Lustrum // Vera Bühlmann – On Substitute

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Who is ATTP? The Research Unit Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics celebrates its five year anniversary.
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The principles of both rhetoric and poetics revolve – albeit in different ways – around how to express yourself skilfully, precisely, even masterfully. In poetics for example by establishing a unity of place, time and action; in rhetoric for example by demonstrating a case by means of ‘common topics’ or ‘commonplaces’, by recognising and utilising kairos (seizing and fitting the moment), and by a process of stasis, meaning the critical assessment and questioning of an argument and thus bringing an unsettled state into one of balanced stability.

Our interest will be in how these terms are treated in the traditions of rhetoric and poetics as separate entities that play together in ‘a plot’ of which we can think architectonically. The principled treatment of these entities (place, time, and action) are not only central to every text, but also to architecture across all scales (for example place making through identification of site, task, and context of a project; time with regard to identifying a style, or a building’s classicality or modernity; and action with regard to the great importance of ‘agency’ at work in the planning and building of our environments).

This course will be co-taught by Sebastian Michael, a professional writer of plays, novels, poetry, as well as popular science prose, and Vera Bühlmann, professor for architecture theory and philosophy of technics. There will be weekly lectures combined with practical exercises along the classical canon of "progymnasmata" exercises – adapted to our contemporary interests.