HAA 171x

Architecture and Authoritarianism in the 20^th C.
Patricio del Real
Wednesday, 1-3pmIn this pro-seminar, we will explore architecture in totalitarian regimes, paying particular attention to fascism as a political ideology and historical frame. The course will examine how architecture in its expanded field produced the ideological apparatus of fascist and totalitarian dictatorships, and shaped its systems of thought and forms of social organization in Europe, Africa and the Americas. We will focus on architectural case studies to examine contexts where dictatorships have toppled democratic forms of government. We will explore material, spatial and intellectual connections between political power and architecture; examine material techniques, aesthetic sources and organizational strategies through which architecture has established its authority in totalitarian regimes; uncover the ways architects have engaged the sphere of politics, government and national sovereignty in the 20th Century. Our aim is to go beyond the notion of an architecture in the service of the state, and to understand it as a tool of power and a technique of authoritarian rule.