Talk description:

In an increasingly globalist culture, is there an “American” architecture? If so, would it be based on projects in America, or designed by American architects but built in Texas, China, Bratislava, and/or the Arctic? What would make it “American”? Is there an American way of discerning situation and possibility/opportunity that is unique?

The current season of Fall or Autumn in America is marked by two important holidays: one an official Federal [national government] Holiday of Thanksgiving, originated in American circumstance, and the other a less formally recognized but culturally important one of Halloween, that has its origins back to Celtic Europe. Thanksgiving marks the survival of Puritan colonists in the 17^th century with their first harvest, shared with gifts of food by the Indigenous Peoples of the region. Halloween, or “All Hallows Eve” is a day and evening of parties, costumes and a certain fascination with the dead and even horror. Each involves different modes and places for participation, a hedonistic immediacy, and a gap of space and time for a certain pause and suspension of belief apart from the commonplace.

The evolutions of each holiday offer metaphors for reviewing contemporary architectural and urban space production. The talk will be illustrated by examples suggesting positive and negative affective influences of the sublime [Halloween]. The difficulties with production of 'official' narratives that reduce architecture to style [Thanksgiving] will be countered by the linking of aesthetics to emerging realities such as intergenerational ethics and regenerative ecological thinking.  

© Image by Michael Lucas: An American Encounter with the Baroque, Karlskirche, Vienna, Austria, 2019.