ARQU-ARQU 2201 Archetypes in Architecture (Arquetipos en Arquitectura)
FORMATIVE CYCLE COURSE. HISTORY, THEORY AREA.
The course questions the different discourses on the idea of the origin of architecture that have structured as collective beliefs in different cultures, as well as the basis from which such discourses are born. In a first chapter, the course is centred around the western idea of architecture’s origin, founded upon two of modernity’s myths: The primitive hut and the noble savage. These ideas – still operative – are nevertheless insufficient to understand the origin and complexity of architecture and more so, become a burden for thinking.
It is necessary to travel backward ask a question prior to the apparition of architecture: Do we know what man is? What is specific about man and humanity? These questions (2nd module) leads us to broaden the proposal stated at the time by Charles Darwin, as it is useless to ask about the origin of architecture if we ignore the biological and cultural singularities of man. The lectures will be based on recent discoveries in the fields of palaeoanthropology, archaeology and semiotics. We will discover that the fundamental difference between homo sapiens and Neanderthal man are to be found in cave and Palaeolithic art.
These gestures of writing would be the essential particularity of our species. This thesis introduces the third module of the course, where we build the hypothesis of the origin of architecture from these primary artistic manifestations of mankind. For this, symbolic connections will be established with the universe of oral traditions and their possible translation in the contemporary world; an inquiry which will lead us to the structures of cosmological myths, their rituals, the determination of spaces and times of the sacred and profane, up to the construction of architectural forms common to all society (The Tower and the Labyrinth) that force us to think deeply about the concepts of memory and sacrifice.
Instructor
Restrepo Hernandez Fabio
Catalog page for this course