This seminar investigates a new generation of architects who practice within a critique of globalization; a disdain for the impacts of “flat world” labor, material supply and environmental impacts; and an exploration of both form and architectural production that is profoundly local in material, construction craft and technique, capacity building and sustainability (environmental, social, economic and cultural). In the hands of the most talented of these architects, these attitudes lead to fresh, elegant and leading edge architecture. These practices provide an insight into a shift of the international conversation around architecture away from Europe and North America. Included in the course are Wang Shu,Liu Jaikun, Hua Li (China), Bijoy Jain, Rahul Merothra, Anapama Kundoo (India), Nina Maritz (Nambia), Vo Trong Nghia (Vietnam), Gabinete de Arquitectura (Paraguay), Alejandro Aravena (Chile), and many others. 

The course will look at the historical and theoretical context of these practices. We will begin with a quick look at the way spatial practices and architecture are essential in the projects of colonization and of cultural imperialism. We then move to investigate the 20th century and how the canon of Modernism is or is not a part of the continuum and the thinking, context and work of the rogue “other modernist” architects that fascinate St. John Wilson: Aalto, Utzon, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, etc.  Then we will investigate the non-European, usually overlapping, generation of these architects, who were often trained in, and profoundly influenced by, modernism in Europe and North America, but sought something more. This is the generation that often spanned new independence movements within their own countries, seeking an architecture that broke with the colonizer and yielded both sophistication in the eyes of the world and identity for those at home. These include: Lina Bo Bardi (Brasil), Luis Barragan (Mexico), Oscar Neimeyer (early work: Brasil), Pancho Geddes (Mozambique), Guilhem Eustache (Morocco), B.V. Doshi (India), Glenn Murcutt (Australia). After this dive into history, the last half of the course are devoted to current practices like those mentioned above.