(B) Architectural Criticism Booklet
Designing a platform for the dissemination of informed critical voices
This assignment will be conducted in self-nominated groups of 8x (eight) students, involving both individual
and group work
In Week 2, students will nominate one of the broad themes provided by their tutors that they wish to
subscribe to and assist in developing across the semester. This theme will become the kernal of the group’s
research, learning and productive activity across the semester. You will research and become experts in the
theoretical frameworks and histories framed by the lectures and readings throughout the semester, which will
allow you to mount exemplary acts of criticism through your written work in the booklet.
This formulation, design, and production of the booklet consists of the following tasks/components. Students
will self-determine how they complete and divide up the work in order to ensure workload parity within each
group. Student are to develop and implement the following tasks;
• Precedent Analysis of exemplary criticism journals/booklets/brochures/pamphlets
•Manifesto drafting and formulation
•Peer-review of student abstracts in your group (2x each)
•Drafting of Author Guidelines
•Graphic Design of Cover
•Social Media Strategy
•Graphic Spread Layout Design
•Editorial Review
•Booklet Production
In your groups, students will negotiate the allocation of roles and responsibilities for the various tasks
listed above. This agreed allocation will be documented with all students in the group signing the agreement.
It should also outline the timeline for each task and critical path between each task that supports the next.
Students will SUBMIT a signed Group ACB Roles & Responsibilities Contract as a single A4 sheet (Word or pdf
file) via Learnonline together with their Assignment 2 submission.
Whilst the Architectural Criticism Booklet will collect and present each individual student’s abstract as a
critical ‘call to arms’, it is aimed that the booklet is curated and thematised in order to ensure that the
work presented within it seeks to engage in a common thematic. This is not to say that the work presented
within its pages should uniformly speak to a common solution or conclusion, rather the arguments presented by
each contributor may very well interrogate issues/themes/concepts raised in the overall manifesto of the
booklet in different ways. In so doing, a more productive and balanced critical conversation will be mounted
in which each individual contributor to the booklet will interrogate the manifesto in differing, yet
complementary, ways.
Writing your Manifesto is a key in opening up and defining the character of your booklet. The term
‘manifesto’ has become politically loaded as a written declaration of a political movement’s ideological
intents and goals, but it has more humble beginnings. Manifesto comes from the Latin manifestus, literally
meaning ‘that may be laid hold of by the hand’. Manus means hand, and Festus comes from fendo: to dash
against. Manifesto, in these terms, became the familiar maritime document; signed by a ship’s master upon the
loading of cargo, subsequently accounted for at the custom’s house of its destination. The manifesto outlined
a detailed description of the ship, cargo, travel itinerary and ultimate destination. The word ‘manifest’
means to display, clear to view, or not hidden. The discursive capacity of the term therefore has been
appropriated by political movements, and architectural and artist groups with an overt polemical ideology at
their core.
Architects and artists have used the manifesto genre of writing to outline an opinion about an issue and to
operationalise that opinion as an implementable strategy for creative practice, often with an explicit
critical agenda. In other words, the manifesto became a way to identify and critique cultural problems, and
then to propose alternative, or corrective, actions and outcomes. It gives the architectural student the
opportunity to engage the following:
• To investigate issues affecting Architecture and culture more broadly, and to begin to develop a set of
personal values and attitudes towards architecture;
•To deepen an understanding of the implications of design choices specifically with regard to how those
choices affect the cultural value and experience of architecture.
According to Jacob Voorthuis, “[i]n form the architectural manifesto is a product where the written word
exists in heightened tension with visual rhetoric. Images, slogans, short texts, expressive typography all
come together to build an image of conviction about a certain issue and to translate that conviction into
strategies for practice … The objective is to formulate, write and give visual form to a set of well
thought out personal convictions about some issue in architecture. Those convictions should be concerned with
the tension between theory and practice.”
Start your manifesto by asking the following questions:
• What is the problem?
•What are the issues involved?
•How are these issues relevant to the architect, and to culture more broadly?
•What is my attitude to the problem?
•What can we do to solve the problem as architects and engaged citizens?
Format:
The format of the booklet will be determined by each group as an outcome of their precedent analysis and your
manifesto.
Submission:
(Individual Contribution) – Students are to upload their individual contributions to the booklet as pdf files
through the SUBMIT your Assignment 1 Individual Work & Architectural Criticism Booklet HERE link on the
course Learnonline web site as directed in the Assessment Summary;
(Group Work) – Students are to upload their final booklet as pdf files through the SUBMIT your Assignment 1
Individual Work & Architectural Criticism Booklet HERE link on the course Learnonline web site as directed in
the Assessment Summary.
Work not uploaded will be considered as not submitted, and therefore will not be assessed regardless of
whether it was completed or not. Make our job easier: please upload your work as required.
(C) Peer Review of Contribution to Architectural Criticism Booklet
Reflecting on the contribution of your peers in researching, designing, editing, and completing the
Architectural Criticism Booklet
This assignment is conducted individually
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