Course Syllabus

230215_GSAPP S23_Speculative City syllabus.pdf 

Speculative City: Crisis, Turmoil, and Projections in Architecture      

This course outlines changes in the discourse and practice of architecture responding to crisis and uncertainty as an opportunity for new potentials, exploring social, political, and economic contexts and their influences on visionary architecture and urbanism. The years leading up to 2020 were compounded by disrupted economies, contested political grounds, and increasing realizations in climate change that culminated in social and political turmoil - instigated in part by a global pandemic and racial injustices. These crises and turmoil upended traditional notions of the typical processes of architecture and question top-down and bottom-up hierarchies, public and shared realms, and other norms. The course explores the current practices of the architecture of crisis and disruption as well as the historical significance of previous post-traumatic yet productive periods from the post-war periods in the U.S., the nadir in New York in the late 70s, and other seminal moments that projected and shaped the modern environment. Examining a selection of initiatives and their geographies, work also investigates architecture in the current context of shifting demographics and social conventions, marginalized groups and inequity, privatized collectivity, rising migrant populations, and heightened ecological and environmental concerns.