Race and the Architectural Humanities: How we (can) research, teach and learn

Curated by The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Director of History and Theory, Tania Sengupta, along with Megha Chand Inglis and Jhono Bennett, the History and Theory Forum is being revived this year after a hiatus, particularly as part of collective action on urgent issues.

This year's theme is 'Race and the Architectural Humanities: How we (can) research, teach and learn', understood broadly, and including the interactions of these themes with design and technologies. Reflecting on how these relationships shape or might shape research, design or other forms of practice and pedagogy through inclusive, anti-racist, socially equitable, environmentally just and culturally nuanced approaches. 

This online event – consisting of roundtables, show-and-tell presentations and conversations - is open to all Bartlett School of Architecture staff and students. The presenters include the school's staff and students as well as key external researchers, designers, creative artists and activists. The forum will enable the school to gather as a community and share the varied efforts taken that address such questions and consider how we might transform our practices in fundamental and meaningful ways.

There is limited capacity to join the event in 6.04 at 22 Gordon Street. 

This event has been oranised by Tania Sengupta, Megha Chand Inglis and Jhono Bennett. The digital facilitator will be Maxwell Mutanda. Visual Design by Ecem Ergin. 

Programme 

Introduction: 09:30-10:00

New Histories 

Chair: Emily Mann

10:00-11:15 

• Radical Identities, Sumayya Vally
• Race and Landscape in Early Colonial Réunion, Kirti Durelle
• Making Histories of Whitechapel Public, Shahed Saleem and Sarah Dowding
• A Provisional, Collectivised Global History, Murray Fraser

Research and/as Practice 

Chair: Ben Campkin

11:30-12:45 

• Digital Witnessing and the Racialised Subject, Nishat Awan
• Decolonising the Architecture School, Ann de Graft Johnson 
• Voices and Landscapes: The Construction of an Embodied Knowledge of Palestine, Mira Idries
• Situated Southern Urban Design, Critical Positionality, Jhono Bennett

Lunch 13:00-14:00 

Working Across Geographies 

Chair: Azadeh Zaferani

14:00-15:15

• Practicing Ethics: the ethics of knowledge coproduction, Yael Padan and Jane Rendell
• Modern Heritage of Africa / Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene, Guangyu Ren and Edward Denison
• Listening to and Researching Gujarati Temple Builders Across Colonial, Familial, and Geographical Domains, Megha Chand Inglis
• Antarctica, Art and Archive: Latent Subjectivities, Polly Gould

Learning and Working Together 

Chair: Felicity Atekpe 

15:30-16:45 

• Decolonising Design Studio Pedagogical Practices for Alternative Urban Imaginaries, Maxwell Mutanda & Lakshmi Priya Rajendran
• Housing Plurality, Claire McAndrew and Mollie Claypool
• Working Towards a Pluriversity: progressive conversations, NOT solutions, Shaunee Tan
• Critical Urban Pedagogy, Catalina Ortiz

Concluding Discussions: 17:00-17:30 

More information 

• Download an information booklet with details of the speakers and roundtables

  Download an information booklet with details of the speakers and roundtables

• Race and the Architectural Humanities Poster

  Race and the Architectural Humanities Poster
• Find out more about History & Theory of Architecture

Image: 

Caption: Black Lives Matter protests, Hyde Park, London, June 2020, Original photograph and re-worked image by Ecem Ergin