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Section of Architectural Theory

The Section for Architectural Theory is dedicated to systematic research and considerations about heterogeneous features of the complex and inclusive, socially necessary and vitally important discipline of architecture. The concepts governing, conditioning and influencing architectural thinking and practice are examined through teaching and research activities of the office. What is analysed are on the one hand the inherent and deeply specific principles, methods, strategies, ways of thinking and functioning of architecture, and, and the other hand, necessary relationships and interactions between architecture and other spheres of cultural production – art, science, technology, economy and politics – as formative components of specific social and historical contexts with factors and ideological impacts by which architecture itself is necessarily conditioned and governed. Such an approach enables architecture to be seen as a specific and autonomous academic discipline that explores space but also as a necessarily conditioned and engaged cultural practice. Students are therefore provided with knowledge and skills to seriously and responsibly think about architecture, understand and practice it.
The courses of the office include Introduction to Architectural Theory in the undergraduate programme, Theory of Architecture I and II in the graduate programme, and a number of theoretical courses in the doctoral programme. The courses present and discuss a wide range of theoretical concepts developed in the course of history aiming to explain the production and reception of architecture, examining thereby the issues of historical contexts whose circumstances led to the emergence of the observed concepts. Two fundamental questions are given a prominent place in research: what are the ways architecture interprets and accepts its role in the specific social and historical situation, and what responsibilities and position in such a historical turmoil can be taken by architectural theory as its central but independent part.