SPATIAL GENEALOGIES

Spring 2020
Instructor: Chris Falliers

The MAAD Proseminar: Spatial Genealogies is a seminar/workshop in which post-professional students with the Master of Advanced Architectural Design (MAAD) program explore the network of influences, connections, and tangents that inform advanced design practice. Leveraging previous or on-going work in one of three MAAD concentrations, History+Theory+Experiments, Urban Works, or the Digital Craft, students trace the lineage of a topic in formal, historic, and conceptual terms. Students research precedents and disciplinary context, building a deeper academic and professional understanding of one aspect of their own MAAD work.  Individually or in groups, students develop a speculative artifact that communicates knowledge to, and provokes discussion with, a larger audience.  This ‘device’ or ‘platform’ to communicate research in a public/institutional space is seen as an act of design.   

For the spring 2020 class, students chose to work collectively on the heightened understanding of, and engagement with, non-human subjectivities.  This brought a fourth perspective focused on themes of urban ecologies, social organizing, and collectivity.  The collective design is seen as a call to action and provocation on how to live with, and for, non-human species.

MAAD Proseminar, Spring 2020: Jiries Alali, Leandra Burnett, Donna Mena, Kurt Pelzer, Sharan Shivkumar Saboji