Critical theory entered the academic discourses in the humanities and social sciences in the late seventies and changed the paradigm of research in these areas. This is followed by a significant change in the fields of interpretation and criticism of the history of art and architecture, which constitute the methodological basis in contemporary research. This course offers a review of critical theories, with an emphasis on the intellectual and historical context in which they arose. In the first part of the course we will review the works of central thinkers such as Marx, Freud, de Saussure and Heidegger, who formulated key questions in different fields of research, as well as becoming significant in understanding processes in culture thus forming the basis for the development of critical theories. In the second part of the course we will focus on the thinkers and theorists from the second half of the twentieth century whose writings constitute the interpretative basis in the fields of visual culture and architecture. Special emphasis will be placed on the way critical theory deals with the definition of the Subject, issues of representation and experience, and reference to questions about space. Among other topics we will address questions of power relations and governmentality, modernism and postmodernism, consumer and spectacle culture, psychoanalysis and gender relations, post-colonialism and globalization. Through them, we will formulate and design analytical tools and concepts that enable critical-theoretical analysis in the field of architectural research.