Mysterious? For whom? Towards a decolonization of the teaching-learning of the history of architecture

Abstract

This article sets out to assess the teaching-learning of the history of architecture in Argentina considering its development and transformations throughout the twentieth century, and based on this evaluation, concludes with the proposal implemented in the teaching at the School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires (FADU UBA). It is understood that the structuring of the current courses in the official Argentine regulations has not substantially altered the canonical, nineteenth-century, colonial model imposed by Sir Banister Fletcher (1866-1953) in his A History of Architecture on a Comparative Method, whose first edition dates to 1896. A glance at the minimum compulsory content of the History of Architecture course in the plan of study at the FADU UBA (and a good number of Argentine universities), as well as the requirements established by CONEAU, the state agency dedicated to the evaluation and accreditation of university degrees, is enough to notice that the cases and problems studied today are still mainly European or North American, with a few local topics “incorporated.” Teachers like Juan Goytisolo, Edward Said, Tzvetan Todorov and Mary Louise Pratt have taught that the world in which we live is largely governed by a perspective that makes invisible or subordinates non-Western, non-white, non-male “others” -- that is, eighty percent of humanity, including our region. The preceding generation focused on “discovering” and “incorporating” local and regional studies. It is firmly believed that the mission of this generation is to completely dismantle the colonial model and build a History of Architecture based on interculturality, complexity and contradiction -using Venturi’s beautiful words- that defines all cultural processes.