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Joan Ockman

Retiree
jo2@columbia.edu
Rethinking Form

Despite the virtuosity of much contemporary form-making, serious formal thinking in architecture is moribund today. “Formalist” approaches to architecture have been in disrepute since the 1960s, frequently derided as “empty,” while anti-formal positions derived from analyses of the city, technology, and globalization dominate contemporary architectural discourse.

LISTED UNDER: Courses Rethinking Form

Avant-gardes and Architecture

are the historical and cultural conditions from which avant-gardes emerge in architecture? Is there such a thing as an avant-garde architecture today? Is this still a useful concept? If so, where is the avant-garde located? Or should this concept be consigned to the dustbin of history?

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Topics in Architecture Culture from World War II through the 1960s

The course concerns the evolution of architectural theory and practice from World War II to the end of the 1960s, from the period of postwar reconstruction and planning through the events of 1968 when the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris was shut down by student strikes after 250 years. During this quarter century of profound sociopolitical and technological change, architecture culture underwent a process of reorientation, self-questioning, and restructuring. The revision and reinterpretation of modernism set the stage for a major paradigm shift in the late twentieth century.

LISTED UNDER: Courses Topics in Architecture Culture from World War II through the 1960s

The Culture of Glass

A seminar exploring the multiple meanings of glass in architecture and the cultural imagination—from mysticism to rationalism, from minimalism to spectacle—starting in the mid-nineteenth century and going up to the present, drawing on social and literary as well as architectural sources. Diligent preparation of readings, an in-class analysis, and a term paper are required.

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Topics in Architecture Culture from World War II through the 1960s FA04

The course concerns the evolution of architectural theory and practice from World War II through the end of the 1960s, from the immediate postwar period of reconstruction and planning up to the events of 1968 when the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris was shut down by student strikes after 250 years. During this quarter century architecture culture underwent intense self-questioning and significant restructuring against a background of profound sociopolitical and technological change.

LISTED UNDER: Courses Topics in Architecture Culture from World War II through the 1960s