Modulverantwortung: Alberto Alessi
Lehrteam: Alberto Alessi
Assistant: Shehrie Islamaj

WOR(L)D ARCHITECTURE
Do you speak my language?

The experience of the world and the experience of the word compete for our intelligence. We want to know where we are because we want to know who we are, because we believe, as if by magic, that context and content explain each other.
Alberto Manguel

Abstraction, Construction, Decoration, Expression, Invention, Organism, Permanence, Precision, Progress, Standard, Tradition, …: What is the value and the intention of such words in the world of architecture? Are they everywhere and by everybody meant and understood the same? Should they? How do they come to be? Are they of tangible or intangible nature? An individual or social result? What roles do places, forms, conventions, educations, intentions and expectations play? This semester our course will explore the complex aspects and fruitful consequences of cultural roots and aims in architecture. Analogies and influences between theories, ideologies and places, as well as points of contact with other disciplines will be discussed and deepened in order to intertwine them in multiple levels of knowledge.  Our aim is to evidence and to share a possible common ground for an open dialogue, involving and activating the international cultural background of all participants to outline a wider knowledge of relevant terms through several disciplines. Architecture will be experienced as part of a global cultural discourse, encouraging students refer to their own roots and experiences, as well as to think across tendencies, trends and events, positioning themselves as conscious architects in today’s society. The themes presented by texts and examples are understood as tools in the hands of architects. Architectural theories are not pure abstractions; they move between absolute positions and relative relations.