After successful completion of the course, students are able to attain a broader understanding of architecture, not only as a discipline aimed at the realisation of buildings, but also as a device of architectonic thinking that concerns and connects both material and immaterial domains of production and theory.

The course will engage in weekly readings of chapters from Roberto Calasso’s The Book of All Books, with particular interest in the themes of election and substitution within the tradition of the Old Testament. As a scripture, the Old Testament is something written impersonally (its writing transcends the work of single individuals) and yet requires such impersonal agency to bind itself to veritable personas, that act not just as mere vicars or substitutes, but as figures elected by a power whose constitution is both mundane and divine—it is a contract between both, and it could perhaps be seen as a form of architectonic intelligence.

The course is primarily addressed to doctoral candidates, but it is also open to graduate students.

The course will unroll through weekly readings (from 20 to 80 pages a week, depending on the chapters) and collective discussions.

The time slot is provisionally set for Wednesdays 5-7, but it will be subject to change in order to best fit the availability of the participants.

Attendance and active participation to the course will be the requirements to successfully pass the course.