Methods for Life-affirming architectures

Theory of Architecture 2.2 (5AR208), programme UMA 2 (2 hp), Spring Term 2026

**Tagging intervention at Copenhagen's Botanical Garden's main colonial crystal palace, Palmehuset.

'Le hablé á la roca y la roca me contestó.'
['I spoke to the rock, and the rock responded.']
- Luisa Capetillo from Igualdad Humana / Human Equality (Puerto Rico, 1913)

'Muchas palabras se caminan en el mundo. El mundo que queremos es uno donde quepan muchos mundos.'
['Many words are walked on the world... The world we want, many worlds fit.']
- III passage of the Fourth Zapatista Declaration on behalf of the Lacandona Jungle (México, 1996)

'La poésie doit être faite par tous, non par un.'
['Poetry must be created by all, not by one alone.']
— Comte de Lautréamont (aka. Isidore Ducasse) from Les Chants de Maldoror (Uruguay, 1870)

General Schedule Summary: lectures, workshops, with group reading discussions 13-17.april, with written exam due 17. april.

This 2.2 session of the ArkTeo2 course will follow-up the topics discussed during 2.1 in the Fall semester.

Again rooted in the Propædeutic Contribution to the Teaching of Architecture Theory (1957), we will continue to refer to Lina Bo Bardi's work as a basis to contemporary topics of spatial practice. In the Fall, we based our discussions, process, and output on the Propædeutic's first section that looked at 'the problems of architectural theory'. For this Spring session, we will base our work on the second section of her Propædeutic which focuses on 'the problems of method' in architecture, continuing with an interest on how AI can assist us in thinking, developing, and communicating our theories, methodologies, and potential imaginaries.

Preliminary Week 16 Schedule

The content is delivered over four days of lectures, workshops, group, and individual work. Engagement and participation in the lectures and workshops is assessed.

Monday

13 april

Tuesday

14 april

Wednesday

15 april

Thursday

16 april

Thursday

16 april

10:00-12:00

Course introduction

Part 1: Intro: Methods

Luis Berríos Negrón

TBC

(Zoom/Auditorium)

Part 3:

Guest LECTURE -

Reyes Santiago Rojas

Methods in Art, Spatial Production and Environment

(Auditorium)

from 10:30

Part 5: Brief Review of Reading(s) and exam description

Luis Berríos Negrón

(Zoom/Auditorium)

Individual or Group study and production

Exam submission

due 23:59

13:00-15:00

Part 2: Intro: Methods

Luis Berríos Negrón

TBC

(Zoom/Auditorium)

Part 4:

WORKSHOP -

Reyes Santiago Rojas

Methods in Art, Spatial Production and Environment

(Auditorium)

Individual or Group study and production

Individual or Group study and production

Exam submission

due 23:59

WORKSHOP OUTCOME / PUBLICATION :: SWEPT

The ZOOM links:

for Monday: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85309774817

Wednesday: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84238357833

Required Reading

Section 'Beginning, or refarin' (pages 2-7) and the first paragraph of 'Devising Methods' (page 8) in the Introduction: Perpetual Inventory from the book Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social by Celia Lury and Nina Wakeford. Routledge, 2012.

Other suggested reference readings

Dombois, Florian. Art as Research. ART and NOW. Über die Zukunft künstlerischer Produktivitätsstrategien, Wien / New York 2010, pp. 79–89;

Marres, Nortje. Experiment: The experiment in living. Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social. Lury, Celia, and Nina Wakeford, editors. Routledge, 2012.

PREVIOUS SOURCE READINGS

Grossman, Vanessa. Lina Bo Bardi’s Theory of an Immediate-Life-Architecture (1957), in ArchDaily's Radical Pedagogies series, 2015.

'Critical of the “functionalism” already present in Vitruvius, and of what she calls the “Scientificism” of the Modern Movement, she revisited concepts associated with Romanticism. For Bo Bardi, “The Moderns oppose a certain resistance to this concept, perhaps influenced by the old habit of dividing and specializing parts of the world, of things and thoughts. Romantics, on the contrary, understand architecture in a cosmic sense.” Advocating nature “as the primary source for the study of architecture,” she openly criticized Bruno Zevi’s notion of “interior space” to which she opposed Gillo Dorfles’s definition of architecture as typically 'spaziale'. Bo Bardi tended toward what she defined as “total-space”: one that participates in human life. People, in turn, are considered as “actors” in the space of the world.'

Wainwright, Oliver. ‘It’s already way beyond what humans can do’: will AI wipe out architects? The Guardian online, Mon 7 Aug 2023.

'The ultimate effects are impossible to predict but, whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay. “Architects are like ostriches with their heads in the sand,” says Leach. “What they need to design right now is not another building – but the future of their profession.”'

Baer, Hannah. PROJECTIVE REALITY: on mythologies of intelligence. Artforum, Online/Print Summer 2023.

'If what we have on our hands is the possibility of an entity with more intelligence than we possess, it’s possible that it might invite us into new ways of conceptualizing intelligence, new ways of inhabiting our ecologies, new ways of not desperately annihilating ourselves on this abundant planet. If we understand that the way we see AI tells us more about ourselves and our histories and values than it does about the machine, perhaps we can also invite it to help us transcend.'

ONLINE REFERENCES

Reyes Santiago Rojas (COL, artistic research, decolonial methods)
https://www.kunstbokoslo.no/exhibitors/reyes-santiago-rojas-terraza

https://curatorsintl.org/collaborators/7673-reyes-santiago-rojas

Art & Architecture examples of Methodologies

El Buen Vivir (BOL/PER/CHL, Indigenous community- and Land-based cooperation)
https://populationmatters.org/news/2024/09/buen-vivir-the-good-life-for-people-and-planet-part-one/#:~:text=It%20is%20an%20alternative%20development%20model%20that,balance%20*%20De%2Dgrowth%20*%20Criticism%20of%20extractivism

https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/indigenous-development-concept-buen-vivir-aims-ensure-material-social-and-spiritual

Recetas Urbanas (dir. Santiago Cirugeda, ES, community and extralegal urban development)
https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/23-insurgent-architectures/interview-legal-grey-zones-joyful-construction-recetas-urbanas-architecture-santiago-cirugeda

https://recetasurbanas.net/videos/

Made You Look (SA, Trauma of Lands, Imaginaries)
https://www.made-you-look.net/writing

https://www.berliner-kuenstlerprogramm.de/en/artist/madeyoulook/

Eva Lacour (DK, Inventing the Arctic, video as methodological tool)
https://www.svalbardsocialscience.com/members/eva-la-cour/

https://www.bildmuseet.umu.se/en/events/geopolitics-of-the-forests-colloquium_11990057/

Luis Berríos Negrón (PR, Tree Nurseries, Anarchives & Remediating colonial memories of Lands)
https://medium.com/intransitive-journal/estratas-viveros-y-entra%C3%B1as-241f51c30236

https://medium.com/intransitive-journal/memory-04-installing-the-anarchive-wk-1-2-b080772f4da6

https://www.umu.se/en/news/when-trees-become-co-actors_12142895/

Learning outcomes (in addition to those specified on the Syllabus)

Knowledge and understanding

Describe the environmental interaction between theories, methods and practices of architecture.
Process why architects ought become experts on methodologies at the junctures and polemics between perception, space, and environment.

Competence and skills

Discuss the concepts of space, location, perspective (human and more-than-human), form, figure, and body.
Formulate and apply basic methods of sculptural and spatial analysis and communication.

Academic Resources

UmU Library: academic writing resources

Course responsible

Luis Berríos Negrón, Associate Professor & Research Fellow [luis.berrios-negron@umu.se]