Dancing is a cultural, social and artistic expression as old as humanity itself. It predates many of our social institutions such as Religions. In this semesters' elective, we will examine the evolution of dedicated spaces revolving around dance. We will trace the beginnings of spatial and architectural specificity in spaces for dancing on both an urban and architectural level. We will examine the social, political and economic context of these spaces at the time of their creation and will seek out similarities and disparities among a wide spread of cultures and geographic areas.

The elective is very much an exploratory course about a subject not yet researched widely. As the Physicist Richard Feynman once famously said, it's about “the pleasure of finding things out”.

While clearly a typological research, past electives have shown that the presentation of case studies from the wide array of cultures mirroring our DIA student body has provided unique and fascinating insights that go far beyond the spatial and architectural realm.

At the same time, we will sharpen your awareness of spatial specificity and typological connectivity, both areas that are essential to a reflected and successful architectural practice.

The elective is a highly discoursive one: we will find things out together, rather than through topdown teaching.

The elective will be divided into two parts:

A few informal talks by myself perhaps a guest speaker to introduce the subject. Each student twill choose a spatial situation connected to dance, this can be the inside of a techno club, a mirrored dance studio, the inner sanctum of temple dancers: you will choose, the more and larger the variety, the better! I encourage you to go digging in your home culture for examples we may not be aware of. You will research this subject and present the results to the class.

In the second part of the elective you will identify and extract the spatial essence of your chosen subject and translate this into a graphic or spatial depiction. This will take the form of one single image, however this single image should tell the entire picture.

These results we will show in a small exhibition at a gallery in Berlin where we will have our last class and discuss our findings with some guest jurors.

If we decide that it is appropriate, there may even be dancing.