Key Themes and Issues
– building culture:
Who is involved in building, and how is the knowledge of building transmitted (apprenticeship, drawings, writings/treatises, formal institutions for training, etc.)?
How did the modern profession of the architect emerge, and what were the key institutions that helped shape the practice of architects, especially from the 19th century onward?
- Treatises by Alberti and Pallaidan
- Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris - learn the styles, a grand tour.
- Australian - build respect for ecology
– architecture, the transatlantic slave trade & Enlightenment thinking:
– how have cities responded to crises and catastrophes?
- Rains in Africa created a ritual rebuilding of mosques.
- Japan - plan for tragedy by the building of easily replaceable materials.
- London - the Great Fire of 1666 prompted urban rebuilding with stone.
– the shifting forms, structures, and symbolism of housing & domesticity:
- Privacy and status of the mid-20th century
– architecture/environment, buildings/landscapes:
How are specific topographies and ecological systems reshaped through the organization of cities, infrastructures, and buildings?
- Dogon in Africa. Islamic influence with mosques. Toron, the wood "scaffolding," is used as a building structure and for ritual rebuilding. French occupation up until the 1960s. Part of the trade flow in the south Saraha. Eurocentric views have dominated Unesco (per Charlotte Joy).
How has the design of landscapes and buildings informed one another in the historical and cultural context we have examined?
– the relationship of architectural design to past models, including the rejection of past architecture as a model
- Where is the architecture of a particular historical and cultural context ideally positioned along the spectrum between imitation and innovation?
– how has architecture been shaped by networks of exchange, contact across cultures, or contestation and conflict?
- Africa - southern Sahara trade routes.
Readings
week nine: Architectural mobilities viewed from Africa: the Sahel, Nigeria + the Swahili Coast
• Giulia Paoletti, "Architecture in Focus: Four Sahelian Landmarks," in the Sahel: Art & Empire on the Shores of the Sahara (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2020): 138–45.
“It features some of the earliest extant art from Africa as well as such iconic works as sculptures by the Dogon and Bamana peoples of Mali. Essays by leading international scholars discuss the art, architecture, archaeology, literature, philosophy, religion, and history of the Sahel, exploring the unique cultural landscape in which these ancient communities flourished. Richly illustrated and brilliantly argued, Sahel brings to life the enduring creativity of the different peoples who lived, traded, and traveled through this crossroads of the world.”
• Charlotte Joy, "Cultural Landscapes in Mali: Historical Antecedents and Future Trajectories," in Cultural Landscapes: Heritage in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by John Beardsley (2016), 63–87.
"Volume-based on papers presented at the symposium "Cultural Landscape Heritage in Sub- Saharan Africa, " held at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., on May 10-11, 2013."
7020 readings:
• Trevor Marchand, "For the love of masonry: Djenné craftsmen in turbulent times," Journal of African Cultural Studies, 26:2 (2014): 155–72.
• Prita Meier, "A 'Curious' Minaret: Sacred Place and the Politics of Islam," in Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere (U Indiana Press, 2016), 66–101.
week 10: The Atlantic World, the plantation system + Enlightenment thinking
• Mabel O. Wilson, "Race, Reason, and the Architecture of Jefferson's Virginia State House," in Thomas Jefferson, Architect (Chrysler Museum of Art, 2019).
• Louis P. Nelson & Maurie D. McInnis, "Landscape of Slavery," in Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's University (University of Virginia Press, 2019).
7020 readings:
• Anthony Vidler, "Architecture, Management, and Morals: The Design of a Factory Community at the End of the Eighteenth Century," in The Scenes of the Street (Monacelli Press, 2011), 149–69.
• Peter Minosh, "American Architecture in the Black Atlantic: William Thornton's Design for the United States Capitol," in Race & Modern Architecture (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).
week eleven: Infrastructure of imperial capitalism: from the bungalow to the city
• William Glover, "'A Feeling of Absence from Old England'": The Colonial Bungalow," Home Cultures, 1:1 (2004): 61–82.
• Swati Chattopadhyay, "Architectural History or a Geography of Small Spaces?," Eduard F. Sekler talk, Society of Architectural Historians, 2021
7020 readings:
• Jiat-Hwee Chang & Anthony D. King, "Towards a genealogy of tropical architecture," Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 32 (2011): 383–300.
• Matthew Gandy, "The Paris Sewers and the Rationalization of Urban Space," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 24:1 (1999): 23–44.
week twelve: Technologies of standardization + their discontents
• Ikem Okoye, "Where was not modernism?," essay in the series "Centering Africa," 2018
• Daniel Barber, "Le Corbusier, the Brise-Soleil, and the Socio-Climatic Project of Modern Architecture," Thresholds, no. 40 (Spring 2021): 21–32.
7020 readings:
• Charles L. Davis II, "Beyond the Primitive Hut: Gottfried Semper & the Material Embodiment of German Character," in Building Character (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019).
week thirteen: Housing modernity
• Dianne Harris, "Private Worlds: The Spatial Contours of Exclusion and Privilege," from Little White Houses (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 111–157.
• Florian Urban, "Social Reform, State Control, and the Origins of Mass Housing," in Tower and Slab (Routledge, 2012), 7–17.
7020 reading:
• Esra Akcan, "Siedlung in Subaltern Exile," in Architecture in Translation; Germany, Turkey & the Modern House (Duke University Press, 2012), 145–213.
week fourteen: New cities: global imaginaries + postcolonial futures
no new reading this week – focus on final projects
week fifteen: Utopian/dystopian visions: architecture / crisis / ecologies
• Daniel Abramson, "From Obsolescence to Sustainability, Back Again, and Beyond," Design and Culture, 4:3 (2012): 279–98.
week sixteen: 21st-century architectures
No new reading + no discussion sections this week –– this should give you plenty of time to focus on reviewing for the final exam!
