A52K4B Critical Studies Design - Studio 5:4 12.0 credits

Taking the point of departure from proposed interventions, the students will work with methods for imagining their project’s specific transformative potential in an extended geographical  and temporal perspective. Further they will be asked to articulate, through self-reflexive and dialogical methods, the practice developed over the course of the year in terms of an altering practice.

Förändrande praktiker / Altering Practices

Altering practices is a research studio based on critical design tools, methods, and projects developed in the courses Feminist Design Tools, Participatory mapping, and Dialogical Interventions. The principal aim of the course is to develop the student’s capacity to critically understand, evaluate, and contextualise the transformative potential of their own and others’ design projects and practices. The design process will engage further mapping and critical writing practices.

Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to:
- Propose a series of architectural interventions and demonstrate their critical implications from a feminist intersectional perspective
- Pursue a self reflexive critical practice
- Understand and reflect critically on central notions such as transformative potential, emancipatory strategy, and altering practice.

Overall goals

1. The course is part of the Critical Studies Design Studio. 2. The course/project goal is to increase the student's knowledge in this area/field and skills/knowledge in the field of architecture in general. The students will enter the project with varying degrees of knowledge/skills and will subsequently end up at different levels at the end of the course/project.
 3. The individual student must show an increase in the particular skills/knowledge offered in the studio and in the field of architecture in general.

One year fully approved architectural studies at the advanced level, courses and projects.

-Jane Rendell, Barabara Penner, Ian Borden (eds.), Gender Space Architecture, London: Routledge, 2000.
-Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petresu, Jeremy Till (eds.), Architecture and Participation, London: Spon Press, 2005.
-Andrea Kahn (ed.), Drawing, Building, Text, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.
-muf, This is what we do. A muf manual, London: Ellipsis, 2001. 
-Joan Ockman (ed.), The Pragmatist Imagination. Thinking about “Things in the Making”, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.
*Specifika läsningar meddelas vid kursstart.

• PRO2 - Project, 3.0 credits, grading scale: P, F
• PRO1 - Project, 9.0 credits, grading scale: P, F

Based on recommendation from KTH’s coordinator for disabilities, the examiner will decide how to adapt an examination for students with documented disability.

The examiner may apply another examination format when re-examining individual students.

If the course is discontinued, students may request to be examined during the following two academic years.

a) Presentation requirements
Presentation requirements will be handed out at the start of the course.

During the second half of the Spring semester the 5th year students are to do a Thesis Preparation booklet.
Through the development of a ‘Thesis Preparation Booklet’ students will have developed a clear focus, thesis question, for their diploma project and will have the opportunity to build an architectural design research on a specific subject the students want to pursue further. The architectural design research, could have an architectural design agenda, technical/material agenda, theoretical or programmatic agenda. It is important that all material is processed by the student and brought together in a booklet. The Thesis Preparation is an opportunity for the students to develop specific techniques and skills as well as to formulate an architectural design ambition through design research.
Requirements:
A4 sized and bind ‘Thesis Preparation Booklet’ of 20 pages including text, images and drawings. The Thesis Preparation booklet shall be handed in to and examined by the studio teacher before the end of the project.

The studio presentation will be part of the future diploma portfolio and shall be delivered in an appropriate and fully qualified way.

b) Examination
80% attendance. Active participation in lectures, tutorials, and seminars etc. Passed intermediate and final assessments. Compulsory attendance during the assessment reviews.
Completion: The project work shall be delivered and, if necessary, reworked within the set time limit.  See general directions.
(Overall principle: Autumn term projects must be approved during the following Spring term: Spring term projects must be approved before the start of the following Autumn term. The reworked projects must be delivered at least one week before the time limit.)
The project work is to be documented in a portfolio, including drawings, analysis and models. The work process shall be legible.

• All members of a group are responsible for the group's work.
• In any assessment, every student shall honestly disclose any help received and sources used.
• In an oral assessment, every student shall be able to present and answer questions about the entire assignment and solution.