An Introduction to Karl Marx - for Architecture and Urban Design

Though Karl Marx does not explicity write on buildings or cities, his ideas on politcal economy are seminal and most potent to understand the forces of production of materials and spaces today, and the decipher the under-current of concentration of wealth, power & ideology. 

Marx, of course, is placed in a tradition of thinking, while he has influenced the thought and writing of several eminent thinkers who have focussed on buildings and cities, such as Manfredo Tafuri, Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Jean Baudrillard, and a host of others. 

The lecture is primarily a stimulation for thinking, and a provocation for seeing, thinking about and challenging notions of building and archtiecture, that one hasn't till now. Students can use the lecture as a launching ground for their own inquiries and proposals to bring back further reading about society in its various manifestations.