OCCAS event: Architecture and its Past

With Mark Cousins, Director of Histories and Theory, Architectural Association School of Architecture and senior fellow London Consortium and Beatriz Colomina, Professor History and Theory, Director of Graduate Studies, Ph.D. Program and Founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University.

Discussion chaired by Thordis Arrhenius, Professor in Conservation, Oslo School of Architecture and Design

The seminar will discuss how architectural history can be productively thought within architectural education today. It is frequently acknowledged that teaching architectural history has become problematic in contemporary schools of architecture. Students and studio-teachers question the relevance of learning about architectural history in an increasingly dense curriculum.

Additionally, in the last 30 years the narratives of architectural history have themselves been historicised, theorised and deconstructed. In this situation there is an increasingly uncertainty as to what the teaching of architectural history should aim for and what role it occupies in the syllabus of the training of an architect.

The institute of Form, Theory and History have an ongoing discussion of how architectural history courses can inform architectural education and how issues of the architectural past can become relevant to the studio teaching.

To forward that discussion OCCAS /FTH have invited Mark Cousins, Director of Histories and Theories at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London and Beatriz Colomina, Professor, History and Theory, Director of Graduate Studies, Ph.D. Program and Founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity Princeton University, to discuss critical issues of teaching architectural history and its relation to research.

The seminar is a follow up event to the conference 'Architecture and its Pasts', Architectural Association London, 21-22 May 2010, arranged by Mark Cousins, and the seminar Stocktaking - Architecture and its Pasts, Museum of Architecture, Stockholm, 07. September 2010 arranged by the School of Architecture, KTH Stockholm through Tim Anstey and Helena Mattsson.

• See also: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/pressroom/kth/pressrelease/view/toppenchans-foer-arkitekturintresserade-457505