infrastructure (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2010).

− Brian Larkin, “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure,” Annual Revue. Anthropology 42 (2013): 327–43.

− Kazys Varnelis, ed., The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles (Barcelona; New York: Actar, 2008.

− Ilka and Andreas Ruby, eds., Infrastructure Space (Ruby Press, 2017).

− Mary Ann Ray, and Robert Manguarian, “Infrastructures of the New Urban/Rural Continuum in Early 21st Century China,” in

Cavallo, Roberto, ed. Proceedings of the International Conference New Urban Configurations, TU Delft, 2014.

− Albert Pope, “The Unified Project,” Architectural Design 82, no. 5 (2012): 80-87.

− Rosalind Williams, “Cultural Origins and Environmental of Large Technological Systems,” Science in Context 6 (1993): 377-403.

− Matthew Gandy, Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 2002).

− Sabine Barles, “The Nitrogen Question - Urbanization, Industrialization, and River Quality in Paris, 1830-1939,” Journal of Urban

History 33 (2007): 794–812.

Week 8. Dynamics

The intensification of urbanization after World War II and, especially, after the 1970s neoliberal turn has implied that

forms of spatial organization are more than ever in constant flux. Urbanization relentlessly grows across the world. And

yet, this is a highly uneven and variable process, where densification and growth coexist with degrowth, obsolescence and

abandonment, This section analyzes some of the key ongoing dynamics that affect the urban, transforming as a result

densities, urban forms, and the composition of populations.

Read:

− David Harvey, “The Urbanization of Capital,” in The Urban Experience (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,

1985), 17-58.

− Alan Berger, “The Production of Waste Landscape” and “Post-Fordism: Waste Landscape through Accumulation,”

in Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006): 46-75.

− Grahame Shane, “The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism: Reflections on Stalking Detroit,” Harvard Design

Magazine 19 (Fall 2003/Winter 2004): 1-8.

− Eric Charmers and Roger Weil, “The Politics of Sub-urban Densification in Canada and France,” International Journal

of Urban and Regional Research 39, no.3 (2015): 581-602.

− Jan Van Ballegooijen and Roberto Rocco, “The Ideologies of Informality: Informal Urbanisation in the Architectural

and Planning Discourses,” Third World Quarterly 34, no. 10 (2013): 1794-810.

− Suzzane M. Hall, “Migrant Urbanisms: Ordinary Cities and Everyday Resistance,” Sociology 49, no.5 (2015): 853-869.

Expand Reading:

− Jean Gottman, “The Process of Obsolescence,” and “Redevelopment, Renewal, and Relocation in Urban Areas,” in Megalopolis:

The Urbanized Northeastern Sea Bord of the United States (New York, Twentieth Century Fund, 1961), 405-428.

− Daniel Abramson, Obsolescence: An Architectural History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016)

− Michael Chieffalo and Julia Smachylo, eds., New Geographies 10, Fallow (2019).

− Keller Easterling, Subtraction (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014).

− Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, A Glossary of Urban Voids (Berlin: Jovis, 2020)

− Brent D. Ryan, Design after Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

2012).

− Brent D. Ryan and Lorena Bello, “The Fiscal Topography of the Shrinking City,” Perspecta 47, “Money,” (2014):

109-205.

− Robert Fishman, “The Divided Metropolis: The Suburb and the Explosion of Global Urbanization,” in Infinite Suburbia, ed.

Alan Berger, Joel Kotkin, and Celina Balderas Guzman (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2017), 553-569.

− Rod Burgess and Mike Jenks, Compact Cities: Sustainable Urban Forms for Developing Countries (London: Routledge. 2003).

− Edward Denison, “China's Macro-planning Policies. Architectural Catalyst or Constraint?,” Architectural Design 82, no.5 (2012):

50-57.

− Jeremy Till and Tajtana Schneider, “Invisible Agency,” Architectural Design 82, no.4 (2012): 38-43.

− Viviana d’Auria, “From live projects to lived-in environments,” Charrette 2, no.1 (2015): 106-118.

− David Conradson and Alan Lathan, eds., Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31, no. 2, Transnational Urbanism (2005)

− Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco, Ignacio G. Galán, Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, Alejandra Navarrete Llopis, and Marina Otero

Verzier, eds., After belonging: The Objects, Spaces, and Territories of the Way We Stay in Transit (Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers,

2016).

− Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Week 9.

Presentation of Research Projects.

Week 10. Human Citizens.

Spatial organization is, most fundamentally, a way to organize and coordinate life, both in its biological and political sense.

In this sense, humans are simultaneously actors who can engage and participate in urban processes, and subjects of spatial

regimes that regulate all facets of life (interpersonal relations, labor, health) in certain ways. This section will focus on the

circular relations between these two conditions, analyzing conceptions of the human self as a political and biological entity

and their translations to forms of spatial practice.

Read:

− Rosella Bonito Oliva and Robert Campbell, “From the Immune Community to the Communitarian Immunity: On

the Recent Reflections of Roberto Esposito,” Diacritics 36, no. 2 (2006): 70-82.

− Kian Goh, “Architecture and Global Ethnographies,” Dimensions of citizenship website.

http://dimensionsofcitizenship.org/essays/architecture-and-global-ethnographies/index.html

− Ana María León, “Space of Co-liberation,” in Dimensions of citizenship, Nick Axel, Ann Lui, Mimi Zeiger, ed. (Los

Angeles, CA: Inventory Press, 2016), 68-80.

− Martín Arboleda, “The Biopolitical Production of the City: Urban Political Ecology in the Age of Immaterial

Labour,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 33, no. 1 (2015): 35-51.

− Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “The Posthuman City: Urban Questions for the Near Future,” in Mariano Gomez Luque

and Ghazal Jafari, ed. New Geographies 9, Posthuman (2018): 70-80.

− Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds

(Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 62-69, 110-112, 117-122, and 153-158.

Expand Seeing:

− Ludwig Hilberseimer, Metropolis Architecture (1927).

− Leonid Sabsovich, Mikhail Barhsch, and Vladimir Vladimirov, The USSR in Fifteen Years, and Domm-Kommuna (1929)

− Siegfried Ebeling, Space as Membrane (1930).

− Konstantin Melnikov, Moscow Green City (1930). http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/24/wood.php

− Le Corbusier, Le Modulor I&II (1943-1951).

− Constant Nieuewenheis, New Babylon (1957-74).

− Yves Klein and Claude Parent, Air Architecture (1959-62).

− Claude Parent and Paul Virilio, Function of the Oblique (1963-69).

− Cedric Price, Montagu County Plan (1969).

− Ant Farm, Clean Air Pod (1970).

− Archizoom, No-stop City. (1971).

− Superstudio, Five Fundamental Acts (1972-73).

− Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts (1978-81).

− Toyo Ito, Pao for the Tokyo Nomad Woman (1985).

− Franco Purini, The Equal City (2000).

Expand Reading:

− Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, Are We Human? Notes on the Archaeology of Design (Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers,

2016).

− Caroline Jones, David Mathers, and Rebecca Uchill, eds. Experience (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016).

− Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Biopolitics and The Emergence of Modern Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,

2009).

− Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, “The Enemy in the Concept,” in Cannibal Metaphysics: For a Post-structural Anthropology

(Minneapolis, MN: Univocal, 2014).

− Walter D. Mignolo and Madina V. Tlostanova, “Theorizing from the Borders. Shifting to Geo- and Body-Politics of

Knowledge,” European Journal of Social Theory 92, no.2 (2006): 205-221.

− Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in

Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149-181.

− Donna Haraway, “Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chtlulecene” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016)

− Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press).

− Mariano Gomez Luque and Ghazal Jafary, ed. New Geographies 9, Posthuman (2018).

− Clive Hamilton, Defiant Earth: The Fat of Humans in the Anthropocene (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2017).

− Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, eds. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Ghosts of

the Anthropocene; Monsters of the Anthropocene (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017)

− Jennifer Gabrys, Becoming Planetary. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/217051/becoming-planetary/

− Peter Sloterdijk, Spheres III. Vol. 3, Foams: Plural Spherology (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2011), excerpts on immunity and

social groups.

− Felicity D. Scott Brown, Architecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics After Modernism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).

− Felicity D. Scott Brown, Environments of Insecurity/Architectures of Counterinsurgency (New York: Zone Books, 2016).

− Etienne Balibar, “Citizenship of the World Revisited,” in Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, ed. Gerard Delanty

(New York: Routledge, 2012).

− Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006).

− Seyla Waldron Benhabib, with commentaries by Jeremy Waldrom, Bonnie Honig, and Will Kymlicka, Another

Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

− Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition,” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).

− Kenny Cupers, “Mapping and Making Community in the Postwar European City,” Journal of Urban History volume 42, no. 6

(2016): 1-20.

− Stephens Angharad Closs and Vicky Squire, ed. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30, no.3, special issue

Citizenship Without Community (2012).

− Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life (Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e),

2003.

− Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004).

− Nicolas de la Mare. Traité de la police. Paris: Chez Michel Brunet, 1738.

− Robin Evans, “Rookeries and Model Dwellings: English Housing Reform and the Moralities of Private Space,” in Translations

from Drawing to Building (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).

− Maria Sherezade Giudici, “Counter Planning from the Kitchen. For a Feminist Critique of Type,” The Journal of Architecture

23, no.7-8 (2018): 1203-1229.

− Maria Sherezade Giudici, “Alone Like the Horn of a Rhino: Reproduction, Affective Labor, and the Contemporary Boarding

House in South Korea,“ Harvard Design Magazine 46 (2018): 34-41.

− Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012).

− Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “25 Indigenous Projects,” in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London:

Zed Books, 2012).

− Matthew Gandy, “Zones of Indistinction: Bio-political Contestations in the Urban Arena,” Cultural Geographies 13 (2006): 497–

516.

Week 11. No Class

Week 12. Non-human Citizens

After being historically considered in urban theory as a passive agent, subject to the transformations imposed on it by

urbanization, nature is now being reconceptualized as an active agent with its own voice. The section studies how ongoing

debates about the status of nature are affecting urban practices.

Read:

− John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” in About Looking (London: Penguin, 1980).

− Bruno Latour, “Love Your Monsters,” in Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, ed.

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger (Oakland, CA: Breakthrough Institute, 2011), 17–25.

https://thebreakthrough.org/journal/issue-2/love-your-monsters

− Andreas Malm, “Against Hybridism: Why We need to Distinguish between Nature and Society, Now More than

Ever,” Historical Materialism 27, no. 2 (2019): 156-187.

− Robert E. Cook, “Do Landscapes Learn? Ecology's 'New Paradigm' and Design in Landscape Architecture,” In

Projective Ecologies, edited by Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister (Barcelona: Actar, 2015), 218-236. Reprinted from

Michael Conan, ed. Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium Series in the History

of Landscape Architecture 22 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2000.

− Paulo Tavares. “In the Forest Ruins” https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/superhumanity/68688/in-the-forest-

ruins/ and “Non-human Rights,” in: Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth, ed. Forensic Architecture (Berlin:

Sternberg Press, 2014), 553-571

− T.J. Demos, Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016),

introduction and foreword.

Expand Seeing:

− Paola Antonelli, Milan Triennale 2019: Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival. http://www.brokennature.org/, and

Paola Antoneli, Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival (Milan: Rizzoli Electa, 2019).

− World of Matter. http://www.worldofmatter.net/ and Arms Inke, ed. World of Matter: on the global ecologies of raw material

(Berlin: Sternberg Pres, 2015).

− Gilles Clement. http://www.gillesclement.com/cat-jardinplanetaire-tit-Le-Jardin-Planetaire

− Francois Roche. https://new-territories.com/

− Maeid. https://maeid.com/

− Studio Ossidiana. http://www.studio-ossidiana.com/

Expand Reading:

− Jennifer Wolch and Marcus Owens, eds. Humanimalia: A Journal of Human/Animal Interface Studies 8, no. 2, special issue

Animals in Contemporary Architecture and Design (2017). https://www.depauw.edu/humanimalia/issue%2016/index.html

− Albena Yaneva and Alejandro Zaera-Polo, eds., What is Cosmopolitical Design? Design, Nature and the Built Environment

(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015).

− Michel Serres, The Natural Contract (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).

− Félix Guattari, The Three Ecologies (London: Athlone Press, 2000).

− Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

− Bruno Latour, “Waiting for Gaia: Composing the Common World through Arts and Politics” (lecture, French Institute,

London, November 2011), http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/446

− Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (London: Verso Books, 2015).

− Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010)

− Sabine Hofmeister, “Nature Running Wild: A Social-Ecological Perspective on Wilderness,” Nature and Culture, 4, no.3 (2009):

293-315.

− Andreas Malm, “In Wildness is Liberation of the World: on Maroon Ecology and Partisan Nature,” Historical Materialism 26, no.

3 (2018).

− Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (2009): 197–222.

− Andreas Malm, The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World (London: Verso, 2018).

− Peter Atkins, Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories (London: Routledge, 2006).

− Jussi Parikka, “Cartographies of Environmental Arts,” in Rossi Braidotti, ed. Posthuman Ecologies: Complexity and Process After

Deleuze (London : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2019), 41-60.

− Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, “Engineers and Bricoleurs in the Anthropocene,” Current Anthropology 60, no.20 (2019): 296-308.

Week 13. No Class.

Week 14. Resources?

Urban design has often treated as externalities the management of critical resources for the functioning of cities: materials,

food, energy, and waste come and go, and are managed elsewhere. This last session studies how in our current situation

of urbanism without an outside these elements no longer can be treated as externalities but as key factors of urban design,

and brings to the foreground an alternative tradition of urban design interested in the integration of settlement and

production.

Read:

− William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel, “Urban Ecological Footprints: Why Cities Cannot be Sustainable - and Why

They Are a Key to Sustainability,” in ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT REVIEW 16, no. 4-6 (1996):

223-248.

− Chiara Tornaghi and Michel Dehaene, “The Prefigurative Power of Urban political Agroecology: Rethinking the

Urbanisms of Agroecological Transitions for Food System Transformation,” Agroecology and Sustainable Food

Systems 44, no.5 (2020): 594-610. DOI: 10.1080/21683565.2019.1680593

− Dorothée Imbert, “Aux Fermes, Citoyens!,” in Ecological Urbanism, Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty, ed.

(Zürich: Lars Muller Publishers, 2010), 256–267.

− Felipe Correa, “A Projective Space for the South American Hinterland: Resource Extraction Urbanism,” Harvard

Design Magazine 34 (2011): 174-185.

− Rania Ghosn, “Carbon Re-form,” Log 47, Overcoming Carbon Form (2019): 107-117.

− Jennifer Gabrys, “A Cosmopolitics of Energy: Diverging Materialities and Hesitating Practices,” Environment and

Planning A 46 (2014): 2095-2109.

Expand Seeing:

− Mikhail Okhitovich and Moisei Ginzburg. Magnitogorsk Urban Plan, and Moscow Green City (1929).

− Ivan Leonidov. Magnitogorsk Urban Plan (1929).

− Frank Lloyd Wright. Broadacre City (1932).

− Le Corbusier. Ferme Radieuse and Village Radieux (1935) and The Three Human Establishments (1945).

− Ludwig Hilberseimer. The New Regional Pattern: Industries and Gardens, Workshops and Farms (1949).

− OMA. Nieuw Nederland 2050. Haarlemmermeerpolder (1986).

− Andrea Branzi. Agronica, Eindhoven (1994).

− Guallart Architects. Sociopolis. http://www.guallart.com/projects/sociopolis (2002-2010).

− MVRDV. Almere Oosterworld. https://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/32/almere-oosterwold (2011).

− Stefano Boeri. Tirana 2030 Urban Plan. https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/project/tirana-030-2/ 2015-17.

− Bruno de Meulder and Kelly Shannon. “The Mekong Delta. A Coastal Quagmire,” in Elizabeth Mossop, ed. Sustainable Coastal

Design and Planning. London: Taylor and Francis, 2019.

− Bruno de Meulder and Kelly Shannon. “Forest Urbanisms Urban and Ecological Strategies And Tools For The Sonian Forest In

Belgium.” Landscape Architecture Frontiers. Volume 7 / Issue 1 / February 2019: 18-33. https://doi.org/10.15302/J-LAF-

20190103

− Agencia d’Ecologia Urbana de Barcelona. http://www.bcnecologia.net/en/projects

− Ecologic Studio. http://www.ecologicstudio.com/v2/index.php

Expand Reading:

− Jean Gottman, “The Revolution in Land Use,” in Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Sea Bord of the United States (New

York, Twentieth Century Fund, 1961), 215-383.

− Jörg Schröder, Maurizio Carta, Maddalena Ferretti, and Barbaro Lino, eds. Territories Rural-Urban Strategies (Berlin: Jovis, 2017).

− Andrea Branzi, “For a Post-Environmentalism: Seven Suggestions for a New Athens Charter,” in Ecological Urbanism, Mohsen

Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty, ed. (Zurich: Lars Müller, 2010), 110.

− Jessica Ann Diehl et al., “Feeding cities: Singapore's approach to land use planning for urban agriculture,” Global Food Security

26 (2020): 1-11.

− Martín Arboleda, Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 2011).

− Felipe Correa, Beyond the City: Resource Extraction Urbanism in South America (Austin: University of Texas, 2016).

− Jeannette Sordi, Luis Valenzuela, and Felipe Vera, eds., The Camp and the City: Territories of Extraction (Trento: ListLab, 2017).

− Charles Waldheim and Alan Berger, “Logistics Landscape,” Landscape Journal 27, no.2 (2008): 219-246.

− Niccolò Cuppini, Mattia Frapporti, and Maurilio Pirone, “Logistics Struggles in the Po Valley Region: Territorial

Transformations and Processes of Antagonistic Subjectivation,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 114, no.1 (2015): 119-

134.

− Rania Ghosn, ed., New Geographies 2, Landscapes of Energy (2010).

− Eve Blau and Ivan Rupnik, Baku: Oil and Urbanism (Park Books, 2018).

− Elisa Iturbe, ed. Log 47, Overcoming Carbon Form (2019).

− Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).

− Sean Lally, The Air from Other Planets: A Brief History of Architecture to Come (Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2014).

− Nicolas Bourriaud and Erik Butle, The Exform (London: Verso, 2016).

− Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, Geographies of Trash (Barcelona: Actar Publishers, 2015).

− Daniel Ibáñez, Jane Hutton, and Kiel Moe, Wood Urbanism: From the Molecular to the Territorial (New York: Actar Publishers,

2019).

− Kiel Moe, Empire, State & Building (New York: Actar Publishers, 2017).

Week 15. Final Presentation