Ardeth #09 RACE. Exploring the Modern-Colonial Legacy in Contemporary Architecture

Architecture is an inward looking discipline. Its history conveys the norms of the discipline to an audience composed mostly of architects, who are familiar with the work of their predecessors-from whom they learnt, or for whom they worked. As such, architecture singularises the multiple processes through which space is produced, excluding difference in the pursuit of coherent narratives to sustain its authority, and does so mainly through the figure of the architect. For a long time now, critics have shown how that figure is principally male. However, little has been said about the fact that the figure of the architect is also white; a racial classification that refers not only to epidermal characteristics, but to their national origin, education, and in most cases their class affiliation.