Forming Anti-Racist and Counter-Hegemonic Spaces

Racism persists in the work we do as architects, architecture students, and architectural educators. In this paper, we combine sociological theories of colorblind racism and white hegemony with an analysis of architectural design processes. We draw from writings, poetry, imagery, and renderings as media that aid in making architecture’s racial discrimination visible. We propose ways of thinking about colorblind racism in design that we hope will aid design practioners, students, and teachers in countering hegemonic racist ideologies that are present in our work. We consider ways that in our practices and our teaching, we conceptualize space as colorblind, we render those spaces as white, hegemonic, and normative, and we disengage when those spaces sustain racism. We argue that our failure to see the racialization of the spaces we imagine is an expression of colorblind racism.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.FALL.19.20

Volume Editors
Amy Larimer, Deborah Berke, Diana Lin, Drew Krafcik, John Barton & Sunil Bald

ISBN
978-1-944214-24-1