Professor Lauren O’Connell
Art History 376-49000-01
Spring 2001
Office: Gannett 100/274-1377
oconnell@ithaca.edu
Architecture and Identity
"We
do not have architecture, therefore, but rather, a part of us is
architecture. Architecture is a way of being just as science, art, and the other
major culture forms are ways of being. So when we come to define the true and
deeper function of architecture, we will not be simply describing the production
of certain types of artefact, but explaining one of the original ways in which
we know ourselves." (Chris Abel, Architecture and Identity, 154)
Course Description
The noted American anthropologist Clifford Geertz recently attempted to summarize a lifetime’s study of other cultures with the following formulation:
"The study of other peoples’cultures . . . involves discovering who they think they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end they think they are doing it . . . " (Geertz, Available Light, 2000, 16).
We might paraphrase his statement for application to the study of other cultures’ architectures, which would involve "discovering who they think they are, what they think they are building, and to what end they think they are building it." Such is the topic of this seminar, whose primary objective is to study the meanings that cultures imbed in their architectures.
Our title assumes a relationship between built form (architecture) and human self-awareness (identity). The pairing of the two terms is meant to suggest, in particular, that the one (architecture) is capable of "expressing" the other (identity). How does this happen? How do buildings, silent and abstract, communicate information about the communities that erect them? Who are these people, and how do they define themselves?
Our interest in architecture, then, will be centered on its "expressive" role, rather than on its strictly aesthetic, structural or functional aspects.
Our interest in identity will be centered on the complex and overlapping ways in which groups define themselves, and on the translation of these self-images into built form.
Of particular interest will be hybrid building contexts, invented identities, and the cross-cultural transmission of architectural messages.
Hybrid contexts: As interesting as it might be to see one-to-one relationships between built form and social identity in culturally monolithic settings, more revealing are those situations, such as imperial/colonial settings, where architecture is called upon to convey a complex, heterogeneous, or conflicted group identity.
Invented identities: Most buildings are built with an explicit functional purpose in mind, by groups whose identities are historically rooted and organically connected to the practices the buildings will accommodate. Especially interesting, however, are buildings conceived by newly asserted groups, such as modern post-colonial nations, whose new identities are still in formation. In these cases, architecture plays a critical role in the consolidation and promulgation of the new national image. Another forum for the marketing of self-consciously constructed identities is the international exposition, for which national groups produce expressive mini-architectures.
Cross cultural transmission. While it may be possible, through research and analysis, to gain some provisional understanding of the symbolic intentions of a building’s sponsors, it is not at all certain that those intentions will be legible to all "readers." Over time and across cultural boundaries the messages conveyed by buildings shift and change, as a host of distorting screens obscure intended meanings. We will pay special attention to the ways in which alien cultures misread one another’s architectures, and on the cultural and political consequences of these misunderstandings.
These themes will guide the organization of weekly sessions, which will proceed from the establishment of a basic theoretical apparatus to the examination of specific cases.
Organization
Our primary resource will be a series of theoretical texts drawn from such fields as architecture, art history, anthropology, history, philosophy, and literary studies. These will supply us with tools for the analysis of specific architectural situations. The first portion of the course will be devoted to group study of texts and sites, the last to individual student investigations.
Requirements
The success of a seminar depends upon the active participation of its members. We will work in a round-table format, discussing readings and projected images as a group. Attendance is required. If possible, please notify me in advance if you will be absent.
Readings must be done before class meets:
Each student will complete three assignments:
Weekly Topics
January 22
Introduction: Architecture and Identity
January 29
Who am I?: Exploring Personal Identity
February 5
Personal Prestige and the Renaissance Palazzo
February 12
How do Buildings Mean?: Architectural Expression
February 19
Who are We?: Defining Group Identity
February 26
Expressing Group Identity: Palladian Transpositions
March 5
National Expression in a Post-colonial World
March 12
SPRING BREAK
March 19
Cross-Cultural Readings: The Screen of Orientalism
March 26
Hybrid Identities: Who is a Russian? Prelim Reports
April 2
The Screen of Travel
April 9
Projecting Identities: The International Exposition
April 16, 23, 30
Student Investigations
Readings, gathered in Course Reader
Introduction: Architecture and Identity
Murray Fraser and Joe Kerr, "Beyond the Empire of the Signs," InterSections: Architectural Histories and Critical Theories, Iain Borden and Jane Rendell, eds. (London, 2000), 124-49.
Who am I?: Exploring Personal Identity
Madan Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World (Athens, Ga., 1996), Introduction, Ch. 1, Ch. 2.
Personal Prestige and the Renaissance Palazzo
Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, c. 25, BCE (Dover, 1986), Bk. I, Ch. 2, 12-16.
Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, c. 1450 (Cambridge, MA, 1994), Bk. 9, Ch. 1, 291-3.
Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture, 1537ff (New Haven, 1996), Bk. 4, Ch. 6, 281.
Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture, 1570 (Cambridge, MA, 1997), Bk. 2, Ch. 1, 77-87, passim.
Adrian Tinniswood, "The Medici and Florence," Visions of Power (New York, 1998), 64-69.
David Friedman, "Palaces and the Street in Late-Medieval and Renaissance Italy," Urban Landscapes, J.W.R. Whitehand, ed. (London, 1992), 69-113.
How do Buildings Mean?: Architectural Expression
Paul-Alan Johnson, "Architecture Expression," and "Can Buildings Mean Anything?" The Theory of Architecture: Concepts, Themes & Practices (New York, 1994), 395-98, 425-7.
Nelson Goodman, "How Buildings Mean," Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences (Indianapolis, 1988), 31-48.
Roland Barthes, "Semiology and the Urban," Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (London, 1997), 163-72.
Umberto Eco, "How an Exposition Exposes Itself," Rethinking Architecture, 201-04.
Geertz, Clifford, "The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States," The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), 255-310.
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, "Inventing Traditions," and "Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe 1870-1914, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1984), 1-14, 263-83.
Expressing Group Identity: Palladian Transpositions
Chris Abel, "Architecture as Identity," and "Living in a Hybrid World," Architecture and Identity: Towards a Global Eco-Culture (Oxford, 1997), Chs. 12-13, 145-233.
Swati Chattopakhyay, "Blurring Boundaries: The Limits of "White Town" in Colonial Calcutta," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 59:2 (June 2000), 154-179.
National Expression in a Post-colonial World
Lawrence Vale, "Capital and Capitol," "National Identity and the Capital Complex," "Papua New Guinea’s Concrete Haus Tambaran," Architecture, Power and National Identity (Cambridge, 1992), Chs. 1, 2, 6, 3-55, 165-89.
Cross Cultural Readings: The Screen of Orientalism
Edward Said, "Introduction," and "Knowing the Oriental," Orientalism (New York, 1978; 1994), 1-43.
Dennis Porter, "Orientalism and its Problems," Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, Williams and Chrisman, eds. (New York 1994), 150-61.
Zeynep Çelik, "Colonialism, Orientalism, and the Canon," InterSections, 161-69.
Hybrid Identities: Who is a Russian?
Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, [on style], [on nationality and architecture], Lectures on Architecture, I, 1872 (Dover, 1987), 177-84, 234-38.
Lauren O’Connell, "A Rational, National Architecture: Viollet-le-Duc’s Modest Proposal for Russia," Journal of the Society for Architectural Historians, 52:4 (December 1993), 436-52.
The Screen of Travel
Mary Louise Pratt, "Introduction: Criticism in the Contact Zone," and "Imperial Stylistics, 1860-1980," Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London, 1997), 1-11, 2-1-50.
Théophile Gautier, "St. Isaac’s," "Moscow," Russia (Voyage en Russie, 1866) F. Tyson, trans. (Philadelphia, 1905), 283-95, 305-309; 378-85;
398-401.
Patricia Morton, "Introduction," and "The Civilizing Mission of Architecture," Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris (Cambridge, 2000), 3-14, 176-215.