Race and Architecture

Charles Davis, SUNY Buffalo

Taught at the University of Pennsylvania (2007-2009); Parsons, the New School (2008); UNC Charlotte (2011-2012)

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Abstract: The purpose of this course is to find critical and productive ways of answering the question: “What does race have to do with architecture?” Students will investigate the numerous ways racial discourses have influenced architectural debates in the nineteenth and twentieth century. We will survey three recurring racial discourses operating in architecture today. They consist of:

  • SOCIAL HISTORIES OF ARCHITECTURE, which analyze architecture for its role in visualizing the social dynamics of race and class. As the city develops over time, architecture provides a public record of social conditions that normally resist formalization. Segregation, gentrification, social housing and place theory are key terms in this research.

  • POLITICAL DISCOURSES IN ARCHITECTURE, which locate the ways architecture operates within, and reproduces the racial politics of specific cultures. Both radical and conservative theorists of Urban Design in the 1960s responded to political protests and urban unrest. Urban Renewal, Advocacy Planning, Contextualism and Autonomy are key terms in this research.

  • BIOLOGICAL AND NATIONAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF REGIONAL IDENTITY, which analyze the ethnographic roots of architectural styles, and critique the contemporary interest in biological metaphors for design. This research analyzes architectural theory for its ‘structural’ conceptions of race, presenting racial frameworks as inherent elements of formalist discourse.

To better understand the multiple ways that race has been defined in our society, we will review a range of definitions that have emerged from the Enlightenment to the postwar period. These definitions have originated from the fields of philosophy, biology, anthropology, sociology and contemporary discourses such as critical race studies and ethnic studies. To relate this broad study of race to explicit developments in architecture, we will pair readings in race theory with readings in architectural history, as well as examine building case studies that reveal the role of racial discourses discussed in the first class sessions. Although this course concentrates on European and American issues of identity in architecture, several class sessions will introduce readings and guest speakers that address issues pertaining to non-Western historical traditions and third-world people of color. Guest lecturers, interviews, and documentaries will also be considered that present contemporary research on architecture and race in multiple contexts (European, American, and Asian), as well as demonstrate contemporary strategies for critiquing and materializing theories of difference.

MODULE 1 - BIOLOGY

BIOLOGICAL DEFINITIONS OF RACE

  • Immanuel Kant, “Of the Different Human Races” (8-23)

  • Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, “On the Natural Variety of Mankind” (27-38)

  • Arthur de Gobineau, “The Inequality of the Human Races” (45-54)

  • Priscilla Wald, "Blood and Stories: How Genomics is Changing Race, Medicine, and Human History" (303-333)

BIOLOGICAL METAPHORS IN ARCHITECTURE

Case Studies: Deane & Woodward. Pitt Rivers Museum; Oxford University (1887); Achim Menges. AA Component Membrane; AA London (2007)

  • Philip Steadman, “The Organic Analogy” (8-20)

  • Georges Teyssot, “Norm and Type: Variations on a Theme” (140-173)

  • Michael Weinstock, “Nature and Civilization” (10-41)

  • Michael Hensel, Achim Menges, Michael Weinstock. Emergent Technologies and Design: toward a biological paradigm for architecture

MODULE 2 - LINGUISTICS

LINGUISTIC DEFINITIONS OF RACE

  • Louis Ferdinand Maury, “On the Distribution and Classification of Tongues” (25-87)

  • Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language (1-27)

  • E.B. Tylor, “Language and Race” (152-166)

  • Bill Ashcroft, “Language and Race” (311-328)

LINGUISTIC METAPHORS IN ARCHITECTURE

Case Studies: Germain Boffrand. Bavarian Hunting Lodge; Buchefort (1740); Peter Eisenman. House VI; Cornwall, CT (1972-75)

  • Samir Younés. “Architecture and Language” (37-42)

  • Germain Boffrand, “Principles of Architecture derived from Horace’s Art of Poetry” (8-12)

  • Sylvia Lavin, “Architectural Etymology” (62-102)

  • Mario Gandelsonas, “Linguistics in Architecture” (112-122)

MODULE 3 - NATIONALISM

CULTURAL, NATIONAL DEFINITIONS OF RACE

  • W.E.B. DuBois, “The Conservation of Race”

  • Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness as Property”

  • Alain Locke, “The Concept of Race as Applied to Social Culture”

  • Michael Omi and Howard Winant, “Racial Formation in the United States”

THE AESTHETIC DISPLAY OF CULTURAL, NATIONAL DIFFERENCE

Case Studies: Albert Laprade. Musée des Colonies: Paris, France (1931); Jean Nouvel. Musée du Quai Branly; Paris, France (2006)

  • Kenrick Ian Grandison, “Negotiated Space: The Black College Campus as a Cultural Record of Postbellum America” (55-96)

  • James Clifford, “Quai Branly in Process” (3-23)

  • Adrian Forty, “Primitive: the word and concept (3-15)

  • Patricia Morton, “National and Colonial” (357-377)

MODULE 4 - THE ARCHITECTURAL PROFESSION

A ‘WHITE GENTLEMAN’S PROFESSION’

Case Study: Paul Revere Williams. Los Angeles International Airport; LA, CA (1965); Julian Francis Abele. Duke University campus plan; Durham, NC (1925)

  • Victoria Kaplan. “Architecture: A White Gentleman’s Profession?” (19-51)

  • Garry Stevens. “The Field of Architecture” (83-98)

  • Roxanne Williamson. “A Consensus of Who is Famous and Who is Not: The Index of Fame” (13-27)

  • Melvin Mitchell. “Tuskegee-Howard Pedagogies Collide” (37-45)

MODULE 5 - PRIMITIVISM

ADOLF LOOS: SOCIAL DARWINISM & CULTURAL REPRESENTATION

Case Study: Adolf Loos. Josephine Baker House: unbuilt (1930)

  • Jimena Canales. “Criminal Skins: Tattoos and Modern Architecture in the work of Adolf Loos” (235-256)

  • Anne Cheng. “Housing Baker, Dressing Loos” (49-82)

  • Caroline Constant, “Adolf Loos and ‘the woman problem’: Decorum and Modern Architecture” (48-77)

  • Carl Schorske, “The Ringstrasse, Its Critics, and the Birth of Urban Modernism” (24-115)

LE CORBUSIER: PRIMITIVE ROOTS OF THE MACHINE AESTHETIC

Case Study: Charles Edouard Jeanneret. Villa Fallet: La Chaux de Fonds (1906); Le Corbusier. Notre Dame du Haut: Ronchamp, France (1955)

  • M. Christine Boyer. “Blackness, Hot Jazz, Clothing, Death” (449-459)

  • Zeynep Celik. “Le Corbusier, Orientalism, Colonialism” (58-77)

  • Le Corbusier. When the Cathedrals Were White

  • Adolf Max Vogt. “The Box on Pilotis as a Leitmotif” (15-22)

MODULE 6 - COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL MODERNITIES

TROPICAL MODERNISMS: TECHNOLOGICAL IMAGES OF THE PRIMITIVE HUT

Case Studies: Gottfried Semper. Caraib Hut. London Expo (1851); Jean Prouvé. La Maison Tropicale. Brazaville, Congo (1951)

  • Jiat-Hwee Chang, “Buliding a Colonial Technoscientific Network: tropical architecture, building science and the politics of decolonialization” (211-235)

  • Wolfgang Herrmann. “Semper and the Archeologist Bötticher” (139-152)

  • Gottfried Semper, “Half-Timber Building in Southeastern Germany” (685-688)

  • Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, “Modernism in late Imperial British West Africa: the work of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, 1945-56” (188-215)

ONE MAN’S GARBAGE: RACE & ‘THE INFORMAL’ IN POSTCOLONIAL LANDS

Case Studies: Balkrishna Doshi. Indian Institute of Management. Ahmedabad, India (date); Hassan Fathy.

  • David Adjaye, "Learning from Lagos: a dialogue on the Poetics of Informal Habitation” (208-235)

  • Rem Koolhaas, "Lagos: Harvard Project on the City" (650-720)

  • Kristin Mann, "The Changing Meaning of Land in the Urban Economy and Culture" (262-276)

  • Lars Spuybroek, Rem Koolhaas, “Africa Comes First” (112-129)

MODULE 7 - URBAN RENEWAL

RACIAL POLITICS OF URBAN RENEWAL: COLOR BLIND URBAN DESIGN

Case Studies: Cornell Urban Design Studio. Urban Renewal Project: Harlem, NY (1969); Minoru Yamasaki. Pruitt-Igoe; St. Louis, MO (1945-70)

  • Robert Stern, “Harlem and Upper Manhattan,” NewYork 1960: architecture and urbanism between the Second World War and the Bicentennial

  • The Museum of Modern Art, “Architecture and Urban Renewal,” The New City: Architecture and Urban Renewal

  • C. Richard Hatch, “The Museum of Modern Art Discovers Harlem,” Architectural Forum (38-47)

  • Paul Davidoff, “Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning” (210-223)

MODULE 8 - THE POLITICS OF HISTORICAL MEMORY

SITES OF MEMORY: THE RACIAL POLITICS OF MEMORIAL DESIGN

Case Studies: ROMA Group. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial: Washington D.C. (2011); Maya Lin. Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Washington, D.C. (1982)

  • Craig Barton. “Duality and Invisibility: Race and Memory in the Urbanism of the American South,” in Sites of Memory: Perspectives on Architecture and Race (1-12)

  • Marita Sturken. “The Wall and the Screen Memory: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” Tangled Memories (44-84)

  • Radio: “Some Say King Memorial Misrepresents MLK, Jr.” National Public Radio (December 5, 2007)