GANT 6100 -

Institution:

The New School

Subject:

Description:

Cities and the Culture of Construction Spring 2009. Three credits. Carol Breckenridge This course explores the relationship between mega-cities, design, and construction in the era of globalization. More specifically, students conceptualize the idea of the "construction site" with its technologies,practices and goals, scope, and scale. Conversely, various practices of urban destruction, demolition and reconstruction are explored. Two key organizing texts for the course are Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (1967) and Comments on The Society of the Spectacle ( 1988). These texts highlight the view of construction sites, in part, as spectacles. This course will unearth the dialectic between construction and destruction in the 21st century's world-wide urban explosion. China, whose urban world could be characterized as one large construction site, is said to be building one hundred cities with populations larger than 10 million each. Osama Bin Laden, whose resources came from one of the world's largest construction families, invested his wealth in the construction of cities in the Sudan before shifting his attention to shaping the landscapes of jihad. Mega-cities like Mumbai are driven by speculation in real estate at various scales, from the gentrification of slums to the "malling" of obsolete textile factories. And,of course, the U.S. interest in Iraq might be described as a war of "mass construction" in which major companies like Bechtel and Halliburton swept in to make millions before the fires of "shock and awe" had even been putout.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.newschool.edu

Phone Number:

(212) 229-5600

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

The Course Profile information is provided and updated by third parties including the respective institutions. While the institutions are able to update their information at any time, the information is not independently validated, and no party associated with this website can accept responsibility for its accuracy.