Dates

Texts and Annotations from 1977 to 2013

Themes

Companion Text Feminism Shared space

Publication Types

Article Book Book chapter Essay

Authors
Andrea Fraser
Kathy Acker
Louise Lawler
Rosalind Epstein Krauss
Rosalind Epstein Krauss
Rosalyn Deutsche

Selected Bibliography

Glossator

Published on 5 January 2023 by
Women Writing Architecture
womenwritingarchitecture.org

[{"page_number":"1","note":"One of the most challenging aspects of the preparation before each studio semester in my teaching chair at the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich, is the selection of texts for the reader. While the overall theme for the studio will have been chosen, often the sites and programme have not been defined, and their selection will be informed by the content and spirit of the texts. It is always the intention that the texts will become instrumental in the development of the students' design projects, something hat happens in different ways in each semester and each project. Sometimes it doesn't work.This collection includes the texts by women that were read during the autumn 2022 studio, and one extra.","endnote":false},{"page_number":"2","note":"This past semester was explicitly intended as a return to the tangible. After a few years of working intensely on programme and with concrete social situations in Zurich we, the teachers in the chair, promised ourselves and the students that we would return to narrower and more specifically architectural concerns. That is not to say that we would turn the clock back and look at the architecture of late-19th century Chicago or post-war Milan, but we would spend more time discussing floor plans, elevations and ideas for construction.","endnote":false},{"page_number":"3","note":"Two texts were included from Andrea Fraser's Museum Highlights: 'A Letter to the Wadsworth Atheneum' and 'Welcome to the Wadsworth'.In 'Welcome to the Wandsworth'. Andrea Fraser provides both the means to construct an institution critique of the history as well as the contemporary condition of the site. Her specific way of building up an argument and then performing it also suggests a technique for the students to take on and make projects that emerge from a critical position.","endnote":false},{"page_number":"5","note":"In 'Narrative Time: the question of the Gates of Hell', it is Rosalind Krauss's reading of Rodin's work within the context of modern industrial society and the way this challenges conventional ideas of originality and space, as much as Rodin's never finished masterpiece, that forms a thematic starting point to survey the sites and existing buildings, and an impetus for the design projects.","endnote":false},{"page_number":"4","note":"Louise Lawler's Rude Museum was not included in the reader, but the annotation touches upon issues addressed by Andrea Fraser.","endnote":false},{"page_number":"6","note":"I think that this semester, the idea of combining reading and reference, and the resonances that the students found between the texts and the site, have enabled texts and projects to become inseparably bound together.","endnote":false}]