“History/Theory”
00:00
00:00

“History/Theory”

e-flux Architecture presents
“History/Theory”
Date
November 14, 2017, 7pm
e-flux
311 East Broadway
New York, NY 10002
USA

On November 14, 2017, e-flux Architecture will present History/Theory at e-flux. Join e-flux Architecture editor Nikolaus Hirsch and special guests Samia Henni, Mark Jarzombek, Reinhold Martin, Spyros Papapetros, Meredith TenHoor, Philip Ursprung, and Anthony Vidler for a series of presentations and conversations on the past, present, and future of architectural history and theory.

If there is no theoretical framework, no grand narrative, no normative system of values that offers architects orientation today as there might have been 50 years ago, there is a chance to learn from the mistakes of the past, map out new horizons, and work towards more inclusive, global futures. For we should not take for granted the ways in which architecture has been, is, and can be brought into history. It is essential to recognize the fact that the canon of architectural knowledge, which is still largely treated as the basis of the discipline and its pedagogy, is founded upon inherited practices that all too often contradict the very principles put forward by the institutions themselves.

The task that stands before us today very well might require unlearning what we know and treat to be history and theory in the first place. We need to rethink how it is formed, who it is for, what role it plays, and how it relates to architectural praxis and its cultural field more widely. It is not that architecture is currently in an a-theoretical or a-historical phase, but that it remains frustratingly irrelevant. It has become an academic discipline shaped by academic carriers for academics and not by or for architecture and its challenges. This is why history and theory has never been needed more than it is today, and in its most radical and nuanced forms.

History/Theory, a collaboration between the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zürich and e-flux Architecture, seeks to question the institutional implications of the fact that knowledge is produced through a plurality of forms and in a multitude of sites, and not just those sanctioned by privileged traditions.

Samia Henni received her PhD in History and Theory of Architecture from the ETH Zurich (with distinction, ETH Medal) and is currently Lecturer of History and Theory of Architecture in the School of Architecture at Princeton University.

Mark Jarzombek is Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at MIT and a founder of the Global Architecture History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC).

Reinhold Martin is Professor of Architecture at Columbia GSAPP, where he directs the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.

Spyros Papapetros is Associate Professor of History and Theory in the School of Architecture and the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University. 

Meredith TenHoor is Associate Professor and coordinator of the history-theory curriculum at Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, as well as editor of the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative.

Philip Ursprung is Professor of the History of Art and Architecture and Dean of the Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich.

Anthony Vidler is Professor and former dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at Cooper Union, and Vincent Scully’s Visiting Professor of Architectural History in the School of Architecture at Yale University.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Category
Architecture, Design
Subject
Infrastructure

Samia Henni is a historian of built, destroyed, and imagined environments. She is the author of the multi-award-winning Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (EN, 2017; FR, 2019) and Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara (2024); the editor of Deserts Are Not Empty (2022) and War Zones (2018); and the maker of exhibitions such as Performing Colonial Toxicity (2023–24), Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria (2017–22), Archives: Secret-Défense? (2021), and Housing Pharmacology (2020). She has taught at Princeton university, Geneva University of Art and Design, and Cornell University among other places. Currently, she is a Visiting Professor at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich, and the co-chair of the University Seminar “Beyond France” at Columbia University. In the fall of 2024, Henni will join the faculty of McGill University’s Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture in Montreal.

Mark Jarzombek is Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at MIT. He is a co-founder of the Global Architecture History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), and together with Vikramāditya Prakash and Francis D.K. Ching, a co-author of the textbook A Global History of Architecture (Wiley Press, 2006). His most recent book is Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).

Reinhold Martin is a historian of architecture, technology, and media, Professor of Architecture in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University, and chair of Columbia’s Committee on Global Thought. His books include Knowledge Worlds: Media, Materiality, and the Making of the Modern University (2021); The Urban Apparatus: Mediapolitics and the City (2016); Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again (2010); and The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space (2003). Previously, Martin has directed the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture and chaired the Society of Fellows / Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia, and was a founding co-editor of the journal Grey Room.

Spyros Papapetros is Associate Professor of History and Theory in the School of Architecture and the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University.

Meredith TenHoor is Professor in the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute and a founding board member and editor of the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative.

Philip Ursprung is Professor of the History of Art and Architecture and Dean of the Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich.

Anthony Vidler is a Professor of Architecture at The Cooper Union, New York. His study of the Stirling and Wilford drawings in the CCA archives was published as James Frazer Stirling: Notes from the Archive (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010).

Map
RSVP
RSVP for “History/Theory”

Thank you for your RSVP.

will be in touch.

Subscribe

e-flux announcements are emailed press releases for art exhibitions from all over the world.

Agenda delivers news from galleries, art spaces, and publications, while Criticism publishes reviews of exhibitions and books.

Architecture announcements cover current architecture and design projects, symposia, exhibitions, and publications from all over the world.

Film announcements are newsletters about screenings, film festivals, and exhibitions of moving image.

Education announces academic employment opportunities, calls for applications, symposia, publications, exhibitions, and educational programs.

Sign up to receive information about events organized by e-flux at e-flux Screening Room, Bar Laika, or elsewhere.

I have read e-flux’s privacy policy and agree that e-flux may send me announcements to the email address entered above and that my data will be processed for this purpose in accordance with e-flux’s privacy policy*

Thank you for your interest in e-flux. Check your inbox to confirm your subscription.