Identity & Agency in Architecture

Catalog description

This course confronts the simple fact that the practice of architecture has a substantial diversity deficit among its professionals and argues that this has negative impacts for design of our built environment. Winston Churchill famously said, "We shape our buildings. Thereafter, they shape us." So what is the impact when our built environment is shaped through the lens of only one part of our population? How does the result shape the rest of us? This course delves into the interplay between identity and the built environment in the United States, both in the historical context and today. It focuses on how underrepresented people have and have not had voice and agency in the shaping of the American built environment and explores future potentials for a built environment that is more reflective of, and improved by, a multiplicity of identities. This is a seminar and a service learning course in which we will use both the readings and discussion of a traditional seminar and the outside-of-the-classroom engagement of service learning to understand the paradigm that we are studying and attempt to change the narrative. By bringing architectural studies to 11-13 year-old students who might not otherwise have direct access to them, we will shift the potential of identity and agency in the built environment of tomorrow. At the same time, we will learn about the built environment through the perspectives of our younger co-learners. Together, we will reshape our own experiences of the built environment and how we envision its creators. Twenty hours of service learning working with our partners in architectural studies, fieldtrips, and an exhibit installation is required. Students do not need to be architecture majors to take this course, but they must possess a seriousness of interest and intent to contribute meaningfully to both the academic and service aspects of the course.