Special Topics in 19th-Century Art (359-0-1)

Topic

Architecture & Climate Design in Africa, 1800-1920

Instructors

Alican Taylan

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-335: 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 during the nineteenth century a wide range of climate design techniques—an approach we will discuss as environmentally modern and inscribed within an Afropolitan framework of globally facing architectural knowledge. Many contemporary architects worldwide today turn to sustainable building methods by tracing their precedents to African architecture, drawing on materials such as earth, clay, wood, and even coral. Often, however, these historical methods are relegated to a category of 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 history of African architecture from an Afropolitan perspective, spanning from the Age of Revolutions—marked, among other events, by the formation of the Sokoto Empire in 1804—until the early decades of the twentieth century, when European colonialism reached its peak. Throughout the quarter, we will study invention and change in African architecture with historical specificity, understanding how the nineteenth century was a period of environmental creativity in response to an ever more globalized world.

Class Attributes

Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
SoC Additional Distro