Back
| Semester | fall semester 2018 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | Ksenia Vytuleva (ksenia.vytuleva@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | One of the most unexplored world’s laboratories for urban ideas still remains the phenomenon of a Socialist City. A testing ground for extreme utopian visions, a terrain for radical architectural phantasies and social experiments, in a way, Socialist City became an intriguing black box with an unlimited scale of urban research and innovation caused by political, social, technological and artistic transformations. This seminar considers Socialist Urbanism as part of a broader cultural history. The response of architectural thought to the machine, as well as the intersection of political propaganda, literature, art and cinematography will be examined. Special attention will be paid to the unconventional strategies of urban design, aesthetics and social solutions, as well as new forms of architectural media and knowledge productions. A significant part of the course is on the paradoxes of a Socialist City as a cinematic city. From the Avant Garde spatial experiments (Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein) - to dystopian zonings in Tarkovsky`s Solaris, cinematic dark rooms interrogate the trajectory of future Socialist Cities and its legacies. Film also plays more obscure role connecting to questions of enlightenment and electrification, nostalgia and collective memories. In addition to classroom lectures and discussion, students will engage with documentaries and architectural movies about building the “New Urban”, where the notions of montage and territorial thinking are being taken to the whole new extreme. Finally, the course investigates the theoretical and scientific platforms standing behind the planning methods of the Socialist Green City, the Linear City and Soviet Cybernetic City. The essential goal of this seminar is to embrace the extent to which architecture and urban logic came to be intimately connected to the expanded exercises of political power and planning – re-imagining Socialist City as a cultural construct and a myth. |
| Learning objectives | This course allows to trace large trajectories of ideologically and politically charged urban experiments, where questions of architecture and image theory radically expand into the fields of governance, politics, law, ethics, science, medicine and hygiene, colonial studies, ecology and even experimentation in climate zoning. It also allows us to revisit the unforeseen histories of social procedures. The class aims to develop competence in identifying, understanding, and analysing the complexities and contradictions of such a vibrant cultural phenomenon of the XX’s century, as Socialist City and its meaning for contemporary architectural practices and the artistic environment. It will allow students to gain proficiency in the use of methodological, historiographical, visual, and intellectual tools necessary to grasp the meanings of the Avant–Garde artistic thought, its cross-disciplinary and synthetic nature. The course will engage students to read Socialist City critically, and possess the confidence to integrate and apply their learning to solving complex problems of today’s scholarship. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Course auditors welcome |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|
No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
| Modules |
Modul: Gesellschaft in Osteuropa (Bachelor's degree subject: Eastern European Cultures) Modul: Gesellschaft in Osteuropa (Bachelor's degree program: Eastern European Studies) Module: Projects and Processes of Urbanization (Master's degree program: Critical Urbanisms) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Urban Studies |