WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2013-2014       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Architectures of Aftermath

CHUM 328
Fall 2013 not offered
Crosslisting: ARHA 340
Course Cluster: Urban Studies

This course will examine the ways in which the built environment has been affected by, is complicit in, and is responsive to catastrophe, both natural and manmade, through a series of notable case studies. Each case study will trace the development of an architectural emergency technology through a catastrophic architectural or urban failure and its aftermath. Exploring how specific disaster events have reshaped the technological, economic, design, and sociological conditions in which architecture is created, students will develop semester-long projects working with a single disaster typology (flood, earthquake, wind, attack, temperature extreme, plague, fire, etc.), positioning architectural failures as moments within time, set against the backdrop of the catastrophe in slow motion that is climate change. In doing so, the class will study the ways in which architecture's role in emergency--both historic and fictional--is represented and the mercurial relationships among prediction, projection, imagination, invention, and testing that characterize the invariably speculative activity of building for the catastrophic moment.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA CHUM
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None

Last Updated on MAR-29-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459