American Architecture and Modernism in St. Louis

3 units

This advanced history and urban issues seminar will explore the history of urbanism as it developed in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and trace some of its international outcomes. We will examine changing theories of how urban environments should be shaped, placing efforts by designers to transform the built environment within the context of major social, cultural and political changes. These include public urban parks and parkways, City Beautiful neo-classical urban environments, regional planning, auto-based planned communities and shopping centers, highrise hotels, theme parks, and megastructural airports. We will explore the relationships between the built environment, social change, political struggle, and design theory. We will, in addition, track the establishment, professionalization, growth and contests over the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design. We will pay close attention to shifting conceptions of, conflicts over, definitions of the urban public, the boundaries of the public sphere, the relationship between public and private spaces, and the role of government in shaping and policing the urban landscape. By using historical methods to analyze documentary evidence, the course will facilitate greater understanding of the complexity and layering of the urban landscape and critical urban design and landscape practices.