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TEACHING

This subject area includes the following courses:

Architectural History & Theory 1: Modernism and Modernity
Bachelor of Architectural Design
Course Coordinator: Brent Allpress
Primary Lecturers:
Brent Allpress, Peter Corrigan
Guest Lecturers:
Leon van Schaik

Architectural History & Theory 2: Australian Architecture
Bachelor of Architectural Design
Course Coordinators: Stuart Harrison & Harriet Edquist
Primary Lecturers:
Harriet Edquist, Doug Evans, Stuart Harrison
Guest Lecturers:
Conrad Hamann, Brent Allpress, Peter Kohane

Architectural History & Theory 3: Asian Architecture
Bachelor of Architectural Design
Course Coordinators: Doug Evans
Primary Lecturers:
Doug Evans, John Ting

Architectural History & Theory 4: C20th Architecture
Bachelor of Architectural Design
Course Coordinators: Mauro Baracco & Peter Corrigan
Primary Lecturers:
Mauro Baracco, Peter Corrigan
Guest Lecturers:
Conrad Hamann

Architecture History & Theory Projects
Balloted Architecture Electives
Master of Architecture (Professional Coursework)

Architectural History and Theory electives are commissioned cyclically with teams of staff and students working on the development of key history and theory projects, documented through publications, online project archives and exhibitions.

Recent related offerings include:

SEMINAR
RMIT Architecture History and Theory Seminar
"PARADIGM ISLANDS"
Teresa Stoppani, Greenwich University, London
RMIT Architecture Visiting Fellow
VENUE: RMIT Building 8, Level 8, Seminar Room 8.8.82
TIME: Monday 22 Oct-26 Oct
10.00am-5.00pm (lunch between 1-2pm)
note: Wednesday lunch between: 12.30-2.30
The seminar is primarily directed at undergraduate and postgraduate students, but other interested participants are welcome to attend throughout the week.

Paradigm Islands Seminar
This work proposes a redefinition of paradigms for the reading and the design of the space of the contemporary city, through an examination of two particular cases of urban concentrations (Manhattan and Venice) which have presented unresolved difficulties for both the Modern and the post-Modern project in architecture. The study proposes these urban spaces as sources for possible design strategies for the contemporary city, offering a reading that goes beyond the stylistic and the formal, and aims to focus on the process of making, its rules, its ‘rationalities’. At a time of sprawl, after-sprawl and loss of the very definition of the city as a recognizable entity in design, this work proposes a reconsideration of spatial operations in architecture that produce and manage density and congestion by combining measurement and heterogeneity. In this sense the study of the proposed association of Manhattan and Venice goes beyond the suggestions offered in the past by philosophical and architectural thought (from Nietzsche to Cacciari, from Tafuri to Koolhaas), to explore it in terms of contemporary design possibilities in the construction of the urban space, its architecture, its narratives. These spaces of density and complexity are considered as products of continuous change and growth, rather than implementations of predefined planned forms, and this study examines the paradigms that define such operations and their flexibility, especially in the light of the possibilities opened up by their application in digital design.

ARCHITECTURE + PHILOSOPHY LECTURE SERIES
"Grid effects in architecture"
Teresa Stoppani, Greenwich University, London
RMIT Architecture Visiting Fellow
CONVENORS:
Esther Anatolitis, Express Media, General Manager
Helene Frichot, RMIT Architecture
VENUE: RMIT Building 8, Level 11, Large Lecture Theatre (8.11.68)
TIME: 6.30 pm Thursday 28 October
Architecture + Philosophy Series

CONTAMINATED LIFE
RMIT Architecture & RMIT Fashion - History Theory Seminar & Design Elective - SIAL Stream
Coordinator: Pia Ednie-Brown, RMIT Architecture Senior Lecturer
Semester 1, 2007
Contaminated Life Blog
To contaminate is to make impure, unclean, polluted or corrupted. The act of contaminating presents social, cultural and biological dangers that become tangled into ideas of purity, the sacred and moral propriety. Becoming ‘sustainable’ is an increasingly insistent moral imperative.

Modern in Melbourne
History/Theory Seminar Electives
Supervisor:
Doug Evans (retired 2007)
offered 1999-2006
online archive:
Modern in Melbourne - Project Archive
Doug Evans, Editor
Online Melbourne modern architecture practice archive, 1935-1975

Ornamental Operations
History/Theory Seminar Elective
Supervisor:
Brent Allpress, RMIT Architecture Research Director
recurring offering

I-DESIGN
RMIT Architecture History Theory Seminar - SIAL Stream, 2006
Tutor: Inger Mewburn
Contact: inger@mewburn.net
This seminar will investigate the various ideas that have been put forward about ‘human’ and ‘machine’ in the last century and how they might converge around the practice of design; specifically we will be interested in the subject of design automation.

Curtain Call
History/Theory Seminar Electives - Urban Architecture Stream
Supervisors:
Marika Neustupny with Peta Carlin
offered 2003-2005
publication:
Curtain Call: Melbourne's Mid-century Curtain Walls
Marika Neustupny
Melbourne: RMIT Press, 2006

ARCHITECTURAL COMPOSITION - Emergence and Vitality
RMIT Architecture History Theory Seminar & Design Elective - SIAL Stream
Recurring Offering
Coordinator:
Pia Ednie-Brown, RMIT Archtecture Senior Lecturer
This seminar explores the historical and philosophical relationship between theories of emergence and architectural composition. Both theoretical fields arose as part of conditions of amplified discursive change, playing the role of mediating internal conflicts within turbulent states of affairs. Philosophically, both theoretical fields draw attention to the fold of thinking feeling or embodied abstraction. The nature and development of this emergence-compositional fold is explored for what it might indicate about the state of play of architectural composition in contemporary architecture.

The Architecture of Neil Clerehan
History/Theory Seminar Electives
Supervisors:
Richard Black and Joseph Reyes
offered 2003-2005
publication:
The Architecture of Neil Clerehan
Richard Black and Harriet Edquist
Melbourne: RMIT Press, 2005.