Theories of Architecture Fellowship Program: Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen

Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen is an Assistant Dean and Professor at the Yale School of Architecture, author of prize-winning books, among which Achtung Architektur! Image and Phantasm in Contemporary Austrian Architecture (MIT Press/Graham Foundation, 1996), Alvar Aalto: Architecture, Modernity and Geopolitics (Yale University Press, 2009), and co-editor with Donald Albrecht of Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Yale University Press, 2006). Her pedagogical career revolves around both architectural design and history-theory, motivated by the belief that the interaction between thinking at doing lies at the very core of architectural education. She defines her main didactic ambition in the overthrowing of the false divide between history-theory and design teaching. Specific areas of interest are 20th Century European and American art and architecture, art and aesthetic theory, and history of ideas.

Seminar: Theories of Architecture in the Design Studio

10th of November 10:00-16:00 - Location Room F

The seminar will elaborate on the pedagogical instruments and methods used by six design studios offered by our Department at the masters’ level of education; and will focus with special attention on the ways in which they articulate a number of theories of architecture with the design of quite different built environments.

Seminar: Levels of Research

11th of November 13:00-17:15 - Location: Room K

The seminar will review current research carried out in our department, including a starting PhD project, a dissertation halfway in the making, a thesis concluded just weeks ago, and a postdoctoral investigation in its preliminary stages.

Seminar: Dealing with Influence: Precedent Studies in the Design Studio

12th of November 10:00-17:00 - Location: Room U

The seminar will review the precedent studies developed by the students of the graduation studio Positions in Practice, offered by the chair of Methods of Analysis and Imagination from our Department. The studio analyses the chosen location at three levels. On the one hand, it develops a contextual analysis, focused on the social, political, economic, but also on the geographic, climatic and environmental conditions that characterize the site. On the other hand, it develops a conceptual analysis, in which specific items from the context are raised to the level of abstract ideas, and studied in relation to theories that also develop those ideas. Finally, it develops a disciplinary analysis, in which local architectures are recognized as a repository of key architectural strategies that can inform future developments in that context. Based on these three levels of analysis, students are challenged to define their own strategy for intervening in the context, by adopting a distinct role as a response to particular cultural, social, environmental, political and economic conditions offered by the site. This intervention will be developed in a second part of the studio.