ABSTRACT
In Edouard Glissant’s writing, the concepts of entanglement and displacement are central to understanding connections across geographic distances. Thinking with Glissant, feminist and decolonial theory, this chapter discusses the development of an open-access curriculum titled “Race, Space and Architecture” co-curated by Huda Tayob, Suzanne Hall and Thandi Loewenson. This curriculum was developed as an open-access resource, rather than for a particular school or program. Taking on Glissant’s attention to displacement and entanglement, the curriculum project directs our attention to spatial thinking, as informed by a multiplicity of displacements – of people, places, ideas and temporalities. This chapter reflects on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of this curriculum, which begins with the premise that ‘decolonization is not a metaphor’, and is instead profoundly unsettling. In this curriculum, texts, discussions and representational materials (drawings, film, graphic novels) act to disrupt and actively unsettle the seemingly stable spatial typologies and categorizations of architecture. This “unsettling” includes a displacement of the curriculum-building process, from an individual practice to a series of workshops and wider public engagements. These associated events include students, academics and activists. Reflecting on this course and the entangled worlds it addresses, this chapter suggests a series of tactics for positioning the Global South in architectural pedagogy.
