The Department of Architecture at Florida International University
presents the fifth htc.Workshop.

The fifth htc.Workshop
Thursday and Friday, 24-25 February 2011
The Wolfsonian-FIU
1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach
http://soa.fiu.edu/images/featuredevent.pdf

The htc.Workshop provides a forum for new research in architectural history, theory and criticism through symposia organized by the Department of Architecture at the College of Architecture + The Arts in Miami's Florida International University, and hosted by The Wolfsonian-FIU. Emerging scholars discuss their work with peers and senior scholars representing a number of disciplines in order to work through difficult material in a collegial setting. Consistent with the international focus of FIU and the Department of Architecture, the htc.Workshop places special emphasis on contemporary research examining architecture in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Revised papers from the htc.Workshop are published in a journal, Propositions, which makes this vital research available to an international audience.
For additional information, contact David Rifkind (david.rifkindfiu.edu).

Program:

Thursday, 24 February 2011, 7pm
Keynote lecture
Ola Uduku ( Edinburgh College of Art and University of Edinburgh ),
West African Modern: Modern Movement Architecture in West Africa and the discourse of Tropical Regionalism

Friday, 25 February 2011, 10am-2pm
Workshop, moderated by Vladimir Kulic (Florida Atlantic University)

Mabel Wilson (Columbia University) and Peter Tolkin (Peter Tolkin Architecture),
“Listening There: Scenes from Ghana”

Vandana Baweja (University of Florida),
“Bombay and Mumbai in Slumdog Millionaire”

Robert Gonzalez (Florida International University),
“Framing the Verdant Latin: Rethinking South America's Green Architecture”

Prita Meier(Wayne State University),
“Architecture Out of Place: The Politics of Style in Zanzibar”

Robert Cowherd (Wentworth Institute of Technology),
“Big Road Architecture: Unexpected Meanings of Jakarta's Urban Form”

About the kynote speaker:
Ola Uduku’s lecture, West African Modern , examines the multiple legacies of modern architecture in West Africa alongside the professional, academic and discursive networks that shaped architectural practices in countries like Nigeria and Ghana. The variant of International Style architecture which became known as Tropical Modernism or Regionalism has a mixture of roots, including the CIAM congresses, the work of Bauhaus exiles, and a post-colonial engagement with non-Western art and design. In addition to the work of the well-known British architects (Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, James Cubitt, and the Architects Co-Partnership) who pioneered the development of Tropical Modernism, this lecture examines the built legacy of indigenous, local architects and artists whose work both predated and contributed to the new modernism. This wider understanding of local critical engagement with the “modern” movement and its aftermath gives an important lens with which to view the transformation of West African architecture to the “post” modern-indigenous architectural and creative art landscape that Africa, South of the Sahara, now presents to the 21st century.
Ola Uduku is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art School of Architecture, and Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh. She has research interests in Modern Movement Architecture in West and sub-Saharan Africa. Social infrastructure provision in urban areas, specifically for minority groups, and urban ‘gating’ are also research themes, as is the history of school design in sub-Saharan Africa. She is a member of ArchiAfrika, a non profit organisation dedicating to linking architectural research and teaching networks in Africa with Europe and further afield, and is involved in a 5 –year European Union project COST IS0904 Researching European Architecture Networks Beyond Europe. She has just completed a 3-year research project focusing on the question, “Does School Design Affect Education Quality in Africa,” for the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DfID) with the University of Bristol. She is currently involved in working to set up a Modern West African Architecture digital and physical Archive in Lagos, Nigeria.