W 9:30 a.m. -12:00 p.m.
ANH 154
Indisciplined Practice is a live research laboratory focused on tracing and rethinking the contemporary methodologies, processes, methods and transdisciplinary convergences in architectural practice and projects across the Americas.
The project sets out to examine — and redefine — the expectations of the architect by locating and analyzing how “alternative” ways of production have begun to permeate formal practice. At a juncture of economic and labor precariousness, financial crises and the end of a global real estate bubble, as well as the introduction of new technologies and media, social and environmental concerns, this atlas engages groups and individuals within and outside the field of architecture to create an open platform through which the current role of architecture can be debated, and new paths can be defined to leverage its potential as a positive force in shaping the future landscape of the discipline.
With the exchange and displacements between disciplines, the platform seeks to establish an openness of practical possibilities. The aim of the transdisciplinary work that it surveys is not to trace the specific discourses of architecture, to find stable codes or general solutions to specific problems, but to focus on the particular ways in which architecture engages with a wide ecosystem of disciplines and practices, identities and differences between groups, individuals, and the technical innovations of innumerable discursive transactions and conceptual reconfigurations today. In that way, the laboratory observes the growing range of epistemological models and alternative practices that operate freely between official and unofficial systems, between institution and self-management, and between technology and craft.
Through a research and practical approach, the students will consolidate the initial survey of contemporary practices, the context in which they have appeared, as well as the environment in which they operate. Additionally they will learn about dissemination and broadcasting media to define a specific format to present the findings of the platform, consolidating a hands-on approach to research and public engagement in an attempt to question some of the basic assumptions underlying contemporary architectural production.