History Theory Experiments (HTX) at California College of the Arts is a platform for advanced interdisciplinary research and critical engagement in architecture. HTX is dedicated to expanding and intensifying the ways we think about buildings and landscapes. We are especially interested in alternative and experimental modes of historical practice, including spatial activism, counter-histories, reconstructions, exhibitions, and new materialities of discourse.

Since its founding in 2013, the Project has sponsored conferences, exhibitions, workshops, and seminars on monuments and racial history, past and future utopian visions, digital reconstructions of historical environments, the economies and ecologies of extraction, augmented reality platforms for urban history, and more.

HTX supports a one-year post-professional graduate degree, a Masters of Advanced Architectural Design in History Theory Experiments (MAAD HTX), where students can explore the possibilities of new genres in history and theory. The HTX degree program draws on its location within an experimental arts college and the potential for interdisciplinary collaborations with scholars and practitioners in visual and critical studies, curatorial practice, film, and writing.

MAAD HTX provides students with exposure to current critical and curatorial practices including:

• In the fall semester, all students in the MAAD Design History, Theory, Experiments [HTX] take a required core course in Architectural Theory and advanced seminars in Architecture Research and Interpretation, along with an open elective.

• In the spring, students complete an independent thesis project, working closely with a CCA faculty advisor, and an optional external satellite advisor.

• Experimental preservation techniques such as digital scanning and reproduction

• Politically engaged forms of spatial activism

• New media such as apps, databases, and other digital platforms for "writing" history

• Archival and historical research methods

• Architectural writing and criticism

Most schools of architecture offer courses to students in the history, theory, and criticism of architecture. But are history, theory, and criticism – often abbreviated as “HTC” — the only possibilities for the scholarly study of the built environment? When we formed CCA’s Experimental History Project in 2013, we wanted to explore other possibilities of historical and theoretical inquiry into the built environment — what we call “HTX”.

In the years since the creation of CCA’s Experimental History Project we have hosted conferences, staged exhibitions and attracted students interested in the possibilities of “X”. Such work includes exhibitions on historical reconstructions of the immaterial aspects of architectural heritage; conferences and exhibitions on immersive new media history projects; digital preservation and conservation techniques; and courses on experimental historical methodologies. Such efforts begin to scratch the surface of “HTX” — an exploration we intend to continue in upcoming events and projects and work with our students.