Dr Bárbara Maçães Costa

My teaching focuses on the relationship between architecture and landscape. I have approached this question in the context of theoretical seminars on modernist environmental aesthetics, landscape-based design studios, and mixed units focusing on representation, particularly cartography. In all cases, my aim is to challenge the perception of buildings as fetishised icons and present them instead as environmental artefacts that embody certain histories and ideologies.

Courses taught

• Architecture MA (ARB/RIBA Part 2)
• Architecture BA (Hons)

My research interests include: the limits and continuities between architecture and landscape in terms of aesthetic discourse and practice; the tension between site and drawing as the primary locus of the project; the role of drawing as a mediator between theory (the concept) and practice (the object); the Marxist debate between autonomy and realism in the neo-avant-garde; the legacies of cartography within the Enlightenment project and its (post)modernist critiques.

I draw primarily on the theoretical framework of dialectical criticism and work with the methods of drawing, cartography, and the visual essay. I am currently preparing a book manuscript entitled 'Objects and Landscapes, a Cartographic Mediation', which presents a synthesis of my research and teaching over the past decade.

Specialisms

• Architecture
• Landscape
• Drawing / Cartography
• Modernist environmental aesthetics
• Dialectical criticism