AHI 552SEM - Studies in Modern Architecture Apost-Mod Architecture, 1970s@

The production, dissemination, and critical reception of architecture has been understood almost exclusively as a visual experience. This seminar is dedicated to the conviction that the visual has been disproportionately emphasized in human experience since the age of mechanical reproduction and especially in the light of recent developments in digital reproduction in the service of commodification. Whereas humans prior to industrialization experienced the world around them fully, with all of their senses B think of the experience of a Gothic Cathedral in the Middle Ages B our society is significantly anaesthetized by a myriad of forces and devices. Hence we will explore architecture in terms of the other senses B smell, hearing, touch and even taste B through readings by such authors as Constance Classen, Alain Corbin, Barry Blesser & Linda-Ruth Salter, Martin Jay, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, David Levin, Kakuzo Okakaura and Juhani Pallasmaa. Student presentations and papers will require the creative application of the seminar readings and discussions to specific sites in Buffalo and western New York. Credits: 3