Through in-depth study of a particular thematic topic, students will engage with the latest research and approaches to understanding the history of architecture as embedded within cultural, political, and economic contexts. Students will produce individual research papers. The topic of this course will be unique from other architectural history courses offered in the previous three years.
ARCH 504D: Architecture and War
Tania Gutiérrez-Monroy
How does conflict translate into the built environment? Until recently, many accounts of twentieth-century architecture accounted for the phenomenon of war mostly through reconstruction. One explanation is the tendency in the social sciences to “bracket war as an anomaly” in the midst of the more “normal” or typical social life periods on which our discipline focuses. As geographer Debora Cowen and social scientist Emily Gilbert suggest, war is pervasive and recurrent, but remains contained in traditional scholarship as a moment of exception along a continuum (of peace) along which other histories unfold. Arguably, architectural history has, too, considered the wartime production of the built environment as an exceptional period, and tended to leave this production (and its theorization) outside numerous accounts.
This course will examine scholarship that argues war as fundamental to architectural creation, from the mass production of materials during the great wars all the way back to pre-modern architectures originating and responding to military contingency—needless to say, architecture as a vehicle of colonization will be a recurring theme.
In their traditional form, architectural and military histories have shared a reliance on canons that tend to marginalize certain accounts. To explore a broader scope, this course will delve into the experience of gendered, racialized, and colonized subjects. This calls for considering ephemeral spatial conditions during war and materials that aren’t always central to architectural analysis. This is NOT a course that celebrates architectures of violence materializing masculine power. We will talk about architectures of violence. We will talk about masculine power. We will not celebrate.
Open to all students in SALA
ARCH 505E: Contested Spaces
Rana Abughannam
Built space is political. Whether in its construction and making, destruction and erasure, or restoration, rehabilitation, and manipulation, architecture has the agency to be violent, host violence, open discussions on violence, and resist violence. Contested spaces come in multiple scales and forms, from the larger territory to the city level, to the landscape and the singular building.
In this course, we will delve into the complex history of various contested sites, seeking to unravel the intricate role of architecture in their creation. We will explore sites of conflict, places of resistance, and buildings that have witnessed violence to understand the agency of built space in the production of the socio-political realm. By examining the destruction of spaces by colonial projects and state-power structures, we will delve into topics such as urbicide, spaciocide, domicide, space annihilation, and conflict infrastructure. We will also explore the ways in which these powers can be resisted and subverted, drawing inspiration from decolonial and anticolonial architectural and urban practices.
Through this course, we will ask what the role of architecture is in contested spaces, how architecture and built space can support the subjectification and elimination of bodies, and in which ways architecture can become an agent of resistance. Most significantly, this course will challenge you to ask yourself why learning about these topics matters and what our ethical role as architects and designers is in the production of space.
Open to all students in SALA.