I was eight years old when I entered my first slave quarter—that was the first time architecture hit me. It was the first time that I can recall thinking about spaces that dictated where my race belonged. But, more than anything, the hit was mostly a surprise, and I questioned if something so much older and so much larger than me was allowed to hit me. Was I, in turn, supposed to fight back?
While I do not blame the building, I do, in fact, blame the education responsible for curating that experience. I can only imagine the difference felt if this field trip was anchored by discussions about inequality and self-worth, rations and resourcefulness, or degradation and fortitude. Instead, I spent my time on the plantation that day trying to figure out if I would have been a field slave or a house slave. In that moment, what everyone failed to realize was that whether they recognized it or not, the slave quarters were also telling my white classmates where they belonged. And just like that, architecture had given me a Black eye.
Architecture is and will always be a racial project unless we take deliberate steps to change it.
Every space I enter has been racially constructed well before my time.1 And the same is true for you. Architecture is and will always be a racial project2 unless we take deliberate steps to change it. As a discipline, we continue to design artifacts without asking the questions that matter. How can we create site plans without addressing issues of land reclamation?3 Why do we discuss street-facing facades without discussing who gets to remain as a longtime resident?4 What is design innovation without discussing historical forms of labor?5 To be frank, this is educational malpractice. Implementing a race-neutral architectural pedagogy maintains White supremacy by way of its negligent adherence to form and function.6 I contend that any prospective—or built—project that does not critically investigate the racial and gendered constructions of the land, labor, and layout is inherently harmful to marginalized communities.
People matter more than buildings. Our pedagogical practice must acknowledge the collective histories of harm against the racialized and gendered public we serve to adequately care for people. We should actively note that the Latine imaginary7 is connected by the history of colonization across the Americas and the Caribbean,8 and the contractual use of many countries for the benefits of desired imports.9 We must call out the disenfranchisement faced by Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian immigrants and the stories they often don't get to tell themselves.10 We should acknowledge the history of legislation in the United States that celebrated the objectification of Asian femininity11 and perpetuated exclusion among Asian and Pacific Islanders born in the U.S. and abroad.12 Similarly, designers must reckon with the hypermasculine portrayals of Black men13 and the mammy narrative of Black women,14 which live on in the shadows of American chattel slavery. We need to note the consequences of settler colonialism and the ways in which contemporary land grabs mimic the land runs for stolen Native and Indigenous territories.15 It is imperative to dissect the ways in which Anglo-Saxon Whiteness continues to be attached to dominance and authenticity, as evidenced by research on American exceptionalism.16
Architecture is a manifestation of contextual power [...] If wielded appropriately, architecture has the power to create new memories, provide security, and give more than it takes.
There is no such thing as a clean slate. The architecture we design is wholly dependent on the methods we use to connect cultural archives to architectural precedents.17 For centuries, architecture has been made for the benefit of wealthy White men.18 The signals sent by red bricks and acanthus leaves have been replaced by curtain walls and concrete forms. Babylonian pursuits have become the main stage of every urban city and the attention to the sky nullifies the divinity found in human scale.19 How do we design spaces that eradicate the sidewalk as a place of surveillance for some and a place of pedestrian safety for others? At what point in the design process should we evaluate ornamentation and the possibility of cultural appropriation? When do we start putting people before the place and the product?
Architecture is a manifestation of contextual power. This is made most evident in the blight of every urban city and the modest fields of the American south. Every year, institutions are well-positioned to inject the discipline with designers ready for more socially relevant practice. This starts with a critical orientation to society writ large—a critical architectural practice. Sometimes this orients us to populations abroad, and other times here in the United States. It is not always global, urban, and sexy, but it is always about power. If wielded appropriately, architecture has the power to create new memories, provide security, and to give more than it takes. Power structures are not dismantled by provocations and open letters, such as this, but by education and deliberate design interventions.
Compared to a white gaze, the Black eye was trained to decode spaces where its body was isolated. The eye taught the body how to navigate spaces it deemed dangerous...
Recognizing race as a social construct means it is a fundamental consideration for design professionals. Race was a design intervention. Subsequently, it cannot be a siloed endeavor. Setting up race education as a supplement to core curricula is a complete disservice to the people who inhabit the spaces we create. Architecture is slowly making strides towards greater inclusion through the academy, recognizing that every eye has a color. However, the stronghold of the European canon and the acceptance of our design educations continue to write restrictive covenants across the discipline. It is this power struggle that gave me a Black eye years ago. Compared to a white gaze, the Black eye was trained to decode spaces where its body was isolated. The eye taught the body how to navigate spaces it deemed dangerous, and after many years, the eye began seeing the systems. In this way, I wasn't born with a Black eye. Instead, this eye is the intended outcome of design.
___
1 Jacqueline M. Battalora, Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today (Houston, Texas: Strategic Book Publishing, 2013).
2 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994), 125.
3 Harmeet Kaur CNN, “Indigenous People across the US Want Their Land Back -- and the Movement Is Gaining Momentum,” CNN, accessed October 16, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/25/us/indigenous-people-reclaiming-their-lands-trnd/index.html.
4 Toni L. Griffin, Ariella Cohen, and David Maddox, “The Just City Essays: Visions for Urban Equity, Inclusivity and Opportunity,” Forefront(Philadelphia, United States: Next City, Inc., October 19, 2015), https://www.proquest.com/docview/1722914416/citation/3AD3609ABADD43E8PQ/1.
5 Foster Rhea Dulles, Labor in America, a History (New-York: Thomas Crowell Company, 1963).
6 Hugh Morrison, Louis Sullivan, Prophet of Modern Architecture (New York: WWNorton & Co, 1998).
7 Juan Flores, “The Latino Imaginary: Meanings of Community and Identity,” in Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad, Reencounters with Colonialism--New Perspectives on the Americas (Hanover, NH: Published by University Press of New England for Dartmouth College, 1997), 183–93, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003162041.
8 Suzanne Oboler, “Hispanics? That’s What They Call Us,” in The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, 2nd ed. (New York: University Press, 2011), 8–11.
9 Juan González, “Banana Republics and Bonds,” in Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, Rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2011).
10 Shirin Sinnar, “The Lost Story of Iqbal,” The Georgetown Law Journal 105, no. 2 (2017): 379–439.
11 Anne Anlin Cheng, Ornamentalism (Oxford, UNITED STATES: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019), http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/harvard-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5611121.
12 Laura Hyun Yi Kang, “Historical Reconfigurations: Delineating Asian Women as/Not American Citizens” (New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822383512-005.
13 Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, Race and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
14 Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Diacritics 17, no. 2 (1987): 65–81.
15 CNN, “Indigenous People across the US Want Their Land Back -- and the Movement Is Gaining Momentum.”
16 Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2015).
17 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “Research through Imperial Eyes,” in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2021), 92–116.
18 Mabel O Wilson, Charles L Davis, and Irene Cheng, Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), http://muse.jhu.edu/book/75439.
19 Gen. 11:1-9
Kendall A. Nicholson is a licensed educator, trained architectural designer, and an avid researcher. He works as the Director of Research and Information at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and is currently furthering his research at Harvard’s Graduate ...
22 Comments
well said - and let's not forget to take on the related problem of class presumption, where architectural practice is too often equated with ownership instead of making a viable world.
I contend that any prospective—or built—project that does not critically investigate the racial and gendered constructions of the land, labor, and layout is inherently harmful to marginalized communities.
Who is responsible for said investigation (politicians, owner, developer, architect, future occupants, community?), and who will be the body responsible for ensuring that said investigation has thoroughly concluded to the point it can be shown that it will NOT be harmful to the particular marginalized communities? I don't know what the author is suggesting occur in the practical sense, but perhaps something similar to LEED could be instituted to score projects according to the depth of their investigations and how the design has responded to the findings.
This piece does bring up meaningful points, but paints too broad an accusatory brush upon the designers in architecture. I know firsthand that 99% of the kids currently entering the job market have very strong social justice acumen, which is something that wasn't seen until recently. The needle is moving, just slower than the author would prefer, but we are headed in the right direction.
I think it's curious that you are looking to individuals as the cast of characters responsible for these problems. To me, it's rather obvious that Capitalism thrives on racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and homophobia, and cannot exist without. We cannot hold individuals accountable for systemic problems, we need to attack systems.
If capitalism is defined as the exchange of goods for money, my guess is that a form of it would exist under any political system, human nature being what it is, but I'm pretty sure that racism, etc. are simply a manifestation of personal insecurities and would thrive under any system. The best we can do is build a transparent and democratic system that can hold injustice to account. Beyond that we will continue to struggle between selfish and communal needs as we always have.
Um, that is bigotry, not racism.
I just looked up the difference and you're right, it said bigotry is personal and racism is institutional. Then again the dictionary says racism is prejudice which the first site said is less than bigotry. Either way, are the Uighurs suffering less racism under communist China than minorities under capitalism? Does it makes a difference under which system the minorities are suffering? I'd argue yes, if there's a vehicle to address those wrongs as faulty as it might be.
We cannot start by fixing other's houses, and neglect our own. We can only fix our home, demonstrate to others we capable of righting wrongs in our own past, to show what is possible for theirs.
Amen.
If capitalism is racism then why has it manifested the highest quality of life for the most people than any other ism? Can you point to a multicultural nation under a different system that has provided better?
Architecture is a manifestation of contextual power. . . . Power structures are not dismantled by provocations and open letters, such as this, but by education and deliberate design interventions.
Whether in unconscious constructions or by conscious critique of those constructions, focusing on power—it's always there, of course—reduces any creative effort and argument to the most sterile of terms. I'd argue one of the major problems with so much contemporary architecture is that it has lost touch with substantial sense of culture, of any ground, of any past—a failure of genuine imagination. Power gets us nowhere, esthetically. But the critiques don't bring us any closer and too often divide and alienate us. Education, always, but instead of interventions that draw battle lines, we need creative alternatives.
The Harvey B Gantt Center for African-American Arts, Charlotte. It references Jacob's ladder, literally and figuratively, as well as the slave spiritual, its history. But the center speaks with a common message many in Charlotte can identify with, Black and white. It doesn't intervene against the surrounding buildings, rather complements them with its patchwork design, its uplift from a horizontal position. And it adds, in general, the sense of expression to the modern reductions that surround.
American culture has always been fueled by a diversity of some sort, which has challenged us but also opened our vision and provided alternatives. I've been listening to the live recordings of John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard lately—three different versions of Chasin' the Trane. There has never been anything like it before, and really after. Such sustained, free invention, such flexibility, its irrepressible spirit. We need something like this.
And then to realise that the ruling class in the US, the 70-80+ yr olds in the current Geriocracy, were already adult when segregation was still commonplace.
tunnel vision. Rather than see the totality of Authoritarian architecture, the academics of present in all subjects focuses obsessively on one of its manifestations-race. If this racial lens is the only lens you have, it's like trying to understand nature when your only able to view one square acre of forest at 10x magnification, not 1x or 1000x. No perspective of the greater ecology, the macro, micro, atomic, sub atomic. No cross comparisons. Its reductionism at its core. Of course the conclusions will also be reductionist at its core. Capitalism and America is racist and leads to oppressive architecture because xyz occured within capitalism and America. Thats obviously not true otherwise a neighborhood like Bed Stuy would have been cemented eternally as a ghetto, rather than magically transforming into some hipster paradise. The architecture didn't stifle that for better or wose. Oppression wasn't baked into the tectonics, but rather socially constructed within that particular scaffolding, and even if oppression was its initial concept, its been retrofit through spontaneous order.
If you let yourself see the forest from the trees you will understand that the battle is not the one that you think it is. And what you may think is a lens is actually a blinders, and that's why the autocrats are embracing it.
Architecture of racism and segregation and slavery are one of many manifestations of a bigger thing - Authoritarianism. The real central characters at battle in this story of architecture is centralized planning vs spontaneous order. Architecture for the people vs by the people, And broadly authoritarianism vs libertarianism. The entire story of architecture from Giza, to Rome, to the Sovit blocs, to Vegas, to Pyongyang, to the antebellum south, to the favellas, to the Bronx....All falls somewhere in that spectrum. And all all of architecture, without the strong arm of government, is a weak enough force that spontanious order can liberate it.
Race is simply a snippet of this bigger story. The effort to make race the primary lens that we view the world through is acting a blinder. The worst part of this is that It's allowing the current autocracy to continue its subjugation out of view...
America’s Poor Are Worse Off Than Elsewhere
The myth that the poor in the United States are not so bad off can be found in a wide range of places. It basically reflects the idea that those in poverty have nothing to complain about – that given the conditions in less developed countries, things could be much worse.
It is certainly true that if we compare the U.S. to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, physical poverty in the U.S. is obviously less extreme. The United States does not have the widespread famine and severe stunting of children that is sometimes found in extremely poor countries.
However, most analysts would argue that the more relevant comparison would be the group of other high economy countries such as those found in the European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia, and so on. In comparing poverty in the U.S. to these OECD countries, we find that American poverty is both more prevalent and more extreme.
US Incarceration Rate
US Literacy Ranking
US Health System Ranking
US Infant Mortality
Name a capitalist system of similar scale that ranks as poorly. If Capitalism is so wonderful, so amply provides for the many, why is it that it performs so poorly, in so many categories?
It may rank poorly compared to other nations who embrace classical liberalism and market economies, but it far exceeds any socialist nation who does not embrace market economies and classical liberalism. How poorly, I don’t know. But, those nations that out rank us do so because of their adoption of the fundamental American ideals that were founded here first. In the US We are living with some downstream consequences of our hypocrisy and failure to live up to our own ideals historically and presently. This does not damn the validity of those ideals, it damns the men who couldn’t live up to them. There is absolutely no doubt that liberalism and free markets have improved life for more people than anything. If you want a deeper look read Steven Pinkers book.
So, the ones pushing back against this radicalism are not necessary saying that everything is fine and dandy. I just know that change must occur with a dedication to the fundamental ideals of western democracy which is the ideal ideal based on historical evidence - individualism, reason, liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, trade, innovation, meritocracy, discipline and hard work, etc etc etc. What you and many others are saying is tantamount to scraping the hypocratic oath because of a shitty performing medical system…
We have a very dynamic and incredible system that promotes innovation, progress, creativity, culture, etc. Black culture, music, film, etc all occurred because of the freedom that the market provided, not in spite of it. It’s the state that was the opposing force. The free market allowed black musicians, artists, athletes, doctors, shop keepers, etc to circumvent the oppressive state and the oppressive public. So we see things a little different. I just imagine an alternative reality where there was no free market to liberate blacks and immigrants. Do you really think that the forces that banned black musicians from using the front door at the theater would have provided the instruments and other resources like the recording studios? Capitalism allows for empowerment without state blessings. Remember, slavery was enabled and subsequently stopped not by the state and the laws of the state.
b3ta, it's possible to "prove" anything when you're moving the goalposts like that, and ultimately somebody has to be last in any ranking system. This doesn't mean that the wealth gap isn't getting larger in the US, just that if you're depending on such a clearly flawed approach, it's incredibly easy to dismiss.
I don't think I'm moving goal posts, I think I'm clearly stating the obvious; the Capitalist system, if so wonderful, and the US the practitioners of said wonderful system, why are we so clearly fucked, by so many measures?
"The free market allowed black musicians, artists, athletes, doctors, shop keepers, etc to circumvent the oppressive state and the oppressive public."
Imagine where something that supposedly free, "allows" people to become things that The US Constitution was supposed to guarantee. I thought people were endowed by their creator, was the creator also responsible for Capital?
Because you are comparing the capitalist system to some utopia that doesn’t exist. What I’m saying is to compare it to other systems that do exist. Utopian politics always end poorly, because of human nature. No one is saying that Capitalism is perfect. I’m saying that it provides more decentralization of power than other systems. As for the constitution…I’m not sure what you mean? The constitution was obviously not followed in terms of how black people were treated pre-civil rights. But that doesn’t damn the constitution itself. What specific amendments are racist as written? Not applied but written? There is a big difference between what’s written and how it’s applied. The goal should be to erase any inequalities in access to those liberties, not to just burn the whole system down. What do you replace it with? Who runs it? What police powers would be required to enforce it? These are all important details. The left constantly identifies problems while naively thinking that the elimination of the systems that created them will magically manifest into better systems. Reality is that people are power hungry and designing a system that even works as ok as ours is incredibly rare and difficult. Capitalism can also be improved greatly by removing the cronyism and oligarchy. The current US form of capitalism is far from perfect. We need to remove corporate influence from govt, allow for unions to gain more power, etc.
I’m by no means a golf cart conservative. Actually following the constitution more closely would cause a hell of a lot of disruption to the corporate and government elite. Why do you think Tulsi was so viciously deplatformed. All she said is that war should require a vote from congress. Duh for us, but the war mongers and contractors didn’t like that.
For centuries, architecture has been made for the benefit of wealthy White men. The signals sent by red bricks and acanthus leaves have been replaced by curtain walls and concrete forms.
Especially today, given our complacency, dormant biases, habitual forgetfulness, and senseless divisiveness, if you don't speak sharply and loudly you do not get heard and your words have no effect. But this is the language of the academy and it does not serve us well. Architecture has been held hostage in the service of simplistic polemics that take into account color but are tone deaf. Lost, the expressive character of architecture, its ability to speak to us all, to what we all might hold in common and our ability to cross lines, along with its potential to shift meanings with new uses and new contexts.
We would not be surprised to hear that this red brick building in the deep South once housed an exclusively white Baptist congregation heavily opposed to civil rights and integration, who might still worship there and hold similar views. We see similar all throughout the South and elsewhere. There is nothing about this modest, warm, formal structure, however, that promotes such a message. But of course it is the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King first started preaching, in whose basement he organized the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955.
The Mies van der Rohe public library in Washington was not called the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library until after his death, so we don't know how King might have influenced its design. But Mies's precise modernism and its dark framing, with the naming and historical associations, take on new meanings and pose ordered questions relevant to our times.
It has been refurbished and partly repurposed recently by Mecanoo, nicely on the exterior. We also get a sense, inside, of how architecture today has lost its way.
https://www.archdaily.com/9723...
The Mityana Pilgrims' Centre Shrine in Uganda looks to speak to native materials and customs and was designed, we're sure, by a local architect sensitive to culture and place. It also fits in, however, with a long evolution of European modernism and was built by the Swiss architect Justus Dahinden.
I love this building. I wish we could see similar here.
https://www.phaidon.com/agenda...
Thanks, Kendall, for giving us a chance to air this out.
I don't understand the point of any of this.
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