HTC Experiments

Julian David Le Roy’s 1770 Travelogue of the Bay of Piraeus

I recently completed teaching an undergraduate course (“Emerging Territories”) which reviewed architects’ writings on globalization and theorists of globalization’s writings on architecture. For one of the assignments I asked the students to develop a focused, audio travelogue/guide focused on recent spatial transformations or spatial phenomenon in the San Francisco Bay Area. We very briefly discussed the long history of travelogues in architecture — from recently translated work such as Palladio’s 1554 guide to Rome, the work of Le Roy, to more recent work by the Harvard Project on the City. In this assignment, it was important that they examine their chosen space while responding to the ideas they read in authors such as Appadurai, Augé, Jameson, Koolhaas, Easterling et. al.  

Film Tours, San Francisco

Jollibee, San Francisco

The above, are two of the most successful of the final assignments — Livia Foldes, “guide to guides” is a short take on the recent phenomenon of tours of the often overlooked urban spaces that become prominent due to their appearance in famous films. Marie Millares, much longer piece,  provides an examination of the restaurant Jollibee, a fusion/fusion Filipino fast food restaurant, popular in the Bay Area.