Between the Fracture and the Fold

The last couple of decades at the turn of the 20th century have been extremely critical to the theoretical discourse in architecture. At the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, architectural theory was busily discussing De-Constructivism and its eminently angular avatars in building. American critical theory of the time was strongly influenced by Parisian thinkers who were exploring theories beyond the scope of architecture. There was a selection of architects during the phase between the 1980s and the 2000s who were rigorously exploring interconnections and translations from varied parallel discourses like art and philosophy to architecture, lending agency to their own theoretical grounding. 0ur Design studio explores this very phase in the architectural discourse which raised questions of meaning embedded within architectural constructs through a rigorous framework of theoretical standings during the latter half of the 20th century. Lending foundation to this fetishization of form-making, this studio helps students to ground their individual visual explorations into process-based learning, journeying from the theoretical to the radical, to the real.