Forms and Politics in Architecture (ABPL90357)

In design thinking and practice, there is a schism between ‘formal’ and ‘political’ (or compositional and socio-political) considerations. This subject provides a study of the relations between form and politics, in an attempt to fill up this critical gap. Ideas and theories of form and of politics are introduced. Under the category of ‘form’, visual, formal, spatial, aesthetic, compositional, syntactical and organizational issues will be introduced; whereas under the concept of ‘politics’, issues of the nation, the city, the institution, micro spatial politics, the body, visibility, knowledge, design ethics, design criticism, spatial and urban planning, and art-politics relations, will be introduced and explored. Multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural, the subject also aims to test western ideas and Asian cultures in an attempt to forge a constructive dialogue between the two systems.