The aim of the course is to inquire methodological and theoretical tools being used or that could be used towards a design practice theory, introducing the contributions of five scholars from different disciplines: Dana Cuff, Albena Yeneva, Tomás Clavijo, Future Architecture Lab, Maurizio Ferraris Which is the agency of the architectural design within the contemporary city’s transformation processes? Could we determine some sort of knowledge to answer this question and what kind of knowledge should it be? Might we call it a theory, intended here as a shareable and transmissible knowledge subjected to empirical control? The course makes a hypothesis: forms, methods, and products of the very practice of the architectural design throughout its process are the starting point to build that kind of objective knowledge. Introducing five contributions by five different perspectives about these forms, methods and products, the course aims to discuss the issues which arise in the search for a theory of architectural design and its agency.

Lecture 1: Dana Cuff (cityLAB, UCLA, Los Angeles) Dana Cuff is a professor, author, and practitioner in architecture. She founded and directs cityLAB, a UCLA’s research center focused on issues of the emerging metropolis. Her work covers affordable housing, modernism, suburban studies, the politics of place, and the spatial implications of new computer technologies. Among her publications The Provisional City (MIT 2000). In 2011 she edited Fast Forward Urbanism with Roger Sherman (Princeton Architectural Press). Lecture 2: Albena Yaneva, (Manchester Architecture Research Group, University of Manchester) Albena Yaneva is Professor of Architectural Theory at the University of Manchester and director of the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG) at the Urban Institute. Her research is transdisciplinary: science studies, cognitive anthropology, architectural theory and political philosophy. Among her publcations: The Making of a Building: A Pragmatist Approach to Architecture (Peter Lang 2009), Made by the OMA: An Ethnography of Design (010 Publishers, 2009), Mapping Controversies in Architecture (Ashgate, 2012 and Routledge, 2016) and Five Ways to Make Architecture Political. An Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice (Bloomsbury, 2017). Lecture 3: Tomás Clavijo (The New Normal, Strelka Institute, Moscow/Space10, Copenhagen) Tomás Clavijo is Innovation strategist, architect, and researcher at the intersections of urban design, tech and culture. Now is working in Space10, a design research lab in Copenhagen. He has also been researcher at The New Normal, a speculative urbanism think-tank and a platform for the invention and articulation of a new discourse and new models for interdisciplinary urban design practices of the Strelka Institute, where he developed – with Mikhail Anisimov, Yulia Gromova, Katya Sivers, Andrei Zhileikin - Seiche, an ongoing research project that explores systems syncronisation through interfaciality between legal and data workflows. Ref. https://thenewnormal.strelka.com/research/project/seiche Lecture 4: Future Architecture Lab (Shenzhen, Guangdong) FALab is a research-based design studio especially in exploring the potential of urban and architecture in the future. It has collaborations with IT companies and government research centres from regional to international. FALab is a subsidiary of XKool Tech which is founded in Shenzhen in early 2017. XKool Technology focuses on the application of a self-developed AI design engine in the building industry to assist urban planning, architectural design, and decisions development. FALab acts as a think tank serviced for XKool Tech: study and design future possibilities in architectural or physical means, study and design future possibilities with non-architectural or virtual means. The subjects of research include smart cities, big data, BIM, space architecture. Ref. https://www.xkool.ai/?locale=en Lecture 5: Maurizio Ferraris (Scienza Nuova, Universitŕ di Torino) Maurizio Ferraris is one of the most known Italian philosophers. He is full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Turin, where he is the President of the LabOnt – Laboratory for Ontology and he is working for the new project Scienza Nuova. He has worked in the field of aesthetics, hermeneutics, and social ontology, attaching his name to the theory of Documentality and contemporary New Realism. He wrote more than fifty books that have been translated into several languages. Among his publications: Storia dell’ermeneutica (Bompiani, 1988. History of Hermeneutics Humanities Press 1996), A Taste for the Secret (with Jacques Derrida – Blackwell 2001); Documentalitŕ (Laterza, 2009. Documentality or Why it is Necessary to Leave Traces, Fordham UP 2012), Manifesto del nuovo realismo (Laterza, 2012. Manifesto of New Realism SUNY UP, 2014)

Modalitŕ di esame:

Exam:

...

Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilitŕ o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unitŕ Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione piů idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.