This course explores architecture and urbanism as communicative media in Islamicate societies, examining how built forms express, and shape social meaning across historical periods. Through selected case studies, we investigate architectural typologies, premodern urban planning, and the semiotic functions of space—focusing on how cities, neighborhoods, and buildings have conveyed notions such as authority, piety, social hierarchy, and collective identity. Attention is given to methods from urban studies and semiotics, enabling students to analyze buildings and urban layouts as combinations of media and form that contribute to meaning-making in society. Readings combine broad historical surveys with close studies of specific urban contexts in the Ottoman, Arab, and wider Islamicate worlds.
- Kursleiter/in: Johann Christian Daniel Büssow
- Kursleiter/in: Annika Jung