EcoMetropolis: Histories, Theories, and Fantasies

Green Buildings, Sustainable Design, Smart Growth … the list goes on … collectively signifying architecture’s and urbanism’s substantive role in responding to perceived environmental problems both locally and globally. This course will attempt to situate this role, that of design in relation to the natural environment, within historical and theoretical trajectories starting from Modernism and continuing to the present. We will critically engage seminal theoretical design propositions, completed projects, architectural writings, and broader philosophical and theoretical texts.

The goal will be to deconstruct received ideas of designing in relation to the natural environment with the aim of enabling students to better develop their own unique and critical positions for practice and discourse. It is important to note, that in this sense, this is not a course about ‘green design’ but rather a deliberate and inquisitive journey into potentially unknown territory regarding what it means to design in relation to the natural environment.

We will deal with a multiplicity of actors and agents that span from Le Corbusier to MVRDV.

Course Instructor: Matthew Soules