At the End of the Wire
Seminar PhD Teaching (052-0834-23)
Organizer: Institute gta
Lecturers: Chase Galis
Time: 15:45 - 17:30
Location: HCP E 47.1
This course shifts the study of infrastructure from abstract material and bureaucratic networks to the buildings, objects, and technologies at the wire’s end. Using the design of these terminal elements as our primary point of analysis, we will read the history of infrastructure through its use and interpretation in local communities.
Case studies in the course will look not at wires and pipes but rather the things that plug into them—electric light, televisions, computers, sinks, etc.—and the ways various communities have understood the promises and performances of infrastructure through their use.
The methods presented in this seminar will challenge the idea that projects of 19th- and 20th-century infrastructural modernization can be viewed through a universal lens by directing attention to the ways their top-down structures have historically been subverted, resisted, and undermined by local users. These methods present an opportunity to consider the responsibilities of architecture and design as practices that sit precisely at the intersection between large-scale infrastructures and specific sites with their own histories.
Chase Galis
Organizer: Institute gta
Lecturers: Chase Galis
Time: 15:45 - 17:30
Location: HCP E 47.1
This course shifts the study of infrastructure from abstract material and bureaucratic networks to the buildings, objects, and technologies at the wire’s end. Using the design of these terminal elements as our primary point of analysis, we will read the history of infrastructure through its use and interpretation in local communities.
Case studies in the course will look not at wires and pipes but rather the things that plug into them—electric light, televisions, computers, sinks, etc.—and the ways various communities have understood the promises and performances of infrastructure through their use.
The methods presented in this seminar will challenge the idea that projects of 19th- and 20th-century infrastructural modernization can be viewed through a universal lens by directing attention to the ways their top-down structures have historically been subverted, resisted, and undermined by local users. These methods present an opportunity to consider the responsibilities of architecture and design as practices that sit precisely at the intersection between large-scale infrastructures and specific sites with their own histories.
Contact
Chase Galis
