The Politics of Public Space in Islamic Societies

Primarily focusing on the architectural examples of the modern Middle East, the course raises concerns related to the political (mis/re)use of spaces, structures, and signs. By contextualzing each architectural case in its specific sociopolitical history, we will ask the following questions: How is architecture used as a site of power and resistance in politically charged societies? Why is architecture-as-representation so central to the making of coercive narratives about modern identities and civil order? How do these shifting uses of the landmark leave their imprint on architectural form, function, and meaning? Our aim will be to analyze how architecture both endorses political discourse and, by contrast, sustains social resistance. Above all, what can modern Muslim states and societies inform us about the politics of space and identity?

While the course will begin with selected examples of public spaces from Islamic history, it will rapidly enter the 19th century, where various colonial encounters and subsequent imperial discourses will be examined. The bulk of the course considers the use of urban ‘text’ as an ideological tool by the leaders of modern nation-states: the heaving-handed modernism and revivalism of the 1920s and 1930s, the native- ization of modernity in the 1950s and 1960s, and the urban revolution of Iran in 1979. The course will conclude with the current events in Afghanistan and Iraq bringing to the fore broader architectural question such as the destruction of monuments as political acts, the women’s veiling as a gendered space, and today’s architectural implication on politics and vise versa.

• Beguin & Baudez. ‘Arabisances: Observations on French Colonial Architecture in North Africa between 1900-1950’, Lotus International 26 (1980) 41-52
  

Imperializing Space: British South Asia

 ‘Orient’ Talking: