ARC 342R.2 / ARC 388R.2
Tues/Thurs 12:30 – 2:00pm, SUT 2.112
Open to all ARC students
Bryan Norwood: bryan.norwood@austin.utexas.edu
This is a course about the history of the built environment of the United States, and how we situate that history in the Americas and the broader globe. This course will follow a selection of themes. It begins with a close study of the architectural formation of the colony and state of Virginia, before turning to a history of the plantations and port cities of Gulf South and the Caribbean, a history that will be traced into the development of the twentieth century oil industry. The course then turns to a history of built relationships between the United States and Latin America, focusing in particular on the built environment of the US-Mexico border. After considering at some length the development of the architectural profession and architecture schools, as well as the formulation of the Prairie Style in the early twentieth century American Midwest, we then turn to the continent-spanning history of suburbanization, and the mid-century rhetoric of “urban crisis” and urban renewal. Finally, the course turns to imperial and cultural histories of the US Pacific, thinking about diverse built environments including the Philippines, Hawaii, and Los Angeles.
In this course, we will be concerned not only with questions of the content of an “architectural” history of the United States–a topic too big to study in a single semester–but also with the challenge of how to write and study these histories in a way that addresses the complexities of the creation, experience, and interpretation of our built environments. Assignments will be based around readings, written responses to the reading, and engagement with lecture content. We will also directly interact with the authors of several of the texts we read throughout the semester.
