Posthumanism and Architecture

Chenyan Wang

-Individual Syllabus Writing
-The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, Fall 2022
-Professor Lauren Kogod

Lithograph, pen: 'Awful Changes'. H.T. de la Beche del. et lith. [c1833]. 25.5x31cm in frame 42x44.5cm. A scientific lecture is in progress, by Professor Ichthyosaurus, exampling a skull of man as a lower order of animals: a geologist's caricature of public scientific lecture on the fossil record and evolution of mankind.

Course Description

Crises like climate change, economical recession and the global rise of authoritarianism are now existential drama that is unfolding at a planetary scale. They also cast doubt on the existing philosophical habits of thought, confronting us with different problems that seem to defy not only our control but also our understanding. Debates on artificial intelligence and virtual reality, ecology and Anthropocene, media and technology, sovereignty and democracy haunt us everyday. It is urgent to widen the breadth of architecture and reconfigure the relationship to our complex habitat. Also, technological apparatus brings lots of dynamic relations as our new ‘milieu’. This course is about how to reimagine these relationships using posthumanism theory as a methodology for architecture practice. Space will be analyzed as "a way of revealing" [1]the constitution of human and posthuman identities. We will be looking to posthuman practices in physical terms, but also philosophical ones that will help us determine new relationships between architecture, meaning, ecology and cultural value.

When we speak of the term “posthumanism”, it will undoubtedly remind us of Foucault's prophecy of the ultimate fate of mankind in his book The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Here Foucault writes that "man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end …then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea. "[2]Today, the development of science and technology has accelerated the transformation of society, and human beings have begun to transcend the boundaries of humanity defined by humanism. Theories of posthumanism are proposed to face such challenges and open up spaces to critically question the concept of "the human" in light of current cultural and historical contexts.

Discussions of posthumanism could be traced to the Macy Conferences on cybernetic from 1954-1963 when a lot of visionary theorists like Warren McCulloch and Norbert Wiener proposed with new theoretical models which dissolved the existing demarcations between physical existence and virtual reality; cybernetic mechanism and biological organism; robot teleology and human culture, disintegrating the foundations of humanism. Posthumanism is regarded as a rejection of self-centered individualism and dualistic ways of thinking, emphasizing a transition in our understanding of the self and its relations to the natural world, society, and human artifacts.

Posthumanism as a methodology /an intellectual tool

The main discussions I want to bring to class are: firstly, what is the posthuman and posthumanism? More specifically, how is it framed and developed in both philosophy and architecture discourse. Secondly, why we should consider posthumanism as a methodology to reconstruct the existing relations in architectural discourse or how architecture as an object or agency entangled in such multiple relationships, or as K Michael Hays concludes, the postmodern posthumanist project in the discourse of architecture. Thirdly, compare different topics in two discourses and try to understand how they represent and affect each other.

This class is divided into three sections: introduction, body and nature, and through language methodology workshop to connect three topics. Discussion in this course will address the above phenomenon through various conceptual lenses as they emerge from philosophy, architectural theory, art criticism, history and other sources. Students will engage with the weekly group discussion and workshops.

The goal of the course is not to convey to students an existing philosophical framework of posthumanism, but unearth a new architectural discourse that considers architecture as an agency of transforming. In the final project, students will bring their interpreted definition of relations into research paper. For instance, how artificial and natural systems can come together to form new synthetic relationships during an era of Anthropocene and pursues new forms of engagement and innovative models of landscape practice or how can we critic the cybernetic social machine though utopias and dystopias theory etc.

Weekly Schedule

Section 1_ Introduction

Week #1      Introduction to Posthumanism:

Theory and Discussion|Instructor Lecture

In this session, students will be introduced to the field of posthumanism. What is the definition of posthuman in philosophy discourse? What is the reason and context for the shift to posthumanism? Students will be familiar with the scope and vocabulary of posthumanism through this class.

Readings:

Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. 1st ed. London,UK: Polity Press. Chapter 1 Post-Humanism: Life beyod the Self. (pp.13-55)
Michel Foucault. The Order of Things. (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1996) Chapter 7 “The Limits of Representation” (pp.235-273) and Chapter 10 “The human science” (pp.375-422)

Recommend:
N.Katherine, Hayles. 2010. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, And Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Week #2      Postmodern Posthumanist projects in architecture discourse:

Theory and Discussion|Instructor Lecture & Group Discussion
In this session, students will be introduced to the postmodern posthumanist projects in the architecture discourse during 1960s. Certain architectural experiments by Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi, Stanley Allen, Jennifer Bloomer will be discussed in the class. Students are expected to find out relationship between architecture and philosophy beyond simple analogy though the collaborative project “Chora L Works” by Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman.

Readings:
Eisenman, Peter. “The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End.” Perspecta 21 (1984): 155–73. https://doi.org/10.2307/1567087.
K. Michael Hays,Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject. Cambridge,London: MIT Pr, 1992. “The Crisis of Humanism, the Dissolution of the Object” (pp.187-213) and “Posthumanism and postmodernism” (pp.279-290)

Recommend:
Derrida, Jacques, Peter Eisenman, Jeffrey Kipnis, and Thomas Leeser. Chora L Works. New- York: Monacelli Press, 1997.

Week #3      From Cybernetic to Posthumanism

Theory and Discussion|Instructor Lecture & Group Discussion
In this session, students will start from theory of Nobert Wiener from Macy Conferences, know the basic concept of cybernetic theory and its development. Then cybernetic art and architectural experiments will be put on the table, students are excepted to talk about the architectural principles in the age of cybernetics.

Readings:

Hayles, Katherine, Niklas Luhmann, William Rasch, Eva Knodt, and Cary Wolfe. 1995. "Theory Of A Different Order: A Conversation With Katherine Hayles And Niklas Luhmann". Cultural Critique, no. 31: 7. doi:10.2307/1354443.
N.Katherine, Hayles. 2010. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, And Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chatper 10: The Semiotics of virtuality: Mapping the posthuman (pp.247-282)
Watch: Cybernetic Serendipity (ICA) - Late Night Lineup (1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8TJx8n9UsA
Cybernetic Serendipity: A Walkthrough With Jasia Reichardt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSwovB28B34

Recommend:
Interesting Website for students to explore:
Online archive: A history of cybernetic animals and early robots
https://cyberneticzoo.com/

Week #4      Posthumanism Methodology—Material Semiotics

Theory and Discussion|Instructor Lecture & Group Discussion

In this session, students will establish posthuman-centered design methodology through material semiotics. They will look into the most well-known version of material semiotics which is Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT). posthuman-centered design methodology. Students will use material semiotics to rethink the relationships between human and animal, organism and machine, and the physical and nonphysical, and evolve current human-centered design methodologies to prepare humanity for a posthuman world.

Reading:

N.Katherine, Hayles. 2010. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, And Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chatper 10: The Semiotics of virtuality: Mapping the posthuman (pp.247-282)
Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva, “«Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move»: An ANT’s View of Architecture”, Ardeth [Online], 1 | 2017, Online since 01 October 2017, connection on 22 November 2022. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/991

Week #5      Vocabulary，Grammar and Category

Workshop|Student Presentation & Discussion

In this session, students will choose words both essential and intangible--words like material, Anthropocene, geontologies, postcolonialism, to name a few--and, by tracing their etymology and evolution, grounds them in a wider political and cultural framework or explore its application in architectural discourse. Then students will be engaged in discussion on the timeline and category of postmodernism, poststructuralism, postmaterialism etc. and imagine the era after posthumanism. Mind map or bubble chart is welcomed as a discussion outcome.

Readings: (recommend)

Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Braidotti, Rosi, and Maria Hlavajova. 2020. Posthuman Glossary. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Section 2_Body

Week #6      Body Metaphors and Space Politics

Theory and Discussion|Instructor Lecture & Group Discussion
In this session, discussion will start from Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”, which is a foundational text that brings together feminism and science and technology and focuses in the relationship between human and technology. The students will talk about the invasion and extension of technology to the body in posthuman era.

Reading:

Donna, Haraway. 1991. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs And Women : The Reinvention Of Nature. New York: Routledge.

Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1994), esp. p. 19; idem, Architecture from the Outside, pp. 49–54.

Week #7      Architecture, Technology and the Body

Theory and Discussion|Instructor Lecture & Group Discussion

In this session, students will talk about the relationship between architectural form, the body, subjectivity and epistemology. Human enhancement, augmented man and cyborg will be brought into the discussion.

Reading:

Diana I. Agrest, “Architecture from without: Body, Logic, and Sex” Assemblage , The MIT Press ,Oct., 1988, No. 7 (Oct., 1988), pp. 28-41,https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171074
Anthony Vidler, “Housing for Cyborgs,” The Architectural Uncanny, (1992): 146-164.Georges Teyssot, “The Mutant Body of Architecture”, FLESH: Architecture Probes, (1994): 8-35
Hale, Jonathan. “Architecture, Technology and the Body: From the Prehuman to the Posthuman.” The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, 2012, 513–33. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446201756.n31.

Recommend:
Beatriz Colomina, editor ; Jennifer Bloomer ... [and others]. Sexuality and Space. New York, N.Y. :Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. Pp.241-255
Lorde, Audre. “The Masters Tools will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” In Gender, Space, Architecture, edited by Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner and Iain Borden, 53-55. London: Routledge, 2000.
Kallipoliti, Lydia. “Masters and Slaves - Architecture - e-Flux.” e-flux, October 2016. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/superhumanity/68674/masters-and-slaves/.

Week #8      Midterm Rest

Watch Movie <Last and First Men (2020)>

Week #9      Subjects, Approach and Milieu I

Workshop| Round-table & Students pick up topics
In this session, each student will choose one topic to develop an independent research project. I highly recommend you can start from a specific architecture project, and trace back to its philosophy background, see if you can find your own argument in the comparison of different subjects and approach. Here are some topics might be useful to broaden your mind.

Readings:

Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Braidotti, Rosi, and Maria Hlavajova. 2020. Posthuman Glossary. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Section 3_Nature

Week #10        Biosphere and Anthropocene

Theory and Discussion|Instructor Lecture & Group Discussion
In this session, students will be introduced to different philosophical theories of Anthropocene, and reimagine the relationship between human and nature in this era.

Readings:

Morton, Timothy. 2013.Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. (pp.1-24)
Donna J. Haraway. 2015. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin”. Environmental Humanities 6 (1): 159–65. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3615934.

Recommend:
Wark, McKenzie. Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene. Verso, 2016.

Week #11      Architecture and Nature

Theory and Discussion|Guest Speaker Lecture & Group Discussion
In this session, students will have a lecture by professor Lydia Kallipoliti, and be introduced to different contemporary eco designs.

Readings:

Lydia Kallipoliti. EcoRedux: Design Remedies for an Ailing Planet, special issue of Architectural Design, 80, no.6 (November/December, 2010).pp.34-43
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins Princeton University Press. (pp.17-27)

Recommend:

Kallipoliti, Lydia. The Architecture of Closed Worlds. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2018.
Ghosn, Rania, and El Hadi Jazairy. Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment. New York, NY, USA: Actar, 2019.
Ghosn, Rania. The Planet after Geoengineering: Design Earth. New York ; Barcelona: Actar, 2021.
O'Donnell, Caroline, and Jose Ibarra. Werewolf: The Architecture of Lunacy, Shapeshifting, and Material Metamorphosis. Applied Research and Design Publishing, an imprint of ORO Editions, 2021.

Week #12       Subjects, Approach and Milieu II

Workshop|Student Presentation & Discussion
In this session, each student will present their selected topic (based on week 9) to develop an independent research project. Your presentation in this course should engage in the comparison of different subjects, milieu and approaches in philosophy and architecture discourse. Your presentation should include visual diagrams or drawings based on the archival findings and historical sources inside and outside architecture discourses which could support your argument. You find your inspirations from the following methodologies: 10-15min presentations with images and arguments; case study; drawings or diagrams; lexicon or mind mapping; creative writing (comics/poetry/novel etc.). To be clear, any creative written or visual forms are welcomed, but you still need at least 2 better-written paragraphs explaining your research focus.

Week #13      Biopolitics and Biopower

Theory and Discussion|Instructor Lecture & Group Discussion
In this session, students will start from the critic of Foucauldian biopolitics in contemporary context, than look into geoengineering’s techno-utopianism projects. Students are expected to find the ways in which architecture can allow for individual agency, and produce resistance to embedded structures of geontopower.

Readings:

Elizabeth Grosz, Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics, and Art (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 116.
Donna J. Haraway, “The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Constitutions of Self in Immune System Discourse,” in idem, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991)
Scott. Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity/Architectures of Counterinsurgency. New York: Zone Books, 2016. (Pp167-223 and Pp431-442)

Watch:
Elizabeth Povinelli – The Four Figures of the Anthropocene
https://michel-foucault.com/2014/06/15/anthropocene/

Week #14       Develop your own focus- Round Table

Workshop|Student Presentation & Discussion

This is a group discussion before the final review. In this workshop, students will engage in exploring what posthumanism and architecture represents for you, finding and developing your own interests and critiques of the current field. I would strongly recommend a comparative analysis of posthumanism theories and their applies in posthumanist projects.

Week #15       Final Pin-up

Bibliography:

Posthumanism of Philosophy

General Theory

Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. 1st ed. London,UK: Polity Press.

Braidotti, Rosi, and Maria Hlavajova. 2020. Posthuman Glossary. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Donna, Haraway. 1991. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs And Women : The Reinvention Of Nature. New York: Routledge.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 2005. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism And Schizophrenia. London: University of Minnesota Press.

Ferrando, Francesca. “Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms: Differences and Relations.” Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts, Vol. 8 No. 2, Fall 2013, 26-32, http://www.bu.edu/paideia/existenz/volumes/Vol.8-2Ferrando.pdf. Accessed January 14, 2015.

Foucault, Michel. 1996. The Order Of Things. Paris: Editions Gallimard.

Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2017. "On Actor-Network Theory. A Few Clarifications, Plus More Than A Few Complications". Philosophical Literary Journal Logos 27 (1): 173-197. doi:10.22394/0869-5377-2017-1-173-197.

Latour, Bruno, and Julie Rose. 2021. After Lockdown. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Miller, Adam S. Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-oriented Theology. New York: Fordham UP, 2013. Print.

N.Katherine, Hayles. 2010. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies In Cybernetics, Literature, And Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wolfe, Cary. 2011. What Is Posthumanism?. Minneapolis, Minn: Univ. of Minnesota Press.

Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Cybernetics

Gorden, Pask., 1976. Conversation theory: Application in Education and Epistemology. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Gladden, Matthew E. “Tachikomatic Domains: Utopian Cyberspace as a ‘Contingent Heaven’ for Humans, Robots, and Hybrid Intelligences.” His Master's Voice: Utopias and Dystopias in Audiovisual Culture. Ośrodek Badawczy Facta Ficta, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, March 24, 2015.

Humphrey, N., 1970. What the Frog's Eye Tells the Monkey's Brain. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 3(1-4), pp.324-337.

Hayles, Katherine, Niklas Luhmann, William Rasch, Eva Knodt, and Cary Wolfe. 1995. "Theory Of A Different Order: A Conversation With Katherine Hayles And Niklas Luhmann". Cultural Critique, no. 31: 7. doi:10.2307/1354443.

Hight, Christopher. Architectural Principles in The Age of Cybernetics. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Kline, R., 2009. Where are the Cyborgs in Cybernetics? Social Studies of Science, 39(3), pp.331-362.

Wiener, Norbert. 1961.Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Second edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Body

Donna, Haraway. 1991. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs And Women : The Reinvention Of Nature. New York: Routledge.

Donna J. Haraway, “The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Constitutions of Self in Immune System Discourse,” in idem, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature(New York: Routledge, 1991)

Donna Haraway, “Cyborgs and Symbionts: Living Together in the New World Order,” in The Cyborg Handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray with Steven Mentor and Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera (Routledge, 1995), xv.

Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1994), esp. p. 19; idem, Architecture from the Outside.

Lenoir, Timothy. “Makeover: Writing the Body into the Posthuman Technoscape: Part One: Embracing the Posthuman.” Configurations 10 (2002): 203-220.

Nature

Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime, trans. Catherine Porter (Polity Press, 2017). Latour, “Some Advantages of the Notion of ‘Critical Zone’ for Geopolitics,” Procedia Earth and Planetary Science, no. 10 (2014)

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. Print.

Donna J. Haraway. 2015. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin”. Environmental Humanities 6 (1): 159–65. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3615934.

Morton, Timothy. 2007.Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,

Morton, Timothy. 2013.Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Showstack, Randy. "Entering the “Anthropocene” Era." Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union 85.5 (2004): 46. Web.

Sayes, Edwin. 2013. "Actor–Network Theory And Methodology: Just What Does It Mean To Say That Nonhumans Have Agency?". Social Studies Of Science 44 (1): 134-149.doi:10.1177/0306312713511867.

Stiegler, Bernard, and Daniel Ross. The Neganthropocene. London: Open Humanities Press, 2018.

Wark, McKenzie. Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene. Verso, 2016.

Posthumanism of Architecture

General Theory

Bedford, Joseph. 2020. Is There An Object Oriented Architecture? Engaging Graham Harman. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Cascio, Jamais. 2003. Transhuman Space: Broken Dreams, Austin, Texas: Steve Jackson Games, Inc.

Derrida, Jacques, Peter Eisenman, Jeffrey Kipnis, and Thomas Leeser. Chora L Works. New- York: Monacelli Press, 1997.

Eisenman, Peter. “The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End.” Perspecta 21 (1984): 155–73. https://doi.org/10.2307/1567087.

K. Michael Hays,Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject. Cambridge,London: MIT Pr, 1992. “The Crisis of Humanism, the Dissolution of the Object” (pp.187-213) and “Posthumanism and postmodernism” (pp.279-290)

Body

Anthony Vidler, “Housing for Cyborgs,” The Architectural Uncanny, (1992): 146-164.Georges Teyssot, “The Mutant Body of Architecture”, FLESH: Architecture Probes, (1994): 8-35

Beatriz Colomina, editor ; Jennifer Bloomer ... [and others]. Sexuality and Space. New York, N.Y. :Princeton Architectural Press, 1992.

Diana I. Agrest, “Architecture from without: Body, Logic, and Sex” Assemblage , The MIT Press ,Oct., 1988, No. 7 (Oct., 1988), pp. 28-41,https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171074

Lorde, Audre. “The Masters Tools will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” In Gender, Space, Architecture, edited by Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner and Iain Borden, 53-55. London: Routledge, 2000.

Hale, Jonathan. “Architecture, Technology and the Body: From the Prehuman to the Posthuman.” The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, 2012, 513–33. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446201756.n31.

Nature

Donna J. Haraway. 2015. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin”. Environmental Humanities 6 (1): 159–65. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3615934.

Ghosn, Rania, and El Hadi Jazairy. Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment. New York, NY, USA: Actar, 2019.

Ghosn, Rania. The Planet after Geoengineering: Design Earth. New York ; Barcelona: Actar, 2021.

Kallipoliti, Lydia. The Architecture of Closed Worlds. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2018.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins Princeton University Press.

Turpin, Etienne. 2013. Architecture in The Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science And Philosophy. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press.

O'Donnell, Caroline, and Jose Ibarra. Werewolf: The Architecture of Lunacy, Shapeshifting, and Material Metamorphosis. Applied Research and Design Publishing, an imprint of ORO Editions, 2021.

Scott. Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity/Architectures of Counterinsurgency. New York: Zone Books, 2016.

Appendix:

Why I choose to write syllabus and what a syllabus can do (especially for posthumanism topic)? If posthumanism can as a methodology to explore the transformation in architecture discourse, why posthumanism cannot be an intellectual tool to change the existing structure of syllabus writings? What’s the meaning of posthumanism class if it continues the teaching system of traditional humanism? Imagine the posthumanism class is a magic show, The real magician is not the professor but the student, the student is the one who pulls the rabbit out of the magic hat, and the professor is the one who designed the hat. So, what’s the hat looks like except it is filled with posthumanism theories?

Syllabus is a remarkable document that changes the structure and logic of learning, it shows more potential to form a creative structure of writing than research paper and we can redefine the writings of course description. The weekly assignments can also be part of my arguments. Different kinds of workshop can turn the classroom into a community.

Example	Projects prepared for class	Conversations / Expectations
Week 2_ Postmodern Posthumanist projects in architecture discourse	1.Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette 2.Jacques Derrida & Peter Eisenman: Project for a Garden, Parc de la Villette, Paris (Chora L Works), 1986. 3.Eisenman’s Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors	What’s the relationship between architecture and philosophy beyond simple analogy? How can we define the category of postmodern posthumanist architectural projects?
Week 3_ From Cybernetic to Posthumanism	1.Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition 2.Vinci Series by Charles “Chuck” Csuri 3.Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood. Fun Palace promotional brochure, 1964. 4.Proposals for a Cybernetic Theatre, Gordon Pask	The development history of Cybernetics and how it influenced Posthumanism? What is the progress of posthumanism theory compared with early cybernetics？
Week 7_ Architecture, Technology and the Body	Contemporary Eco-design Projects: 1.Early bionics, artificial neurons and cyborgs_ Human Enhancement 2. Anthony Vidler_Home for Cyborgs 3. Haus-Rucker-Co_Architectural Utopia Reloaded	Explore the space between architecture and technological paradigms specifically through the lens of the robot and the cyborg.
Week 11_ Architecture and Nature	Contemporary Eco-design Projects: 1.El Hadi Jazairy & Rania Ghosn_ Design Earth 2. Lydia Kallipoliti_ The Architecture of Closed Worlds. 3. Caroline O'Donnell _Project Party Wall, Friendship WC& Ecological Action Lab 4. Mitchell Joachim_Project Cricket Shelter and Modular Edible Insect Farm 5. David Benjamin_ Studio: The Living 6. Ariane Lourie Harrison_"Posthuman" architecture 7. ecoLogicStudio, London 8. François Roche _New-Territories	How the intersection of biology, computation and design challenge the relationship between the natural and the artificial? How artificial and natural systems can come together to form new synthetic relationships during an era of Anthropocene
Week 13_ Biopolitics and Biopower	1. Bio-politics projects about urbanization and population in 17th- 18th century_ Polizeywissenschaft, Germany, Cerdá’s Plan of Barcelona, the Garden City, the superblocks of Red Vienna, the “Siedlungen” of Frankfurt and Nazi Germany 2.Hospital architecture_ Prentice Women's Hospital 3. Geoengineering’s Biopolitics_ Project: Russ George’s ocean fertilization experiment; Montreal Biosphere	How architecture can be a practice of biopolitical disobedience? Can geontology (Elizabeth A. Povinelli) as a way to reexamine contemporary formation of power? How architecture get involve in the environmentality (Michel Foucault) games after World WarⅡ? Discussion on philosopher Roberto Esposito’s fundamental enigma of biopolitics: at what point does a politics of life become a politics of death—is this a politics of life or a politics over life (combine specific geoengineering projects)?
Workshop_ Compare Posthumanism learning to language learning	Independent research project for inspiration: 1. Design: House for cyborg/Posthuman settlements 2. Transplant_ Extraterrestrial botany 3. Data Matter_ Data center design 4. Wild rhizome_ growing architecture 5. Deserts/Ocean are not empty_ redrawing the “emptiness” 6. Pollution as colonialism 7. Toxic Land - Extractivism and Geoengineering	How will architecture interface or contribute to different apparatus and how it become a symptom of it in the era of posthumanism? In the cross-learning of philosophical theory and architectural projects, have you discovered a new methodology of post-humanist architectural learning?

[1] Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt, New York: Harper Torchbooks [1953] 1977, p. 12. And see “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.” In Basic Writings,2nd edn, New York: HarperCollins,1977, p.434. Where he announced the completion of the age of humanist metaphysics by the “new and fundamental science called cybernetics”

[2]Michel Foucault. The Order of Things. (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1996) p.422. ‘Man’ here by Foucault was referred as the humankind who walk lonelily on thinly constructed meanings created by ‘western thinking’ which does not exist at all. The way which things is ordered has changed over time, and the ‘man’ was historically determined and situated within different cultures. For now, technology was eroding the boundaries of what ‘man’ was supposed to be. In this book, Foucault re-made himself into an archaeologist and re-located different systems of epistemology from the pre-Classical to the late 19th century, Foucault’s rewriting and re-examination of history, as well as the redefinition of ‘man’ made him a pioneer of posthumanism theory.

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