This weekly lecture course examines the field of aesthetics and its relationship to architecture in the broader context of contemporary social and cultural conditions. Aesthetics are often sidelined in architectural discussions as dealing with mere surface, style, or subjective notions of beauty. By contrast, this course will center aesthetics as a discourse that is deeply enmeshed in material, political, and cultural histories. The course will present a number of critical approaches to aesthetics, and will explore different contemporary ideas around the transformative potentials of aesthetics as a form of sensorial and cultural practice. In discussions on readings and visual case studies, students will explore aesthetics in relation to contemporary issues that include digital representation, artificial intelligence, the Anthropocene, the nonhuman, class, gender, and race, and the post-colonial.
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