Is the concept of an avant-garde still viable in architecture today? Or should it be consigned to the dustbin of modernist ideas? When did the avant-garde originate and how should its history be written? Manfredo Tafuri’s The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s was initially published in 1980. It remains the only sustained effort to define and historicize avant-garde theory and practice specifically in relation to architecture. The seminar undertakes a close reading of Tafuri’s rich, rewarding, and difficult book, beginning with the challenging methodological introduction, “The Historical ‘Project,’” and traversing a series of critical episodes from the eighteenth century to the late twentieth. Open to Ph.D. students and others with a strong background in architectural history.