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80 413 Portfolios and Political Compasses
Admission to AHO and successful completion of three years bachelor level studies (180 ECTS).
Course participants must be able to keep a steady workflow, iterating in every week in order to build complexity over time. The course methodology will facilitate for that but it is each student's own responsibility to assure continuity in their participation.
Portfolios and Political Compasses is a part-seminar part-workshop elective course dedicated to discussing the dynamic relationship between a student's own set of intentions and the multiple ways in which their portfolio-object/thing can enable, enhance, expand and create an actual experience of said intentions.
Inspired by Alejandro Zaera Polo's "Well Into the 21st Century: Architectures of Post-Capitalism?" reflections already initiated in 1998 and revisited in an article published in El Croquis in 2015, the course will equip its participants with a modest cross-media publishing toolkit through a series of exercises to speculate an own political compass for their Design and Architecture practices.
In short: what's involved in showing your work in public, and how to make it personal while at the same time relevant to others?
Some practitioners have an online presence, some don’t. Some write for newspapers, some don’t. Some make collages, other make photoshoots, other make 3D renderings. Some film videos, some do livestreams. Some write articles, some use memes. Some do all of it together and more. Some say nothing should be done. Great things have been done through sketching on napkins in bar conversations (we won’t drink in class).
Guest faculty in Art History, Graphic Design, Architecture, Journalism, Curatorial Studies and Public Programming will join us over Skype, enhancing our collective investigation.
Our collective speculation on Portfolios and Political Compasses will be articulated through prototyping portfolio formats in different media (print, film, web and performance) together with discussions about dissemination strategies that can establish one's set of ideas as a thing in the world.
Course participants will exercise short writing, documentation methods, collective critique and intensive editing of their own body of work, iterating presentations to their colleagues with increasing complexity towards a final prototype to be critiqued by an expert panel by the end of the semester.
Short software tutorials will be offered in class regarding methods for image collection and catalogging, together with simple techniques for harnessing AHO's own print lab infrastructure with a particular focus on rethinking objects such as boards, post-it walls, and xerox printing.
The course will also present current / pre-existing tools for online publishing and problematize public presentation formats such as Pecha Kucha and Keynote/Powerpoint/TED-talks, discussing the match between intentions with presentation situations.
Students are encouraged to bringing their own/previous portfolios (if existent) as an initial body of content.
Zaera-Polo, Alejandro. Well Into the 21st Century: Architectures of Post-Capitalism? El Croquis 187: Sergison Bates Architects 2004–16, 2016.
Manovich, Lev. “Database as Symbolic Form.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 1 June 1999, doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/135485659900500206.
Wall, Jeff. Pictures of Architecture - Architecture of Pictures: a Conversation between Jacques Herzog .. Walter De Gruyter & Co, 2004.
| Mandatory coursework | Courseworks required | Presence required | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Presence required | Required | 80 % presence required |
| Form of assessment | Grouping | Grading scale | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio assessment (Vurderingsmappe) | - | Pass / fail | — 30% presence — 50% iterative exercises — 20% final delivery |