Visual Culture has emerged as a study field in its own right in the late 1970s, in the midst of a crisis in academic research and the collapse of Modernist distinctions and hierarchies. Moreover, images of all kind – from painting, photography and film to virtual reality – were becoming part and parcel of the everyday, and technological developments were facilitating the design of instruments enhancing man's visual capacity and simplifying the production and consumption of images. The need to understand the meaning of images and their effect on the individual and on society at large lies at the heart of this area of research. In this course we will study key texts written by prominent thinkers such as Marx, Freud and Foucault, whose views and notions have contributed significantly to the understanding of fundamental processes in visual culture. With their help we will forge the analytical means and concepts that can provide contemporary producers and consumers of images with a critical view. We will discuss, among other matters, issues of surveillance and control, spectacle and consumerism, psychoanalysis and gender relations, post-colonialism and globalization.

The course reviews contemporary architecture and critical thinking in the realm starting at the end of modernism and the beginning of postmodernism up to this day. We will discuss historical, political, technological and cultural turning points, and examine how these affected the field

of architecture and planning. We will review key works and masterpieces that are considered groundbreaking, and that mark the changes that led to their appearance. Emphasis will be placed on architectural qualities and developing critical awareness towards what is being done in the local sphere and the world.

The course will look into in the architectural act - the building and the city, but will also reveal how the critical discourse in contemporary architecture is manifested in exhibitions, films, articles and books, in works of art and in the cultural discourse in general.

The student will learn to characterize key works from contemporary practice while putting them into a cultural, historical, political, social, geographical, ecological and technological context. The student will develop his/her critical and conceptual capacity based on the knowledge they have acquired during the course.