Semester:
Offered:
Maria Gough, Vishal Khandelwal
This comparative seminar examines the major role of textiles in architectural theory and practice, with a primary focus on India and Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. Our objective is to think historically and cross-culturally about a subject—the concept of architextiles—that has resurfaced in recent decades. Key topics include: Mughal textile architecture; typologies of the tent and other mobile structures in colonial and postcolonial India; Gottfried Semper’s theorization of textiles as the origin of architecture; Bauhaus Weaving Workshop & the architecture of cloth; Arts and Crafts Movement within specific geographical contexts; Anni Albers’s concept of the "pliable plane”; fabric partitions in the architecture and exhibition designs of Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe; collaborations between textile designers and architects, such as Mrinalini Mukherjee and Ranjit Singh, and Nelly Sethna and Joseph Allen Stein; and Frei Otto-inspired temporary exhibition pavilions and the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. We will study textiles, samples, and original publications first-hand at the Harvard Art Museums and the Graduate School of Design, and make field trips to museums in London and possibly also New York. Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Limited to 12.