HISTORIES AND THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE III [2020] PORTFOLIO - Liam Harvey

University of the Witwatersrand

Bachelor of Architectural Studies YOS 3

“This course explores architectural histories and theories since modernism. It surveys both built and imagined architecture and how social emancipation, globalisation and media have characterised its production. The course extends knowledge of recent architecture and builds critical skills.”

Facilitated by Dr Mpho Matsipa and Hannah le Roux

Aiming to build upon the tenets within the pedagogy of this course concerning architecture and modernism, these projects work to critically establish a position towards architecture and its historical canon resulting from four main themes;

  • Analysing existing counter-institutions in order to discuss and investigate the manner in which architecture and spatial practices have and continually affect the way in which histories and knowledge bases are shared, to understand the method in which one diverges from this bias-laden practice.

  • Investigating and interrogating the colonial and western biased manner in which the history of architecture and modernism is collected and redistributed, and exposing the problematic silences within those structures.

  • Establishing a clear understanding of how an individuals access to rights and basic services from the state in which they reside is directly related to both macro and micro scales of architecture, being that of the urban down to the domestic respectively.

  • Experimenting with spaces that hold great cultural and historical significance with a sensitivity to that importance, in order to arrive at and develop a method of proposing the reuse and revitalization of important spaces within contemporary circumstances.

Works