Connecting the Dots: Reframing the History of the Built Environment of the Americas
When I presented my forthcoming book “Spatial Theories for the Americas: Counterweights to Five Centuries of Eurocentrism” last month at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies, my colleague Sarah Lopez asked if the main contribution of the book was about the historical content or the historiographical methods. At that moment I answered using Juliet Hooker’s book Theorizing Race in the Americas which was a major inspiration. In that book, Prof. Hooker proposes that we use juxtaposition as a method, and not comparison. She wrote:
“Juxtaposition places two disparate objects side by side, and it is by being viewed simultaneously that the viewer’s understanding of each object is transformed. (…) Juxtaposition thus allows us to ask: What happens when thinkers and traditions that are viewed as disparate are staged as proximate, what insights are revealed? (…) Most centrally, however, juxtaposition does not assume prior similarities or differences between thinkers and traditions. One of the problems with comparison is that it presumes the existence of stable and discrete traditions of thought that are available for comparison. But by assuming prior difference (or connection) between traditions, comparison does not interrogate the boundaries between traditions as contingent products of political power. In contrast, I view juxtaposition as a historical-interpretive approach that seeks to situate the resonances and/or discontinuities between traditions of thought within the specific historical, intellectual, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts in which they emerged”.
“With European concepts as hegemonic as they are, our American buildings and sites would always compare unfavorably. Juxtaposition would help us see two or more spatial histories side by side, each with its specificity.”
I used Juliet Hooker’s words to refer to the frustrating attempt to “compare” the history of the built environment of the Americas with the history of the built environment of Europe. With European concepts as hegemonic as they are, our American buildings and sites would always compare unfavorably. Juxtaposition would help us see two or more spatial histories side by side, each with its specificity. Yet juxtaposition does not change the frames we use to analyze each landscape. Sarah Lopez’ question of methods or content stayed with me for weeks because the real answer is that we need to dislocate both.
Figure 1. 2018 map featuring all the buildings mentioned by Kostof 1985 (20th century chapters), Frampton 1992, Curtis 1996, and Cohen 2012.
So I went back to the book introduction which reminded me that I was inspired to write this book after drawing a map full of dots. Quoting myself:
“In 2005, already bothered by Eurocentrism, I decided to check the depth of such bias in our canonical texts. I took the indexes of four major survey books on Modern Architecture. I looked at the 20th-century chapters of Spiro Kostof 1985; and the full books by Kenneth Frampton 1992; William Curtis 1996; adding Jean Louis Cohen in 2012. For every building mentioned in the indexes, I plotted a dot on a map of the globe, color-coded. The result could not be more graphically telling. We teach architectural history as North Atlantic history, and we use European concepts and values to judge and discuss such architecture. In a preface published in 2018, I elaborated on this very map as a result of NATO, the Iron Curtain made very visible in Eastern Europe. But breaking away from this NATOcentrism, it is very interesting to perceive that all four authors are Europeans, and if I one day expand the mapping exercise to the major books used in Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas, I would need to add the Italian Leonardo Benevolo and the Catalan Josep Maria Montaner. What does that say about the fact that in the last 50 years, no country on the planet has the research capability and the educational infrastructure of the USA, and yet our canonical books used to teach modern architecture are all written by European scholars? As I discuss in the first chapter, the new survey books published in the 21st century are already pointing in a different direction, and Kenneth Frampton himself has recently published a revised and enlarged edition of his classic Modern Architecture a Critical History that attempts to correct precisely such NATOcentrism. The point of departure of this book is that not only we do not know our own history but we also use spatial concepts from across the Atlantic Ocean to analyze and judge our places. This book is an attempt to bring light to this issue, first by explaining the roots of such an incomplete memory and by discussing theories of space (from cartography, geography, anthropology, and mostly architecture) that have been proposed as counterweights to five centuries of Eurocentrism. Architecture has played a central role in this construction and we have only started to properly study it through the lenses of decolonial theories”.
“Not only we do not know our own history but we also use spatial concepts from across the Atlantic to analyze and judge our places. My book is an attempt to bring light to this issue, first by explaining the roots of such an incomplete memory and by discussing theories of space...that have been proposed as counterweights to five centuries of Eurocentrism.”
From this first inspirational map many others followed, plotting how the Americas were featured (or not) in our main survey books of “global architectural; history”: Banister Fletcher; Munford; Benevolo, Kostof; Ingersoll, Ching, Jarzombek and Prakash. The first chapter of Spatial Theories for the Americas discusses 7 of those maps. So it was natural that my thoughts kept bringing me back to maps, and lines, and dots. Like the pre-school game of connect the dots, I believe what I am doing is challenging the Eurocentric mandatory sequence of Greece-to-Rome-to-Gothic-to-Renaissance-to-Baroque. I am shuffling the numeric order like Enrique Dussel proposed to include Phoenicia, Eastern Roman Empire, Persia, Arabs into this sequence.
Figure 2. The dots in canonical order: 1 Egypt, 2 Greece, 3 Rome, Renaissance, 4 French Beaux Art, 5 Chicago, 6 European contemporary
In my case I am proposing to juxtapose the architectural history of Western Europe with the architectural history of the Americas, before and after the European invasion. So it was natural that the answer to Sarah Lopez’ question about content versus method would require that I draw a few more maps. order to revisit how juxtaposition would help us develop American concepts to understand American spaces. I believe that in this book I am challenging the historiographical methods by connecting the dots in a different order.
The maps 2-5 are not included in the book and were drawn exclusively for this PLATFORM article to illustrate what I am trying to do: Figure 2 shows the dots in canonical order, with Europe at the center of the world and the Western construction of the sequence 1 Egypt, 2 Greece, 3 Rome, Renaissance to 4 French Beaux Art, to 5 Chicago, and finally to 6 a faint counter-influence of US modernism into European contemporary architecture. Figure 3 shows what’s happening lately on “expanded” surveys of Global Architecture. Sites in China, India, Mexico, Peru, and North Africa are added to the picture as starting points of other traditions, but those are never linked to the Western canon.
Figure 3. The “expansion” adds data points to the global map of architectural manifestations but does not dislocate the centrality of the Eurocentric canon.
The Eurocentric narrative remains intact unless we start connecting the dots differently and adding relationships between the building traditions previously excluded from the historiography (Figure 4). The first chapter of the book demonstrates precisely that, demonstrating that the “expansion” that started with Kostof (1985) and continues with Ching, Prakash, and Jarzombek (2015), and Ingersoll (2018) privileged pre-modern sites that do not shuffle the narrative enough. The number of sites pre 1492 grew five-fold, from 7 in Kostof to 27 in Ingersoll and 35 in Ching, Prakash, and Jarzombek. Any reason to celebrate is tampered down once we realize that the number of sites and buildings from the modern period has increased only marginally. Kostof discussed a total of 31 buildings and sites in the Americas after 1492, Ching, Jarzombek and Prakash raised that number to 34 and Ingersoll to 48. An increase of only 50% while the pre-modern period saw an increase of 500%. What this unequal growth indicates is that pre-modern sites are now “included” but only because they don’t challenge the Eurocentric narrative of modernization, treated in isolation and shrinking to irrelevance after the arrival of Europeans. Once we expand also sites and buildings erected in after the 16th century we would have a much more complex picture of the ebbs and flows of influences and counter-influences between Europe and the rest of the world.
Figure 4. The “expansion” needs to induce other connections of potential currents of influence and counter-influence for a pluriversal picture to emerge.
In my case I will be working to center our narrative in the Americas as Counterweights to Five Centuries of Eurocentrism as stated by the subtitle of my book. My proposal is to problematize the reductive simplicity of the Eurocentric canon and call our attention to the ways in which the Americas participated in the history of the built environment by centering in our continent. Other scholars can recenter the starting point in other geographies to learn new things and develop new insights.
One direct outcome of my Americentric narrative is that the traditional Cartesian directions get shuffled: Europe is to my East and China to my West, a shift of directionality that forces us to rethink those categories. Seen from the Americas, the data points of architectural history are indeed perceived differently (Figure 5).
“It’s not only that the Americas are an integral part of the rise of European modernization. I am proposing that we move towards Spatial Theories for the Americas.”
Figure 5. With the Americas as the center, the multiple data-points show a plurality of building traditions in which the Eurocentric canon is one among many possible narratives.
It’s not only that the Americas are an integral part of the rise of European modernization, as Anibal Quijano wrote in 1992 and I expanded to architecture. I am proposing that we keep working on content (adding data points) and methods (connecting them differently) to move towards Spatial Theories for the Americas. As I wrote in another passage of the book’s introduction:
“Much like the ancients observed the sky and connected stars that moved together, I see those concepts as new constellations being drawn from a complex and diverse field of historical points that are intricately connected but have not been named yet. This is precisely the metaphor that I use to explain my work as a theoretician: connecting the dots between multiple sites and events to draw new patterns that explain our contemporary world a little better. It is also a collective effort, as represented by the need for at least two Mixtec “architects” to tension the thread. My work is only possible because dozens of scholars have conducted rigorous research on a plethora of sites and events. This book is my attempt to connect those dots and draw new concepts in search of Architectural Theories for the Americas”.
