63. The Global Project with Mark Jarzombek
“Yeah, I’m not going to teach the Parthenon, I’m sorry…”
- Mark Jarzombek
This week, Vikram and veteran guest, Mark Jarzombek, meet at MIT to discuss the status of the Global Project. This was recorded in front of an audience of Mark's students and teaching assistants who participated in a Q&A following our episode.
A Global History of Architecture, Wiley, 2rd Ed.
Timestamp Outline
2:14 Vikram begins be describing the cultural xenophobia that followed the events of 9.11 in the United States and how this sparked their interest in the Global Architecture Project.
Vikram continues to describe underlying themes of postcolonial and poststructural theories in the mission of reworking the Eurocentric approach to architecture history the western world has long taught.
5:03 Vikram and Mark discuss tokenism, Vikram recalls a particular incident during his time at Cornell
7:00 Vikram references an iconic diagram from Vers Une Architecture (click here for more on this classic, Eurocentric narrative of Modernism)
8:19 Mark tells his students, most textbooks tend to start architecture history with Stonehenge, “…and we’ll get to Stonehenge, but if you’ve noticed, we haven’t gotten there yet…there’s a lot of history that started long before, interesting history!”- MJ
8:53 Vikram and Mark describe their critics of the traditional, linear narrative of architecture history and their use of “time-cuts” in their textbook.
*This could be described as a poststructural method of teaching history as opposed to the structural, linear model
13:32 “Yeah, I’m not going to teach the Parthenon, I’m sorry…”- MJ
14:52 “What is the global, anyway?”
19:40 Vikram and Mark discuss “What is Architecture” and some of the work on their project for the 2020 Venice Biennale
30:22 Vikram and Mark compare the role of understanding ourselves through history, comparing Kierkegaard and Hegel
33:29 Vikram references the work of Karen Barad as an example of the kind of thinking that is beyond the global
