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SUMMARY:Neighbours: Lectures on History & Theory of Architecture. Vol.2. L
 ecture 5 / THEMA\, TPOD\, ACHT\, HITAM
DTSTART:20231206T123000
DTEND:20231206T133000
DTSTAMP:20260916T034726Z
UID:cfad35b2532311e8f397cee033e9c7c20dd878b6a57e652bf2f42779
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Davide Spina\nThe Politics of the Screen by Davide Spina\n\n
 Screens have always been with us. Think of paintings\, photographs\, proje
 ction screens\, and\, more recently\, laptops and smartphones. These objec
 ts have had a profound impact on our everyday life and are likely to conti
 nue doing so. This talk will examine a specific moment in the long affair 
 between humans and screens\, namely\, the proliferation of television sets
  in the 1980s and its architectural manifestations. Throughout this decade
 \, commercial television saw a boom across the Global North\, with archite
 cture playing a key role in this phenomenon as both the content of the med
 ium (set designs) and its infrastructure (broadcasting studios\, pop-up st
 udios\, and antennas). Moreover\, television at this time became a driver 
 for architectural change\, shaping the design and experience of domestic a
 nd public space. All of this was manifestly in evidence in 1980s Milan\, w
 here the rise of a particularly aggressive form of commercial television (
 Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset) and the presence of a vibrant architectur
 al scene created a new epistemological space for the flourishing of postmo
 dern positions about politics and the self. This talk will examine the arc
 hitecture of television in 1980s Milan with a specific focus on its politi
 cal aspects and consequences. \n\nDavide is a Postdoctoral Researcher at 
 the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture\, ETH Zurich\, wh
 ere he also received his doctorate. In January 2024\, he will start as a t
 enure-track Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. His areas 
 of expertise are real estate development\, construction history\, labour\,
  the history of technology\, and methods in architectural history. His PhD
  thesis examined the post-war activities of the Vatican-controlled real es
 tate developer and contractor SGI. The thesis won three dissertation prize
 s (from ETH\, Munich’s Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte\, and the So
 ciety of Architectural Historians) and will come out as a book via MIT Pre
 ss in Spring 2025. Since 2020\, he has been co-organizing DocTalks\, an i
 nternational online platform for early-stage researchers in architectural 
 history and theory. Davide has received funding from the Canadian Centre f
 or Architecture\, the Swiss Institutes in Rome and Milan\, the Swiss Natio
 nal Science Fund\, the JM Kaplan Fund\, the Gill Family Foundation\, and t
 he Graham Foundation. In 2017\, he was a Visiting PhD Scholar at the Colum
 bia GSAPP. He regularly presents his research at international conferences
 \, including those of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Euro
 pean Architectural History Network. Some of his essays have appeared in A
 rchitectural History (2022)\, AA Files (2014\, 2016\, and 2017)\, Log
  (2022)\, and gta Papers (2020).\n\nA lecture series by invited speaker
 s in the field of History and Theory of Architecture organised jointly by 
 Sarah Nichols (THEMA)\, Pier Vittorio Aureli (TPOD)\, Christophe van Gerre
 wey (ACHT)\, Alfredo Thiermann (HITAM).\n 
LOCATION:AAC 0 08 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==AAC%200%2008
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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