Course Details

1. Identify contemporary issues and research topics in Architecture.
2. Recognize the theoritical concerns related to contemporary projects.
3. Develop the ability to discuss abstract ideas and relate them to specific case studies.
4. Develop critical thinking and questioning.
5. Construct personal arguments and positions regarding contemporary questions in architectural theory and practice.
6. Express personal positions and ideas via a series of relative means.
7. Demonstrate argumentative and discursive skills in speaking and writing.
8. Locate critical questions within their relative historical and theoretical contexts.
9. Identify the difference between different sorts of theorisations according to their relative epistemological status.
10. Apprehend the specific epistemic status of architectural thinking.
11. Critically locate the idea of the avantgarde in different historical conditions.
12. Analyse the distinct types of architectural arguments, methods and representation tools used by contemporary avant-garde architects and be able to critically apply-test them.

Starting from a genealogical critique of the term ‘avantgarde’ itself, the course attempts to map out the current architectural movements and positions (theoretical and applied) presenting a clearly avant-garde agenda. Emphasis is given on those more clearly related to the so-called ‘digital architecture’. Innovative tools, methods and processes as well as the relevant theoretical concepts are analysed and explained. The course makes use of a series of applications from such offices as Foster and Partners, Ove Arup Engineers, Gehry Partners, FOX, Ocean North, BIOTHING Alisa Andrasek, Atelier Jean Nouvel, FOA, COX Architects, UN Studio, Cloud 9 Architecture, Decoi Architecture, Bernard Cache OBJECTILE, Markos Novak, Massimiliano Fuksas and Peter Eisenman, to name but an indicative few whose work is explained according to their use of such software as maya while also addressing their complex geometrical origins. As a whole, students are expected not just to be able to understand these novel spatial tectonics, but also to criticize in tearms of their wider social, aesthetic and ideological context. Eventually, the course aims at a critical understanding of the terms "the architect" and "the contemporary" themselves, considering the ongoing crisis which, undoubtedly, also seriously challenges all current certainties regarding the role of the architectural profession and its discourse as well as the foundations of the idea of progress as such. The list of architects indicated above is renewed every year. Students are asked to: 1. analyse their specific arguments, methods and tools, 2. test the above by performing 'as if' they were identifying with them, 3. criticise them by also situating them to their relative context.

• Surface/ Επιφάνεια, Nikolas Patsavos & Yiannis Zavoleas (eds.), (2013): futura & EAAE.

• Architecture / Theory since 1968, ed. Michael Hays, (2000), The MIT Press
• Contemporary Theory and Criticism of Architecture, 1960 - Present, Mary McLeod
• Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture, ed. C.Jencks and K.Kropf , (2006), Wiley Academy
• Warped Space/ Στρεβλός Χώρος, Anthony Vidler, N. Patsavos/ Ν. Πατσαβός (transl.), (2014), ΙΩΝ
• Epistimi kai Schediasmos/ Eπιστήμη και Σχεδιασμός, Panos Tzonos/ Πάνος Τζώνος, (2001), Παπασωτηρίου
• Epistimi kai Schediasmos/ Eπιστήμη και Σχεδιασμός, Panos Tzonos/ Πάνος Τζώνος, (2001), Παπασωτηρίου
• Allen, S. (2003). Practice: architecture, technique and representation. London: Routledge.
• Cache, B. (1999). Digital Semper. Retrieved September 14,2010, from fielddesignlab.files.wordpress.com:http://fielddesignlab.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/digital-semper2.pdf
• Corbusier, L. (1923). Για μια αρχιτεκτονική. (Τ. Παναγιώτης, μτφ.) Αθήνα: Εκκρεμές, [2004].
• De Landa, M. (2002). Intensive Science and Virtual Philoshophy. London, New York: Continuum.
• Deleuze, G. (1993). "The Diagram". In G. Deleuze, & C. V. Boundas, The Deleuze reader (pp. 193-200). New York: Columbia University Press.
• Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison. (A. Sheridan, Trans.) New York: Vintage Books.
• Kolarevic, B. (2003). Architecture in the digital age, Design and manufacturing. New York: Spon Press: Taylor & Fransis Group.
• Kwinter, S. (2002). Architectures of Time: Toward a theory of the event in modernist culture. Massachusetts: The MIT press.
• Lynn, G. (1999). Animate Form. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
• Morales, I. d. (1997). Differences: Topografies of Contemporary Architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Pai, H. (2002). The Portfolio and the Diagram. Architecture, Discourse and Modernity in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
• Renaut, A. (2009). Η φιλοσοφία. Αθήνα : Πόλις.
• Thompson, D. A. (1999). Ανάπτυξη και Μορφή στο Φυσικό Κόσμο. Αθήνα: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Ε.Μ.Π.
• Trummer, P. (2005, Summer). Spatial Regimes, Material and its Architectural Effects. Hunch Disciplines, the Berlage Institute report No. 9 , pp. 104-111.
• Van Berkel, B., & Bos, C. (1999). Move, UN Studio. Imagination, Techniques, Effects. Amsterdam: UN Studio & Goose Press.

The taught part of the course is delivered to students by means of lectures, conducted by electronic presentations. Lecture notes and pictures are given to students in electronic form.