Interiority is a concept of increasing importance to architects in urban centers today. As populations increase, cities become denser, resources diminish, and economies sober, architects will need to confront new methods of space making. One could argue that the “topological city” with its highly continuous, centrifugal qualities (and the economies and politics that drive these) is a rare and dying breed of the last century. In the not-so-distant future, cities will have to consider how to adapt and alter their existing structures to grow inward, to reconfigure their interior, and to design for the discontinuities and temporal layering of their urbanity. This seminar uses key concepts, such as alteration (as opposed to adaptation), object-hood (as opposed to objects) and centripetality (as opposed to the centrifugal), as foundational launching points to understand and define the specificities of architectural interiority. Through a series of readings and case study analyses involving models, diagrammatic drawings, and montages, students speculate upon architectural and urban strategies that embody the qualities of interiority. The seminar focuses principally on projects in dense urban settings, including Hong Kong and New York City, where the conventional striation of architecture, planning, and urban design are enmeshed and ontologically reconfigured. Students are asked to precisely locate design strategies and the qualitative aspects of each project in order to develop theories of interiority. Comparative analyses and discussion in relation to contemporary art and music are incorporated as a means of understanding the broader cultural and socio-political aspects of interiority as it relates to the discipline of architecture. Limited enrollment.
