ARH 218 - Smith College - Spring 2016
Modern Architectures of North America
Recognizing that there are multiple ways of studying the built environment, these projects utilize different modes of inquiry to explore architecture. While each project comes to its own unique conclusions, many of these projects intersect in terms broader themes or questions that they raise. Through their organization into groups, these projects locate a number of productive ways of thinking about the built environment.Although these projects represent a variety of methodologies and topics, each highlight the dynamic relationship between humans and architecture. The grouping Identity: What Lies Beneath Style and Form explores the way associations related to identity become attached to architecture. These projects astutely portray the way in which these associations are not monolithic nor static, and can be utilized to reinforce group identities--whether regional, religious, cultural, gendered, or national--for different reasons and to different ends. Suburbia focuses more narrowly on the identities associated with suburban housing. Looking to points at which design intersects with the lived experience, these projects investigate the agency of those who live in these spaces. Though predominantly inhabited by white, middle class families, each of these projects locates the way in which other questions related to gender roles, modern living, conformity, nature, and climate can be teased out of a sustained study of suburbia. While architecture can serve as a liberating means to express identity, it can be used to oppress others. The grouping Patients, Prisoners, Politics explores the ways in which architecture is used to further differentiate people marked as others. Although both projects recognize that these built environments were meant to be used as tools to control certain groups of people, they highlight the ways in which people forced into these environments found ways to insert their own agency in these spaces.
Architecture Relating to the Natural Environment shifts our attention to the way in which architecture is conceived in relation to the built environment. These projects explore the ways in which harmonious relationships between architecture and nature can be defined in aesthetic terms, climate conditions, or with attention to environmental responsibility. They invite us to consider who articulates this relationship, from trained architects to more informal architectural practices. Change and Adaptation reminds us that architecture has a life that extends beyond its conception and construction. This grouping takes on the issue of time--past, present, and future. Whether addressing the context of the moment in which the building is designed, aspirations for the future, or alterations over time, each of these projects also show how the issue of time intersects with the economy and hope for economic prosperity.
