The Architect as Producer: Theory as Liberatory Practice

In Teaching to Transgress, theorist, educator, and social critic bell hooks reclaims the word theory and challenges us to produce theory as a liberatory practice. hooks affirms that in the production of this theory “lies the hope of our liberation, in its production lies the possibility of naming all our pain–of making all our hurt go away.” Such a form of theory, hooks concludes, is necessary to build a mass-based resistance struggle: one in which there is no gap between theory and practice.

The past few years have brought the necessity of theory as liberatory practice to the foreground of discussions on architecture. The interconnected crisis of violent war, mass enforced migrations, global warming, precarity, and structural inequality have changed how we understand what architecture is and does. These and other events have highlighted the role of architecture in the rise of wealth accumulation, racism, patriarchy, land dispossession, labor struggle, and environmental disaster. In this course we examine how architects further these processes and how they might contribute to counter them by turning to the role of architecture within the relations of production.

In his essay “L’Architecture dans le boudoir,” architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri concludes by wondering what might happen were we to shift the focus from what architecture wishes to be or say, to the role the discipline plays within the capitalist system. Citing Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Author as Producer,” Tafuri proposes that instead of asking about the attitude of a work to the relations of production, we should ask: what is its position within them? By keeping this central question in mind, he concludes, many of the so-called masterpieces of modern architecture come to take on a secondary or even marginal importance, and many debates are relegated to peripheral considerations.

The course responds to hooks and Tafuri’s challenges by thinking about architecture’s position within the relations of production through four interrelated topics: lands, materials, labors, and knowledges. We start by questioning where architecture happens, the land we stand on, the ways in which lands are transformed into real estate, and the role architects play in this process. We then move on to the materials, resources, and objects that architecture is made of, as well as the processes of extraction they are imbricated in. We address the bodies that participate in the making and maintenance of architecture, from building labor to the role of the architect as worker. We conclude by reflecting on the motivations that animate the discipline and its teaching, and the ways in which it is being unlearned and reimagined.

Students will be evaluated on class participation, discussion facilitation, short writing assignments, and a research project. This course is planned as a “lecture” with many small group activities and other alternative pedagogies. It qualifies as a BTC Distributional Elective.