Urban Voids as Artifact:The Commons and Collectivity (ARTS 3304 R)
Term: 2023-24 Academic Year Spring
Schedule
Tue-Fri, 11:05 AM - 1:30 PM (1/24/2024 - 5/7/2024) Location: SLC HEIM 213
Fri, 11:05 AM - 1:30 PM (1/24/2024 - 5/7/2024) Location: SLC HEIM 209A
Description
This course reexamines the notion of the void not as land ripe for building real-estate capital but as space for cultural expression. Students choose a void from infrastructural areas, parks, empty unused buildings, or land that has often transformed with histories of erasure and dispossession. We can discover the urban void in many forms, from abandoned retail spaces to empty lots. Urban planner Bernardo Secchi in 1984 described urban voids concerning industrial typologies as “urban fractures, areas with no current function or use or character,” while architect Ignasi de Sola-Morales in 1995 described them as “terrain vague,” which were abandoned “land in its potentially exploitable state.” How can we define “the void” without understanding a solid? The solid and void relationship can be observed in the Nolli Map of Rome, with a solid-void/figure-ground representation of urbanity. One can argue that this fundamental tool is also used in suburban and rural areas to record and derive da