Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability

Our political question concerns architectural sustainability. Accordingly, we assume no established definition of what sustainability means, whether it is universally desirable, or what kinds of architectures are truly sustainable. Taking the question very seriously, however, we recognize indeed the urgency of the matter at stake and the need to take imminent responsibility.The approach we adopt toward critical sustainability is twofold: on the one hand practical, material, constructive; on the other analytical, conceptual, academic.At first, our courses introduce various methods and tools that belong to either of the two domains, the scholarly and the practical. As the year progresses, the two perspectives become increasingly intertwined. Even so, their dual capacities are never unified. A polyrythmic structure characterizes the program: lectures, individual tutorials, workshops, roundtables, fieldwork, networking, and seminars interweave to establish a type of research project work we call co-evolutionary.As a special feature we offer a closed philosophicum: a year-long reading session devoted to seminal philosophical texts. With this we meet the need to question scientific and practical truths with speculative rigor.