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Mapping Architectural Controversies
Overview
Many projects engender controversy: sports arenas, responses to environmental disaster, memorials,
adaptive reuse, transportation, and housing. But, once established, buildings are often viewed as simply
inevitable and stable objects. Following how buildings are debated and made (and sometimes unmade)
dismantles the designer-as-sole-creator myth and focuses instead on the heterogenous nature of
environmental design. It extends our thinking of buildings beyond their formal or technical properties to
their complex processes.
Mapping architectural controversies is a technique for investigating and representing this dynamic and
contingent processes. It is an approach inspired by scholars in science and technology studies and cultural
geography, like Albena Yaneva, whose essay about the 2012 London Olympic stadium controversy you
will read to initiate this project. Mapping architectural controversies looks at much more than formal
architectural analysis does. As Yaneva writes: “We follow and enlist the whole range of actors concerned
by the [buildingʼs] design whether they are architects, clients, communities, costs, design precedents or
existing buildings, area regeneration prospects or legacy scenarios, diagrams or sketches, beams or
structural models or indeed anything else” (Yaneva, 90).
A key concept that this project asks you to explore is the idea that
agency—the power to decide or
control—resides not only in individuals and institutions (architects, interior designers, developers, builders,
publics, design agencies, corporate sponsors) but also in material objects (friable brick mortar, expensive
steel) and ideas (historic preservation, ecology, architectural theory, professional culture, popular beliefs).
“Everything can be an actor as long as it makes a difference” (Yaneva, 91). Considering both
human and
non-human actors accounts more fully for the forces that shape a projectʼs trajectory.
Phase I — Project Selection & Initial Research
Directions
1. Project topic (Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA))
2. Read the chapter “Mapping Controversies” by Albena Yaneva (attached to the assignment, 83-94).
3. Begin research, gathering and documenting sources in an annotated bibliography as you go.
4. Review the sources you have amassed for your project topic. Further organize and edit them.
Begin to draft answers to the “WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, HOW questions.”
a. WHO are the actors (consider human and non-human actors)?
b. WHAT kinds of things mark the evolution of this project?
c. WHEN do different decisions, actions, discourses take place?
d. WHERE did this happen, was the impact felt?
e. WHY do certain ideas emerge, decisions get made?
f. HOW do events unfold, does discourse occur?
Deliverables
Submit the following deliverables to the Project 2-Phase I Assignment in Canvas as a single PDF.
-At the top of the first page include your name, class, project title, and date.
-File Name: Lastname_Firstname_Project2_PhaseI.pdf
-Note that AI may not be used to develop any written or visual component of the project.
1. Responses to all the “WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, HOW questions. Note, these questions
should guide your research but not structure your written narrative. (250-500 words)
2. Provide a list of all potential actors (human & non-human) that you have identified so far as
important to your architectural controversy. This should be a separate list from the #1, but may
repeat some information.
3. Draft a thesis statement (1-3 full sentences) which identifies the who, what, when, where, and/or
why of your essay. What is the specific controversy at hand? Why are you studying it? What may
be learned from this case study? This is only a first draft which will be improved in the coming
weeks.
4. In-progress annotated bibliography.
An annotated bibliography is a list of sources (books, articles, news media, social media,
other websites, etc.) with a short sentence about each source that explains the following:
i. Main focus or purpose of the source
ii. Usefulness or relevance to your research topic
iii. Background and credibility of the author(s). Who the author is in relationship to
the controversy?
Project Topic:
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
****I have attached the Albena Yaneva essay reading file in case of need.
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