Architecture and the Making of Human Difference

This seminar will explore race—"a concept of human difference that established hierarchies of power and domination between Europe and Europe’s others”—and architecture from its earliest appearance to the present. Architecture has long reinforced the hierarchies embedded in western epistemology and presented narrow visions of the world, reproducing cultural assumptions about space, place, city, comfort, etc., while assimilating race without acknowledging its impact. For its part, architectural history has largely uncritically conveyed the culture, norms, and values of architecture.