Welcome to this years Critical Readings. Without too much preamble, let's start from our traditional base line, now or nowish, to proceed backwards through the prevailing thought of the twentieth century. The two texts for this week are Alain Badiou's This Crisis is the Spectacle: Where Is the Real? (2010 easily downloadable for free) and Jonathan Meades essay on Zaha, The First Great Female Architect, originally penned for the unfortunately named magazine 'Intelligent Life' in 2008 and also downloadable.
Badiou, along with Slavoj Zizek, occupies the space of what you might call a celebrity theorist- whose books clutter the shelves of art gallery bookshops. Although their work can be off putting at first, it can be made more accessible (in Zizek's case especially) by a visit to YouTube.
Meades is also somewhat a celebrity as writer and broadcaster, and the collection above has found it's way on to many of the more literary minded architects shelves.
We shall attempt to dissect what they are saying and how they are saying it in next weeks sessions (7th for PT and 11th Oct for FT).
In the meantime you are asked to join up and follow this guiding blogsite, which will usually be updated each Sunday. You should also set up your own blogsite (I suggest with blogspot.com) where you will make weekly commentary on your readings. For this course you compile your submission as you go along, or as we go backwards, with each blog, so please do not think you can write an essay at the end. That is not the point. Make time to both do the reading and write your blog each week as a habit.
You will find previous commentaries on many of the texts from previous students who have done this course on the web. Of course you will find them useless other than to inspire a little confidence. Be aware I am looking for your progress and your thoughts as we go along. I am not interested in somebody else's except in class when we have the opportunity to debate opinions together. On the business of blogging you might look up my own blog pauldaviesarchtecture.blogspot.com to see what form blogs might take.
