The Architecture of Late Capitalism and Beyond

IKA Lecture Series Winter Term 2015|16
Visionary Cities: Utopian Urbanism and Science Fiction
Nic Clear | Endowed Professorship for Research in Visionary Cities
All lectures will be held in English.

Architectures of Late Capitalism
Contemporary architectural magazines, websites and blogs are full of images showing us buildings that promise that the future we had always dreamed of is already here. The skies are always blue, the streets are always clean and the spaces populated by photo-shopped models drinking cappuccinos.
However we should not allow ourselves to be seduced by the Sci-Fi look and processes of these projects, which owe more to the desire to create futuristic looking architecture as a marketing ploy. The real technologies that drive this architecture are the technologies of global finance, management and procurement.
In this final lecture the current aspects of architectural production will be assessed in relation to recent developments in science fiction film and literature and the series will end with a series of speculations on the technological drivers that will form the agenda for the rest of the 21st century.

Nic Clear is Head of Department of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Greenwich, where he also teaches a postgraduate design unit that specialises in the use of film and animation in the generation, development and representation of architectural spaces. Nic is particularly interested in the intersection between architecture and Science Fiction. He edited an edition of AD titled Architectures of the Near Future and has written the Architecture section of the Oxford Handbook to Science Fiction.

Lecture Series Winter Term 2105|16

12.10.2015 | Lecture 01
Introduction: A Strange Newness

09.11.2015 | Lecture 02
Science Fictions of the Avant Garde

23.11.2015 | Lecture 03
The Industrial City and Its Antithesis

07.12.2015 | Lecture 04
Post War Utopias

11.01.2016 | Lecture 05
The Architecture of Late Capitalism and Beyond