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Critical Spatial Practices: A Trans-Scalar Study Of Chinese Hutongs And American Alleyways, Gregory Marinic, Rebekah Radtke, Gregory Luhan

Interiors Faculty Publications

Across time and cultures, the built environment has been fundamentally shaped by forces of occupancy, obsolescence, and change. In an era of increasing political uncertainty and ecological decline, contemporary design practices must respond with critical actions that envision more collaborative and sustainable futures. The concept of critical spatial practice, introduced by architectural historian Jane Rendell, builds on Walter Benjamin and the late 20th century theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau to propose multi-disciplinary design practices that more effectively address contemporary spatial complexities. These theoretical frameworks operate through trans-scalar means to resituate the built environment as a nexus of …

"Introduction" To Presenting Difficult Pasts Through Architecture: Converting National Socialist Sites To Documentation Centers, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

This study deals with the question of how architectural design, when applied to his­torical places, can assist in bringing an extremely difficult – notable and troubling – past to the present in meaningful ways. In particular, it examines postwar architectural designs that converted National Socialist perpetrators’ places into documentation centers on National Socialism whose explicit purpose is, above all, to present and discuss the community’s involvement in the National Socialist ideology and actions.

Although the cases I have selected for close study vary stylistically and in many other ways, these centers have a number of common attributes that make the …