Special Topics in Architectural History (379-0-1)

Topic

Architecture, Ecology, and Empire in 19th-Century

Meeting Info

University Hall 418: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

This course studies the relationship between buildings, cities, and their ecologies to show that African architecture developed environmentally attuned forms of architectural thinking and practice during the nineteenth century—an approach we will discuss as environmentally modern. Indeed, many contemporary architects today turn to sustainable building methods whose precedents they trace to African architecture, including materials such as earth, clay, wood, and even coral. Often, however, these methods are relegated to "timeless building traditions" that seem to have existed in Africa since time immemorial. This has the effect of freezing African architectural culture in time (what philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò calls "socio-cryonics"). We will explore a global history of African architecture from an Afro-centric perspective, spanning from the Age of Revolutions—marked, among other events, by the formation of the Sokoto Empire in 1804—until the turn of the twentieth century, when the so-called Scramble for Africa by European and Ottoman empires reached its peak. Throughout the quarter, we will study invention and change in African architecture with historical specificity, understanding how the nineteenth century was, for architecture, a period of environmental creativity in response to an ever more globalized world.