ARC3717H S
Instructor: Hans Ibelings
Meeting Section: L0101
Wednesday, 3:00 - 6:00pm

This seminar explores the seemingly simple, yet complex phenomenon of normal architecture. Normal architecture exists between two extremes. One end of the spectrum is occupied by a generic architecture which is nothing but the pragmatic acceptance of norms and standards: circumstantial normality. The other end consists of architecture which is generic by choice, where norms and standards are used as means to achieve an ideal, intentional normality, a sublimation of the ordinary. In between these extremes sits the architecture which reflects an ambition of sorts but falls within the standard deviation limits of what is considered normal in a particular place and time.

The distinction between a circumstantial and an ideal normality will be taken as a point of departure in this seminar which aims to deepen the understanding of the everydayness of the built environment and examines the unusual, deliberate efforts of architects to make architecture which is conspicuously normal. Since the beginning of the modern era several architects and theoreticians have attempted to understand what normal, standard architecture and design could be. Meinhard von Gerkan’s study of the everyday architecture (Alltagsarchitektur: Gestalt und Ungestalt), Rem Koolhaas’s essay ‘Generic City’, and the ‘Supernormal’ exhibition of Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa are just three examples of readings of the ordinary, generic, and normal aspects of architecture and design. Aside from observing normality, architects have also attempted to create a normal architecture, whether it is through a systematic approach — such as J.N.L. Durand’s Précis des leçons d'architecture données à l'École polytechnique, and Ernst Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre (translated as Architect’s Data) — or in a more liberal way through an artistic interpretation of normality, as can be found in Le Corbusier’s Purist phase, Paul Schmitthenner’s ideal German house, or Pier Vittorio Aureli’s ‘Less is enough’ architecture.

The course consists of short lectures, readings, and discussions, and will lead to three collective products:

- an anthology of texts addressing issues pertaining to normal, standard, typical, ordinary, generic, commonplace, everyday architecture and design;
- a catalogue of normal buildings and objects
- an ‘uneventful’ architecture history.

Each student should:
- find five texts pertaining to the commonplace, the normal, the standard, and write a short introductory analysis for each of them;
- contribute a ’family’ of 25 normal projects to the catalogue;
- write an essay about one particular uneventful moment/project, which could become a chapter of an uneventful architecture history.