Regarding
the social unrest of his time, the famous modernist architect Le Corbusier once
stated that it was either “architecture or revolution.” But what about
architecture in a revolution and as revolution? How has architecture been put
in service of radical politics? And how have architects translated their
ideologies into design? In this course, we will look at the intersections of
architecture and radical politics by reading, among others, leftist European
architects and Soviet avant-gardists who used architecture to restructure
society along with socialist and social-democratic principles about
architectures of fascism and crony capitalism and about designers from both
the radical left and right who theorized total destruction as the precondition
for their utopias (or dystopias). We will write manifestos, visual analyses,
critical essays, and more.
Image: Ahmet Öğüt, Bakunin‘s Barricade, 2015, various materials. A barricade inspired by Mikhail A. Bakunin’s never-realized proposal from 1849. Installation view, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 2017.
- Instructor: Ecem Saricayir-Feberwee