MANNERS:
ON ESSAYISM, ARCHITECTURE
AND FRIED ARGUMENTS

SUMMER TERM 2023
GRADUATE SEMINAR
@ ./STUDIO3 - INSTITUTE FOR
EXPERIMENTAL ARCHITECTURE UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA

︎ SUPERVISORS | SO@P (UWE BRUNNER & DOMINIC SCHWAB)
︎ STUDENTS | TAMER ACAR, CONSTANTINA FOURNOGERAKIS, LUITPOLD MAXIMILIAN HERTEL, JAN HOFER, EVA MARIA LEONIE LÄNGLE, MARCEL MARTIN, ZORAN MIRCETA, MONIKA RASCHLE, GERGANA TAKOVA, MAXIMILIAN FERDINAND HAPP, HELKE JETTE KÖLSCHBACH, JULIA MUSCHLER
︎ PHOTO CREDITS | SO@P, ZOE OSCHWALD
︎ LINKS | ./STUDIO3, VIDEO REEL.
 
Over the course of this graduate seminar, we looked at the Essay as an aesthetic form, as a modality of thinking and as a specific way of staging arguments in and through space.


Most people know the Essay from literature. But the Essay as an academic and artistic expression has established itself in many creative practices and genres beyond written language, such as in documentary filmmaking, film studies, stage design, performance art, installation art and exhibition design, to name a few.


The departure point of the seminar was the film director Peter Greenaway and his unique cinematic work. One film in particular, namely ‘The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover’, served us as a context of study, as a site of intervention, as the material to be appropriated and staged, and as the substrate into which we immersed ourselves in order to formulate a spatial utterance in response.


The idea of the course was to investigate a space-making that is liberated from rigid tectonic constraints but rather sets its foundation on intellectual and sensual building blocks. Therefore, we tried to imagine a spatial condition as flexible, as fast, and as explicit as the spoken word.


Inspired by a diverse spectrum of essayistic expression, each group of students has been asked to design a virtual environment guided by an argument as a response to a specific architectural theme encountered in Greenaway's film. The design part of the seminar was accompanied by film screenings, workshops, lectures and round table discussions.