This course explores architecture and the environment in Italy, examining their physicality through the lens of construction materials. Canonically, scholars regarded architecture and the environment as passive reflections of immaterial entities such as capitals, social structures, and political forces. However, processes of urbanization are primarily transformations in brick-and-mortar. This course provides a forum for debating a growing body of literature in architecture stemming from the material turn in the social sciences that centers on a materialist approach to understanding cities, buildings, and environments.
Through reading seminars and workshops, students will delve into the study of Italian architecture, forging their research and critique skills. Given its omnipresence in Italian urbanization over the past century, a particular emphasis will be placed on the study of concrete. The course will analyze the role of concrete in the country’s environmental and cultural transformations, focusing on emblematic cases in Sicily.
Students will examine concrete buildings in the region and their involvement in the reorganization of knowledge and labor, as well as various discourses and controversies related to material extraction and ecology. The course provides students with both conceptual frameworks and practical research skills to study cities as socio-material complexes and encourages them to integrate this way of knowing the environment in their research.
This course has an associated course fee. See the Course Fees webpage for more information.
Department: Architecture
Location: Florence
Semesters: Fall, Spring
Credits: 3