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City Of Felt And Concrete: Negotiating Cultural Hybridity In Mongolia's Capital Of Ulaanbaatar, Joshua Hagen, Alexander Diener

Joshua Hagen

Capital cities play an integral role in the construction of national identity. This is particularly true when the capital is the country's only major urban center. Over the course of its history, Mongolia's capital of Ulaanbaatar has been periodically reshaped to reflect competing trajectories of national culture. This article examines the evolving symbolism of architecture, urban design, and public space in Ulaanbaatar as a means of exploring Mongolia's complex negotiation between its traditional culture (mobile pastoralism and Shamanism/Buddhism), its socialist legacy, and globalization. Amidst the rampant social change of the last two decades, rather ambiguous national narratives have emerged in …

From Socialist To Post-Socialist Cities: Narrating The Nation Through Urban Space, Joshua Hagen, Alexander Diener

Joshua Hagen

The development of post-socialist cities has emerged as a major field of study among critical theorists from across the social sciences. Originally constructed under the dictates of central planners and designed to serve the demands of command economies, post-socialist urban centers currently develop at the nexus of varied and often competing economic, cultural, and political forces. Among these, nationalist aspirations, previously simmering beneath the official rhetoric of communist fraternity and veneer of architectural conformity, have emerged as dominant factors shaping the urban landscape. This article examines patterns, processes, and practices concerning the cultural politics of architecture, urban planning, and identity …

African Architectural Transference To The South Carolina Low Country, 1700-1880, Fritz Hamer

Fritz Hamer

There is growing historical and archaeological evidence that African style housing was an integral part of slave communities on plantations in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Besides the "shotgun" house, other African house forms were built in North America before descendants of African slaves became acculturated to western construction techniques. The rarity of historical and archaeological evidence of these structures can be attributed to the culture bias of early white observers and the poor preservation of these impermanent structures in the archaeological record.

The Chicago Bungalow, Dominic Pacyga, Charles Shanabruch

Dominic Pacyga

The Chicago Bungalow is more than a housing style indigenous to the city. It epitomizes Chicago's work ethic and its rewards for successive waves of ethnic newcomers to the city since the early 20th century. In this book, the Chicago Architecture Foundation interprets both the design and the meaning of these homes, in keeping with CAF's mission to raise awareness of Chicago's architectural legacy.

After 1915, new neighborhoods appeared across the prairie. The Chicago-style bungalow came to both dominate and symbolize these areas. A one and one-half story single-family freestanding home, it included such conveniences as electricity, indoor plumbing, and …