ARC 342R Seminar
Tues 12:30 – 3:30pm, WMB 6.126
Open to SOA* and non-SOA upper-division undergraduates
Melanie Ball: melanieball@utexas.edu
This seminar uses the framework of the “experiment” to investigate the cultural implications of housing’s role as both a testing ground and training ground for visions of a better future. We will explore case studies—spanning the late-nineteenth to late-twentieth centuries, and ranging from individual housing sites to the cultural theories informing modern design and modern domesticity—with a broader historical inquiry in mind: how has housing operated as a realm for experimentation, in service of political, economic, social, and religious ambitions? Other questions may arise along the way: Why does a government invest in urban renewal? Who benefits from industrialized housing technologies? When is housing the problem, and when is housing the solution? Where does the architect fit into this equation… and where does experimentation take place beyond architects’ purview? From the settlement of utopian separatist communities to the utopian principles undergirding modernist housing estates; from the transnational routes of the New Town movement to housing developments shaped by their residents’ transnational migrations; from the demolition of blighted tenements to the construction of race, class, and gender through domestic life and space, this course will critically interrogate the way modern housing has functioned in the quest for better tomorrows.
*SOA students must have taken ARC 318L (grade of at least C)
