ARTH 100
Mediating Space
Instructor: Dr. Mattern
TR 12-1:30

Course Description

If it hasn't already, the Internet is bound to transform our physical bodies and environments into 0's and 1's and electrical impulses--or so say many cyberculture theorists. Over a century before the Internet, Victor Hugo proclaimed in his Notre-Dame de Paris that "this will kill that"--that the book will kill the building. Yet we have not traded in our physicality for virtuality--nor have we exchanged all of our brick-and-mortar schools, churches, and communities for virtual versions. In fact, many architectural theorists, sociologists, psychologists, geographers, and scholars in related disciplines argue that as our media have become ever more virtual, the design and development of our physical spaces--through architecture, landscape design, and urban and regional planning--have become even more important. This course examines the dynamic and complex relationship between media and architecture. We will look at architecture as media, symbols, and embodiments of particular ideas and values--and at the impact that communication media have had on the practice of architecture and the way we experience our environments. We will trace the contemporaneous development of media and architecture from the scribal era in the Middle Ages, before the birth of the book, to the digital era of today and tomorrow. In the process, we will examine how our schools, libraries, civic and commercial spaces, homes, cities, and geographies have evolved--and how the way we inhabit those spaces has changed. In our survey, we will make use of weekly readings, multimedia presentations, guest speakers, and fieldtrips.