Anthropology and Architecture

Recommended Prerequisites

Space, Culture and Globalization, working knowledge of the English language (reading skills). 

Teaching Methods

Students will read the main texts of the research areas mentioned in theoretical classes, prepare a critical review of one of the texts and a small ethnographic work.  

Learning Outcomes

This course aims to strengthen the dialogue between anthropology, cultural studies and architecture. Study architecture in a wider cultural context and show how reflection on architecture and the built environment can feed anthropological research and analysis. Students should acquire a set of skills related to the critical and reflective use of literature essential to topics under discussion. This form of active knowledge is exploited by producing an individual argument about the contents of the course. Appeals to the use of ethnographic methodologies to research built space.  

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

This course discusses built environment trough different scales: from the city to the architecture. The modern and post-modern city and architecture are studied through the point of view of the voyeur, the urban planner or architect, and through the practices of everyday life. The course discusses new urban segregation and appropriation processes of mass-produced objects through recent anthropological studies of material culture and consumer practices.  

Head Lecturer(s)

Sandra Isabel de Oliveira e Xavier Pereira

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Synthesis work: 20.0%
Frequency: 40.0%
Research work: 40.0%

Bibliography

   Berman, M., 1982, “Baudelaire. O Modernismo nas Ruas” in Tudo o que é Sólido se Dissolve no Ar, Lisboa, Ed. 70.

Caldeira, T., 1999, “Fortified Enclaves: the New Urban Segregation” in (Low, S. (Ed.), Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader, Londres, Rutgers University Press, pp. 83-107.

Cordeiro, G. I. et all, 2003, Etnografias Urbanas, Oeiras, Celta Editora.

Certeau, M. de, 1984, “Walking in the City” in The Practice of Everyday Life, Londres, University of California Press.

Chevalier, S., 1998, “From woolen carpet to grass carpet: bridging house and garden in an English suburb” in Miller, D. (Ed.), Material Cultures: Why some things matter, Londres, UCL Press, pp. 47-71.

 

Harvey, D., 1998(1989),  “O pós-modernismo na cidade: arquitectura e projecto urbano” in Condição Pós-Moderna: Uma Pesquisa sobre as Origens da Mudança Cultural, São Paulo, Edições Loyola, pp. 69-96.

Holston, J., 1989, “The Death of the Street” in The Modernist City. An anthropological Critique of Brasília, Chicago e Londres, The University of Chicago Press.

Jacobs, J., 2000, Morte e Vida das Grandes Cidades, São Paulo, Martins Fontes.