WHOSE HISTORY?

Is our knowledge of the past limited to who and what we see? What conditions have produced the writing of history, and the perspectives that orient it?

In this second Claiming*Spaces conference, we aim to interrogate the narratives of architectural and spatial planning history conveyed through the media, university, and curated canon.

One dimensional views, produced through particular structural conditions – only allow for the inclusion of perspectives that are familiar. Indeed, the writings of history become repeated and produced from the same structural viewpoint, denying diversity, contestation, and integration of difference. Multiplicities of history, and diverse approaches to the production of architecture, are erased and muted to facilitate the re-production of the one-sided canon.

Reflect on the demographics of the architects we are presented within university! The Icon Architect: Lone, never-sleeping genius, middle-class man, white, cis, able... penetrates beyond the boundaries of the university. Architectural practice, city planning, and cultural production are governed by, and produced for this image, thus structurally reproduced again and again.

To bring the question of 'whose history' to the forefront of architectural discourse, we invite you to take part in unlearning the narrative we have been fed because it is in the best case lacking and in the worst case a lie. It is a collective responsibility to challenge, and change, who is teaching, what is being taught, and in what ways. Through that, we write future histories.

WHOSE HISTORY?

Is our knowledge of the past limited to who and what we see? What conditions have produced the writing of history, and the perspectives that orient it?

In this second Claiming*Spaces conference, we aim to interrogate the narratives of architectural and spatial planning history conveyed through the media, university, and curated canon.

One dimensional views, produced through particular structural conditions – only allow for the inclusion of perspectives that are familiar. Indeed, the writings of history become repeated and produced from the same structural viewpoint, denying diversity, contestation, and integration of difference. Multiplicities of history, and diverse approaches to the production of architecture, are erased and muted to facilitate the re-production of the one-sided canon.

Reflect on the demographics of the architects we are presented within university! The Icon Architect: Lone, never-sleeping genius, middle-class man, white, cis, able... penetrates beyond the boundaries of the university. Architectural practice, city planning, and cultural production are governed by, and produced for this image, thus structurally reproduced again and again.

To bring the question of 'whose history' to the forefront of architectural discourse, we invite you to take part in unlearning the narrative we have been fed because it is in the best case lacking and in the worst case a lie. It is a collective responsibility to challenge, and change, who is teaching, what is being taught, and in what ways. Through that, we write future histories.