Expanding Agency. Women, Race and the Dissemination of Modern Architecture

Abstract

Expanding Agency: Women, Race and the Dissemination of Modern Architecture is a five-year research project funded by a European Research Council Advanced Grant. It explores the role that women and members of ethnic minorities, primarily African Americans, played in transmitting modern architecture and design internationally between 1920 and 1970.  Strands devoted to patronage, journalism, entrepreneurship, and institution building offer alternatives to accounts that focus primarily on architects. This approach expands our understanding of who had agency in this important story and more generally in shaping the built environment. Taking a global view that stresses comparisons across continents also helps build a more nuanced history of how architecture, landscape architecture, interior decoration, and the design of furnishing were transformed by new ideas that emanated from a multiplicity of sources.  This in turn can help support a more diverse profession that, in the wake of #metoo and Black Lives Matter, is better prepared to engage with a broad public, including to address such social challenges as sustainability and the integration of migrants.