1st Session: MUNDANE ARTEFACTS [ATELIER D’ECRITURE ON EXPERIENCE-BASED WRITING] This session will provide hands-on knowledge on the role of description as a type of narrative that holds implicit theories of the phenomena under scrutiny. We will discuss the role of objects, artefacts and technologies in mediating social relations. We will reflect in particular on concepts and descriptive approaches used by sociologists of technology (ie ‘mediation’, ‘delegation’ of action, ‘mediator’, ‘intermediary’, ‘script’, ‘prescription’, ‘affordance’, ‘program of action’ and ‘anti-program’). The students will hone their writing and critical thinking skills based on introspection. Assignment for the atelier: Describe a situation of using an object, artifact, device, or technology; focus on its agency and relational capacity; unpack the modalities of engagement with it, interactions and transactions. Try to be specific, base your text on experience (personal or collective), NOT on general reflections on the role of objects in design and dwelling practices. Send your text (300words max) directly to Albena prior to the session (without sharing it with anyone else). Readings: Compulsory: Latour, B. (1991) ‘The Berlin Key or How to Do things with Words’, In P.M. Graves-Brown (ed) Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, Routledge, London pp. 10-21. Optional: Gibson, James J. (1979) ‘The Theory of Affordances’. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (focus on ‘affordance’ pp. 127-128 and pp.133-134) Akrich, M. (1992) ‘The De-scription of Technical Objects’, In Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, eds. W.E. Bijker & J. Law, pp. 205– 224. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (focus on ‘script’ pp201-211) Queneau, Raymond (1958), Exercises in Style, London: John Calder Publishers. 2nd Session: DESIGN AS A VERB [ATELIER D’ECRITURE ON PROCESS-BASED WRITING] This session will shift the attention from design as product, to design as a process. This will require tracing ethnographically the complex socio-spatial coordinates of design venture through the daily work of architects, planners and their technologies, as well as producing narrative accounts of the contingency of design practice. We will reflect on the use of ethnography as a method for tracing architectural and planning processes. The students will refine their writing and critical thinking skills based on ‘slow’ observation of and reflection on design experiences and urban processes. Assignment for the atelier: Describe your process of design. Try to capture design qua verb, or, designing: Where are you? What do you do? Who else is there in addition to you? What happens in the spur of the moment? Who participates and how? Who acts? What are the different events, temporalities, and spaces? Try to be specific, base your text on your own experience or the observation of another designer/creative practitioner, NOT on general reflections on the process of design/planning. Send your text (300words max) directly to Albena prior to the session (without sharing it with anyone else). Readings Compulsory: Sennett, R. (2008) The Craftsman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Chapter 9 ‘Quality-Driven Work’, pp. 241-267; focus on “The Janus Face of Obsession: A Story of Two Houses”, pp. 252-263. Optional: Till, J. (2008) ‘Three Myths and One Model’, In Building Material 17: 4-10. Jacobs J. and Merriman P. (2011) ‘Practicising Architecture’, special issue of Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 12, No. 3. Yaneva, A. (2005) ‘Scaling Up and Down: Extraction Trials in Architectural Design’, In Social Studies of Science, 35(6): 867-894. 3rd Session: DWELLING AS A VERB [ATELIER D’ECRITURE ON EVIDENCE-BASED WRITING] This session will shift the attention from the functionalist concept of ‘use’ (and ‘user’) to using/inhabiting/dwelling as a process. We will develop an understanding of dwelling as the process of active settling in, transforming, appropriating, adjusting, and living with the varying materiality and programs of a building/urban environment. ‘Dwelling’ will be unpacked here as the activity of worldmaking through active participation in the shaping of material form through inhabitation. The students will gather evidence on different dwelling processes and will practice writing based on observation and analysis of the collected data. Assignment for the atelier: Gather evidence on how people inhabit a space (domestic, university, leisure, public). Write a mini article on the process of dwelling. Talk us through the process of ‘dwelling’: What happens? Who is there? What/who acts, interacts, transacts? In what times? Where? How? How do you know this/evidence? How can you analyse the evidence and structure the argument? Add visuals in a clever way! Send your text (300-500words max) directly to Albena prior to the session (without sharing it with anyone else). Readings Compulsory: Ingold, T. (2000) ‘Building, dwelling, living: How animals and people make themselves at home in the world’, In Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, London: Routledge, pp. 172-188; focus on what Ingold calls the “dwelling perspective” – start from the middle of page 176 - to the middle of 178; try to grasp the concept of Umwelt from Jakob von Uexku¨ll and the example of the oak tree; then, read the last section “The House as Organism” pp 187-188. Optional: Brand, S. (1994) How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built, New York: Viking; Chapter ‘The Study of Buildings in Time’, pp. 427-450. Strebel, I. (2011) ‘The living building: Towards a geography of maintenance work’, In Social & Cultural Geography, 12(3), pp. 243-262. 4th Session: TRACING CITIES [ATELIER D’ECRITURE ON HOW TO USE VISUALS IN TEXTS] This session will discuss a pragmatist approach for the study of cities. We will argue that a better understanding of cities could be gained by literally keeping our compass sights on the paths through the city, following the routes that link humans with the material and natural world, the subjective with the objective, the built with the unbuilt, the small with the big. The students will hone their writing skills by carefully reflecting on the role of visuals in supporting, illustrating, strengthening, and amplifying arguments made in writing. Assignment for the atelier: To prepare for the session, please 1) Read selected parts from Sorkin or Latour (details below); 2) Extract key arguments on the authors’ understanding of the material culture of cities and urban technologies. Pay attention to Sorkin’s way of writing about NYC and Latour and Hermant’s writing about Paris; 3) Choose one city or neighbourhood to trace. Stroll there for 20mins; 4) Write a mini visual essay à la Sorkin or à la Latour & Hermant. Carefully choose and include several visuals that better support your argument. Send your text (300words max) directly to Albena prior to the session (without sharing it with anyone else). Readings Compulsory: Sorkin, M. (2009) Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, New York: Reaktion books; Chapter ‘The Stairs’ pp. 9-67 (focus on pp. 9-29) or ‘The Stoop’, pp. 67-79. Optional: Latour, B. & E. Hermant (1996) Paris, Invisible City, Paris: Les empêcheurs de penser en rond. [Read ‘Distributing’, pp 62-71 in combination with the visuals in the virtual book: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/virtual/index.html] Calvino, I. (1974) Invisible Cities, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 5th Session: HOW TO WRITE A BOOK This session will provide guidance on how to turn your PhD manuscript into a book or a series of peer-reviewed journal articles. We will cover a range of questions, including, how to devise a realistic publication strategy, how to distinguish between arguments for a book and an article, how to choose the right publisher or journal, how to plan and strategize, how to approach a publisher and communicate with them, how to write a good book proposal, what to expect from the review process, how to prepare a writing sample, how to approach academic writing for different purposes, and finally, how to survive in a world of extremely competitive academic publishing (some ‘warrior’s tactics). Readings We will analyze some book proformas and guidance from different publishers (ie Routledge, Bloomsbury, American University Presses, etc.) and some sample book proposals (good and bad) as well as examples of academic articles. The materials will be circulated prior to the session.

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The course offers advanced knowledge on different styles of academic writing. Tailored especially for the needs of researchers in Architecture, Urban Planning and Design Studies, this series of seminars will provide insights and practical knowledge on experience-based writing, process-based writing, evidence-based writing, the role of visuals in texts and the writing of books and academic articles. The sessions will be organised as ateliers d’écriture which will begin with an introduction/presentation followed by discussion on the basis of a specific writing exercise. The students will read a short text (typically 20 pages) and will write ½ page (300words) on a particular topic. Each session will be dedicated to a specific argument or theme inspired by Science and Technology Studies (STS) – a tradition that ‘flourished’ in the 1980s in the aftermath of the structuralism wave and generated new concepts and methodologies for the understanding of innovation and technological change. In the past two decades STS (and in particular Actor-Network-Theory) has gained critical acclaim among researchers in the field of architecture and is now very influential both in urban research and pedagogy. The ateliers will act as ‘surgeries’ of different writing styles and narrative techniques. The students will be able to fine-tune their writing and critical thinking skills, experiment with different writing techniques, study different narrative and analytical approaches that might be useful for urban and architectural writers. Selected papers will be read in class and then analysed collectively through a careful ‘dissection’ of the specific arguments and writing style. In the discussions we will explore the mechanics of the material act of writing and its performativity, and we will unravel key riddles around the ‘art of description’ and ‘art of analysis’.

In presenza

Presentazione orale - Presentazione report scritto - Sviluppo di project work in team

P.D.2-2 - Aprile