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MARCH-6500-2: HT: Spaces of Extraction

Spring 2021

Subject: Graduate Architecture
Type: Seminar
Delivery Mode: Online
Level: Graduate

Course Dates: January 25, 2021 — May 09, 2021
Meetings: Wed 6:00-07:25PM, Online - AR-8
Instructor: James Graham

Units: 3.0
Enrolled: 1/12

Description:

This history/theory seminar will look at the architecture of extraction—the buildings,infrastructures, logistical networks, and landscapes that have driven resource consumption andfossil capitalism. This also means thinking about architecture AS extraction, and we will explorethe material bases of the built environment alongside other modes of extraction (of value, oflabor, of knowledge) that can be found in our discipline. Across the semester, will be attendingto the connections between the fields of architecture, geology, political economy, and ecologicalthought. How might atmospheric data, settler colonialism, labor struggles, resource geology,racial capitalism, and corporate globalization be read through architectural sites andlandscapes? And how might an abolitionist approach to these various modes of extraction helpus rethink architecture?This course will take three formats, depending on the week—we will have reading-focusedseminars, discussions with guest speakers, and research workshops. In our internaldiscussions, we will look at histories and theories relating to resource hinterlands andcolonial/extractivist thought. As a public seminar, we will hear from a number of historians whoexpand the objects of architecture to encompass questions of material flows and politicaleconomy. As a workshop, participants will each document and analyze a particular mode ofextraction. Final projects will be written texts, which we will also imagine materializing in variousformats of critical public engagement.Online course sections will be delivered with both asynchronous and synchronous components as outlined in the course syllabus. Required online synchronous meeting times are listed as the meeting pattern for this course section.

Pre-Requisites and Co-Requisites:

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