- Consider you mini-paper as a rehearsal for the final paper. Unless you decide to take on a completely new topic, your final paper (due on the finals week) should be an improved (upon my comments) and expanded version of your mini-paper (due on week 10).
- You are free to choose your own topic, e.g., if you are fascinated with the concept of the phenomenal transparency, you are free to dedicate the entire paper to this subject
- Discuss the avant-garde’s attempts to challenge existing norms vs. users’ complaints that their requirements were not met (consider, among other sources, Greenberg’s and Gutman’s essays)
- Discuss earlier-twentieth-century architects’ fascination with “literal” transparency in the context of W. Benjamin’s and M. Foucault critique.
- Discuss the seventeenth century debate between the “ancients” and the “moderns” as a prelude to the debate between “spectacular” architecture and non-representational design techniques.
- Discuss the search for origins as a philosophy, which, between the early eighteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century drove much of architectural theory discourse. Explain the essence of J. Rykwert’s and R. Krauss’s criticism of the notions such as “origins” and “originality?”
- Style: refer to “critical writing guidelines” (see, “Mini-Paper”, in “Assignments”).
- Sources: one of the main purposes of this exercise is to learn how to draw from multiple—and somewhat contradictory—sources. Make sure that you cite no less than two (preferably three or four) different pieces of architectural theory. However, for your mini-paper, you should be able to use only those essays that we have discussed during our Virtual Debates. For the final paper, you will be required to compliment them with your own independent research—but we will discuss it closer to the end of the term.
