MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM, CEPT UNIVERSITY SPRING 2015-16

KEY TEXTS IN HISTORY AND THEORY

This course provides an overview of key history and theory texts that have shaped
architectural thinking particularly in the twentieth century. It aims to provide a critical
understanding of the ideas that underlie the text and contextualize the text in terms of other
intellectual developments of the time. The course is mandatory for students specializing in
History, Theory and Criticism. It is also open as an elective for senior UG, other PG students
from FA, and PG from FD. The first, and continuing assignment is that students will write a
review of the book/ summary of the ideas discussed in each class on a blog that they will
each set up. They will also do a final assignment where they will select a cluster of texts that
share epistemological/ methodological/ conceptual origins, and write a 2000 word essay in
the terms of the framework of discussion in class.

Schedule:
7 January - Intro by Gauri
21 January Srivathsan (Chapters 1 and 2 in Roger Scruton, Aesthetics of Architecture,
Princeton University Press, 2013)
28 January Nitin Raje (Felix Otter, Residential Architecture in Bhoja's
Samarangnasutradhara: Introduction, Text, Translation & Notes, India Motilal Banarsidass
Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2010)
4 Feb Jan - Riyaz (Banister Fletcher, Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture,
Routledge, 1996)
11 Feb Jigna (James Burgess, On the Muhammadan Architecture of Bharoch, Cambay,
Dholka, Champanir, and Mahmudabad in Gujarat, W. Griggs & Sons, 1896 and Maganlal
Vakhatchand Sheth, Amdavad No itihash : A.D.1850, Ahmedabad Gujarat Vidya Sabha,
2008)
18 Feb - Riyaz (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Manifesto of Futurism, Gazzetta dell'Emilia, 1909
and Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, Ariadne Press, 1998)
25 Feb Smit Vyas (Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, Dover Publications Inc.,
1985)
3 March Rutul Joshi (Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities, Vintage;
Vintage Books ed., 1992)
10 March Gauri Bharat (Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a phenomenology
of architecture, Rizzoli, 1979)
17 March - Nitin Raje (Bill Hillier, Social logic of space, Cambridge University Press, 1989)
24 March - Rutul Joshi (Michel de Certeau, Chapter 9 - Spatial stories in The Practice of
everyday life, California: University of California Press, 1984)

31 March Vishwanath Kashikar (N. J. Habraken, Structure of the ordinary, MIT Press,
2000)
7 April - Jigna Desai (Jeremy Till, Architecture depends, MIT Press, 2013)
14 April A. Srivathsan (Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting. Notes around the Doppler Effect
and Other Moods of Modernism in William S Saunders (ed.), The New Architectural
Pragmatism, University of Minnesota press, 2007.)
21 April Discussion and reflection