ARC 606- Material Culture Studio (Memory, Build!) – Miguel Guitart

While architecture has the power to innovate, inspire, and provide shelter, it is also a reflection, and result, of the challenges our society faces today - climate catastrophe, racism, colonialism, structural inequities, gender oppression, and extreme financial disparities. Simultaneously a product of culture, societal norms, history and function, architecture is also used as a tool in the hands of the powerful as a means to manifest political agendas. In the US today, buildings and cities are largely designed, built, and owned by, and for, those with means and power: MONEY.

Drawing on local Buffalo case studies, the studio will research existing models of architectural production from policies, ownership, to construction and review the role of the architect in the process. From the funders, to the users, students will interrogate the relationships between the various stakeholders and agents that produce a building, specifically in terms of ownership, profit, material resources, displacement, gentrification, and use. We will research, analyze, and visualize legal and financial structures of land and building ownership and their spatial implications, raising questions regarding the ways in which the prevalent models of architectural production - private and for profit - replicate or recreate existing social inequities. 

The first half of the semester will be dedicated to research and visualization using various representation tools: drawings, mapping, network and power diagramming. And the second half will be dedicated to proposing design interventions that challenge or disrupt the expected use of selected sites. We’ll be collaborating with a local community organization, and presenting studio research and design work to their members.