Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

Architectural education in Puerto Rico has not been decolonized. Thus, for the most part, history of architecture survey courses remain very much epistemologically Eurocentric and, even if observing the architecture schools accrediting board’s requirements for “students [to] understand the histories and theories of architecture and urbanism, framed by diverse social, cultural, economic, and political forces, nationally, and globally” (NAAB, Conditions for Accreditation, 2020), these courses could still be viewed by some as sexist, elitist, racist, and generally othering. It is not surprising that architectural history courses are still mostly taught from the position of authority and from the perception of architecture as a benign, good-willed, practice, as the discipline has historically been at the service of those in power and, on the island, architectural education and practice keep “developing” under problematic contexts of colonialism/coloniality. Following Freire (1968), as a measure of resistance, a decolonizing architectural pedagogy of the oppressed not only prompts teaching from the position of the subaltern but also, to didactic spaces where the subalternized can speak (Gayatri Spivak, 1988). Thus, the presentation/paper will address my on-going reframing of the four architectural history surveys I teach at the University of Puerto Rico in terms of postcolonial and decolonial frameworks and points of view as well as localized epistemological context, problematizations, and teaching objectives, strategies, and resources. Decolonizing the history of architecture curriculum may be a first step forming critically conscious architects, in the terms defined by Freire, whom might be able to design hopeful futures.