Introduction
Decolonizing Architecture Advanced Course is a year long research-based course, which is part of the Royal Institute of Art’s offer of further education. The course uses the term decolonization as a critical position and conceptual frame for an architectural and artistic research practice engaged in social and political struggles. In the Decolonizing Architecture Advanced Course, we engage in a collective endeavor in experimenting with decolonial approaches. We do this work in dialogue with guests, sites, concepts, texts, and, most importantly, with each other.
The course benefits from being located at a leading art institution of higher learning with a long artistic tradition dating back to the beginning of the 18th century. The Royal Institute of Art offers programs in fine art and further education within architecture and fine art, as well as an experimental artistic research environment.
Theme and content
The fundamental pedagogical approach of the course is based on the articulation of sites, concepts, and people. Each participant is asked to choose a particular site, understood as a site of action and a site of knowledge. Concepts emerging from the research site provide a grounded theoretical approach to the practice. Every year, a new theme and collective site are proposed as a collective project. The articulation of individual and collective research projects constitutes the outcome of the year-long course.
Ideal candidates should be interested in the political and social dimensions of Architecture, and in conceptual speculations that are grounded in and emerge from artistic and architectural practice. Participants should be open to experimental forms of collective production which challenge individual authorship, and to an open-ended process oriented towards material and immaterial outcomes. Decolonizing Architecture Advanced Course offers a unique opportunity to join a collective international community of practitioners and to receive the necessary material and intellectual support for developing a self-driven artistic and architectural practice.
The course is led by Alessandro Petti, professor in Architecture and Social Justice, in collaboration with Marie-Louise Richards, junior lecturer in Architecture, and enriched by the contribution of advisors and invited guests.
Current Course
Archive
- Decolonizing Architecture: Internal colonization and the countryside
- Decolonizing Architecture 2020/2021
- Decolonizing Architecture: Al Masha – Rural Commons
- Decolonizing Architecture: Experimental Sites of Knowledge Production (fortsättningskurs)
- Decolonizing Architecture: Modernism and Demodernization