The Berlage, second-year studio Housing Contemprary Forms of Life: A Project for Tehran.
Seminar with Pier Vittorio Aureli
Friday 30 November
Room C, 15:00 – BK-TU Delft
The Theology of Tabula Rasa:
Walter Benjamin and Architecture
In the presentation I will address Walter Benjamin’s reading of architecture. I will focus on two texts written in 1931 “The Destructive Character” and “Experience and Poverty” I believe that these two texts not only summarize Benjamin’s approach to architecture, but they also offer the possibility of an ethical project within and against the current ethos of economic recession and austerity measures.
Readings
Walter Benjamin, “The Destructive Character,” in Selected Writings 1931-34 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 540-542.
Walter Benjamin, “Experience and Poverty,” in Selected Writings 1931-34, ibid., 731-736.
Detlef Mertins, “Walter Benjamin and the Tectonic Unconscious: Using Architecture as a Optical Instrument,” in Modernity Unbound (London: Architectural Association), 114-139.