1: The Architecture of First Societies with Mark Jarzombek (GAHTC)

““In an updated scenario, ecology wouldn’t be about carbon-neutralness, or wouldn’t be a rational, metrical thing. It would have to be a conversation that we would have with materials.””

MIT Professor Mark Jarzombek discusses his GAHTC module on the Architecture of First Societies, establishing the importance of thinking architecture beyond established canons based on cities and technology. Instead he argues the origins of architecture in the ‘social package’ and in the representational networks of ‘modeling’.

Timestamp Outline

1:45 “What do you mean by first societies?”
2:42 Social Creatures (not just toolmakers or food processors)
4:44 !Kung people huts
6:29 Women were the first architects
6:50 Two radical alternative readings of architecture
7:35 Architecture as rational response to shelter is “historical nonsense”
11:01 The question: is there a parallel trajectory from first societies alongside the 19th century lineage of technology and phallogocentrism?
12:02 “Vortexes of aliveness”: animism
12:25 Ise Shrine  in Japan:  asking the tree permission to cut it
13:20 “In an updated scenario, ecology wouldn’t be about carbon-neutralness, or wouldn’t be a rational, metrical thing. It would have to be a conversation that we would have with materials.”
14:35 “This is when architecture begins”: Malta and the first architectural models
16:54 “It was a little piece of the flesh of the building itself that you would carry with you.”
19:50 Two discussions of “what is architecture?”
21:26 Modeling and scales: Roland Barthes and the Eiffel Tower
23:18 The story of the pit house: the “longest and most ancient form of architecture ever produced.”
25:30 Begin, don’t end with the fact that they are connected: Navajo and Jomon
26:12 Contemporary discussion of what the chthonic is?
27:04 Haida homes, the mansions of pit houses
27:26 Pit house vs piloti: digging in vs rising above