What can socio-cultural anthropology and art history do for architecture?

Eleonora D’Agostino (SIMBDEA) e Lucrezia Eritrei (Università degli Studi di Bologna)


Starting from the definitions of "art history" and "socio-cultural anthropology", this lesson examines architecture as a human aspect influenced by historical, social and cultural flows. Architectures, indeed, cannot be understood as stand-alone entities: they are connected to the communities and societies that produced them, as well as to the historical backgrounds of their changes in techniques and shapes.

Architectures are an important key point to research and to understand the complexity of contemporary challenges, through technological processes, urbanization, new ecological scenarios and hierarchies of power.

The lesson will focus on the historical development of modern and concrete architecture, showing its aesthetic aspirations, deeply influenced by artistic theories and socio-political ideas.

The case of brutalism as an aesthetic movement is particularly relevant to understand the theoretical reasons that led to the spread of concrete use, important requisites to deal with the increasingly current debate on concrete buildings as heritage to preserve or demolish.