HS3: Urban Humanities

Collaborative Goals

After years of restricted in-person activities on our campuses, our working group focused on public-facing events this academic year. In the fall, we held a lecture and workshop at Cornell University with Ola Uduku, Roscoe Chair and Head of the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool. In the spring, we held a lecture at Hamilton College with Despina Stratigakos, Professor of Architecture at the University at Buffalo. Our goals were to encourage attendance at public events, student participation, and interdisciplinary dialogues on key concerns in architecture and the history of architecture today.

On November 9, 2022, Dr. Uduku presented the lecture “Aid by Design?” at Cornell University focusing on the colonial history of West African architecture that is under-represented in the United States. The following day, she held a workshop that explored in a discursive tutorial format some key themes and topics that the lecture raised. Participants examined case studies, participatory experiences and viewpoints of aid. Case studies included Haiti, Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, Sri Lanka, Daadab, Uganda and Kenya, and Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh. Participants also discussed theories of aid from a development studies and economics perspective to contextualize where “shelter” sits, as well as the pragmatics of aid responses ranging from instantaneous-response events to strategic policies. Additional discussions included Shigeru Ban’s Humanitarian Architecture, White Architecture’s “Make Sense,” Architecture Ethics and Globalisation, Rural Studio at Twenty, Architecture Depends and UNDP Special Report on Human Security (2022). Due to unforeseen security issues, we had to move the lecture and workshop to Zoom at the last minute.

On April 10, 2023, Dr. Stratigakos presented the lecture “Hitler’s Building Plans for A World Under the Swastika: Comparing Occupied Norway and Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle” at Hamilton College. The lecture was planned in connection with two of Ruth Lo’s Spring 2023 courses: “Modern Architecture” and “Architecture and Politics.” In the latter course, this lecture was the culmination of a three-week extended case study on the architecture, landscape and urbanism of Nazi Germany. Students responded enthusiastically to the lecture as Dr. Stratigakos touched on many of the themes and topics from class, including the manifestation of power in the built environment, infrastructural violence (eg. building of highways), the intersections of architecture and race, and representations of architecture in popular media.

We met our goals because we planned our events in conjunction with courses and publicized the talks across our campuses. We also chose speakers whose research addressed themes that are particularly relevant today and are relatable to our students. The two events were thus well attended by people across disciplines in our respective communities.