702-617 Crisis & Complexity: 1950s Architecture

702-232 Modern Architecture B: 20th Century and admission to a post-BPD course.

The formative aspects of post World War II architectural design and architectural theory. The social, theoretical and aesthetic aspects of practice in the Bay Region of California, Los Angeles, Great Britain, Scandinavia, Spain, Italy, Greece, Mexico and South America, Holland, Japan and Australia during the 1950s are examined. Concepts of monumentality and regionalism, the emerging critiques of modernism, brutalism, the writings of Team 10, issues of ornament and self-expression, conflicting attitudes toward the notion of history, reformist approaches to urbanism and mass housing, and the influence of architectural journals during the 1950s are investigated.

On completion of the subject students should have developed skills in research, critical analysis and writing and some experience with group work.

Projects, seminar paper and exercises to the equivalent of not more than 5000 words.