Coming Home. Stories in Architectural Theory

Lecture History and Theory of Architecture IX (063-0807-22)
Organizer: Chair of Prof. Ursprung
Lecturers: Michael Gnehm
Time: Autumn 2022 | Fridays 11:45–12:30
Location: HIL E 3
 

The lecture course discusses architecture and literature in its diverse relations: Stories as moments when architecture comes to life, the writing of architectural history and theory and literary writing. The focus aims at the notion of home and its discontents in architectural narratives.

Course Catalogue
LECTURES
Recordings
Slides
23  Sept. 2022 | Outline ⁞ RAINER MARIA RILKE
30  Sept. 2022 | Reading Fiction and Architecture ⁞ ROBERT MUSIL and JAMES JOYCE
▭ ⁞ 7  Oct. 2022 | Writing Stories and Architectural History ⁞ JAMES JOYCE and GEORGETTE KLEIN
21  Oct. 2022 | Politics and Authorship ⁞ ROLAND BARTHES and GEORGETTE KLEIN
▭ ⁞ 4  Nov. 2022 | Nationalist Narratives ⁞ MINNETTE DE SILVA
11  Nov. 2022 | Regionalist Narratives ⁞ MINNETTE DE SILVA
18  Nov. 2022 | Meaning and Being ⁞ PETER MÄRKLI
25  Nov. 2022 | Rhyme and Reason ⁞ WALLACE STEVENS and EZRA POUND
▭ ⁞ 2  Dec. 2022 | The Architectural Uncanny: Retrospect and Outlook
▭ ⁞ 9 Dec. 2022 | Exam

TEXTS DISCUSSED
Barthes , Roland, «The Death of the Author» (1968), in Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath, London: Fontana Press, 1977: 142–8.
Calvino , Italo, «Cities and Signs», in The Invisible Cities, 1974 (It. 1972).
De Silva , Minnette, «Marg Comment», Mārg: A Magazine of Architecture and Art 5, no. 3. 1951: 44.
De Silva , Minnette, «A House at Kandy, Ceylon», Mārg 6, Nr. 3, June 1953: 4-11.
Joyce, James, Ulysses, Student’s edition, the corrected text, ed. by Hans Walter Gabler, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
Klein , Georgette, «Masken» (1926), «Der neue Mensch und der neue Wohnraum» (1927), «Sommertessin. Eine Briefreihe» (1927), in: Georgette Klein, Texte 1919–1954, Zürich 2022.
Musil , Robert, The Man without Qualities, vol. 1 (1930), trans. Sophie Wilkins, New York: Vintage, 1996: 13–16.
Pound , Ezra, «Canto XLV», 1936.
Rilke, Rainer Maria, The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), trans. John Linton, London: The Hogarth Press, 1920: 43–45.
Stevens , Wallace, «Anecdote of the Jar», 1919.

OPTIONAL READINGS
▭ THEORY
Barthes , Roland, «Writing Reading» (1970), in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989: 29–32.
Cage , John, «Rhythm Etc.» (1966), in A Year from Monday. New Lectures and Writings, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967: 120–32.
Cixous , Hélène, «Fiction and its Phantoms: A Reading of Freud’s Das Unheimliche (The ‹Uncanny›)», New Literary History 7, no. 3 (Spring 1976): 525-48.
D’Alleva , Anne, «Thinking about Theory», in Methods & Theories of Art History, London: Laurence King, 2005: 5–16.
Foucault , Michel, «What is an Author?» (1979, trans. Josué V. Harari), in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, New York: Pantheon Books, 1984: 101–20.
Freud , Sigmund, «The ‹Uncanny›» (1919), New Literary History 7, no. 3 (Spring 1976): 619–45.
Grosz , Elizabeth, «Women, Chora, Dwelling», ANY 1, no. 4 (January/February 1994): 22–7.
Hertz , Neil, «Freud and the Sandman», in The End of the Line. Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime, New York: Columbia University Press, 1985: 97–121.
Heynen, Hilde, «About the Displacement of Home», in Making Home(s) in Displacement, eds. Luce Beeckmans, Alessandra Gola, Ashika Singh, and Hilde Heynen, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2022: 396–415.
Hobsbawm , Eric, «The Revival of Narrative: Some Comments», Past & Present 86, no. 1, February 1980: 3–8.
White , Hayden, «The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality», Critical Inquiry 7, no. 1 (Autumn 1980): 5–27.
▭ STORIES
Burger, Hermann, Schilten. Schulbericht zuhanden der Inspektorenkonferenz, Zürich and Munich: Artemis, 1976.
Didion , Joan, «On Going Home», in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968.
Frisch, Max, J’adore ce qui me brûle oder Die Schwierigen, Zürich: Atlantis, 1943.
Kafka , Franz, «The Way Home» (1908) and «Home-Coming» (1923/24), in Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, New York: Schocken Books, 1971: 387 and 445–6.
Munro, Alice, «Vandals» in Open Secrets, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994: 261–94.
Munro, Alice, «Home», in New Canadian Stories, eds. David Helwig and Joan Harcourt, Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1974: 133–53 (rpt. in View from Castle Rock, London: Vintage, 2007).
▭ SECONDARY SOURCES
A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia , eds. Richard T. Grey, Ruth V. Gross, Rolf J. Goebel, and Clayton Koelb, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005: 119 («Home-Coming»), 202 («The Way Home»).
Avermaete, Tom and Cathelijne Nuijsink , «An Architecture Culture of ‹Contact Zones›: Prospects for an Alternative Historiography of Modernism», in Rethinking Global Modernism: Architectural Historiography and the Postcolonial, eds. Vikramaditya Prakash, Maristella Casciato, and Daniel E. Coslett, London and New York: Routledge, 2022: 103–19.
Danielewski , Mark Z., «Foreword», in Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (1957), trans. Maria Jolas (1964), New York: Penguin Books, 2014: vii–xvi.
Doran , Robert, «Humanism, Formalism, and the Discourse of History», in Hayden White, The Fiction of Narrative. Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, 1957–2007, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010: xiii–xxxii.
Gnehm, Michael, «Coming Home. A Central Place of Repose», in Judit Solt (ed.), Bob Gysin + Partner BGP Architekten. LuxusWohnen, Basel, Boston, and Berlin: Birkhäuser, 2003: 33–8.
Gnehm, Michael, «Zum Schriftcharakter der Architektur: Victor Hugo und Viollet-le-Duc», Der Architekt. Bund Deutscher Architekten BDA, no. 3, 2012: 26–31.
Gnehm, Michael, «‹Architecture comes first›: Ezra Pounds amerikanische Renaissance», in Helmut Koopmann and Frank Baron (eds.), Die Wiederkehr der Renaissance im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Münster: mentis, 2013: 259–84.
Gnehm, Michael, «Gottfried Semper: Hüllen, Masken und Realität», TEC21 148, no. 7, 11 March 2022: 35–7.
Hayles , N. Katherine, «Inhabiting House of Leaves», in Writing Machines, Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press, 2002: 108–31.
Kearney , Richard, «Introduction», in Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (1957), trans. Maria Jolas (1964), New York: Penguin Books, 2014: xvii–xxvii.
Rao, Eleonora, «‹Home› and the Narrative of an Impossible Nostos», Commonwealth Essays and Studies 37, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 27–34.
Stratigakos , Despina, «The Uncanny Architect: Fears of Lesbian Builders and Deviant Homes in Modern Germany», in Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture, eds. Hilde Heynen and Gülsüm Baydar, London and New York: Routledge, 2005: 145–61.
Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory , ed. David Herman, Manfred Jahn and Marie-Laure Ryan, London and New York: Routledge, 2005 (entries by Jan Alber, Amy J. Elias, Martin Kreiswirth, Ansgar Nünning, and Hayden White).
Shaw , Debra Benita, «Home», in Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, eds. Stefan Herbrechter et al., Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022: 1–18.

Contact


Michael Gnehm