“Only a tiny part of architecture comes under art: monuments. Everything else, everything that serves
some practical purpose, should be ejected ... “ Adolf Loos, Architecture, 1910.Loos’s observations indicate architecture’s artistic potential is blocked by practicality. Architecture as
program is not art. A program’s primary function legitimizes, while concealing, ideological routines of
the status quo. Loos’s statement suggests the ejection of “practical purpose” (i.e. program) returns
architecture to the category of art. In other words, uselessness re-orders program fixations and, in turn,
confronts pervasive structures and authoritative cultural practices.
Contemporary discussions of race, gender, cultural agency, and identity are most vibrant outside of
architecture. Discussions of these realities, from within constructed illusions of the “program
statement,” protects institutional dogmas. Recalling to Loos’s idea, displacing the programmatic allows
architecture to associate with otherness. Otherness is evolving and complex. The course offers a
methodology to explore such complexities while being aware of the limits and potential of architectural
design.
This seminar/workshop proposes the design of a thing—a Totemic Operator. The thing has a specific
purpose (but not a program). It is closer to art than architecture. Art is an aesthetic surrogate for
otherness. The Totemic Operator’s origins are semiological, anthropological, philosophical,
technological, and artistic. Its form is the intersection of these disciplines.
Formal investigations involving form, materiality, etc. parallel analytical readings of Ferdinand de
Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Martin Heidegger. This technique produces a structured interface
between spatial and literary syntaxes. The Totemic Operator, situated between interdisciplinary
perspectives, acquires cultural versatility, substance, and meaning. Architectural design, free of
programmatic preoccupations, provides visual/formal order to intersections of discourse. To signify
form as architectonic systems, adjacencies, and intersections re-forms architectural design as an
exquisite cultural tool.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.

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