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| overview | Architecture - History -
Pedagogy Conference
Nov. 21 & 22, 2003 |
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Overview At various moments in architectural history, the critique of architectural pedagogy perhaps became more prominent in public discussion rather than the norms of the field of practice themselves. One thinks of the impact that the Bauhaus and “post-modernist” thinking had on architecture in the 1920s and 1970s respectively. In the last decade, pedagogical debates have tended to revolve less around aesthetic and ideological discussion, referred to as “theory”, than around the pragmatics of bringing teaching to keep up with an increasingly diversifying and complex field. In many schools of architecture, pedagogy seems to exist in a liminal space disguising certain operations while enabling others. This conference seeks to reassess the status of critical forms of pedagogy in architectural schools. Where is the intellectual mission at the heart of pedagogical practice today? Are we looking at a future beset by “post-criticality”, where critique is differentiated into minute, parcellized paradigms? Or is this post-criticality the sign of some new, as yet unspoken, paradigm of relationship between theory and practice that emerged at the last fin-de-siècle? Key to this is the changing relationship between pedagogy and the teaching of history and theory. With the blossoming of doctoral programs, for example, within architectural schools in the last decade, architectural history is now fully given along two separate and not always complementary, axes: firstly, the need to follow (rather create) disciplinary paradigms and corpus of work through which it can acquire professional standing within the humanities; secondly, to continually renegotiate its relationship to the pedagogical demands of professional programs. Tenure, disciplinary expertise, the accreditation system are just some of the agendas that work within the intellectual core of pedagogy. In the current "post-critical" dispensation and in earlier
avatars, how does the history-theory curriculum shape the pedagogical
profile? How do different teachers envisage this relationship as panning
out in the future? The sessions will be organized accordingly.
Dedication to Professor Henry A. Millon This conference is dedicated to Professor Henry Millon, whose distinguished career has ensured the vigor of the field both nationally and internationally. He has served as director of the American Academy in Rome and, until recently, as dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Since the late 1950s, he has been a member of the faculty in MIT's Department of Architecture, and is credited as one of the founders of the History, Theory and Criticism Section within it. From Baroque and Rococo Architecture (1961) to Michelangelo Architect (1980), An Architectural Progress in the Renaissance and Baroque: Sojourns In and Out of Italy (1992), and The Triumph of the Baroque (1999), Millon's in-depth studies, exhibition catalogues, co-edited volumes, and articles as well as his singularly well-focused seminars at MIT have served as the foundation for the training of generations of young scholars. In recognition of Millon's mark on architectural history, the History Theory Criticism Section is organizing a graduate student conference along with the publication of a special issue of Thresholds, a biannual journal, run by MIT's graduate students in the Department of Architecture, that has benefited from the support of the Graham Foundation in the past. |
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© 2003 |
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