The Gift of Architecture

This course focused on gifted buildings, from 19th century philanthropic donations, through the 20th century welfare states, colonial and postcolonial developmentalism, buildings that circulated in state-socialist gift economies, and the ways in which secular and religious gift-giving shapes urbanisation today. By discussing the politics, economy, and aesthetics of gift-giving, we studied their impact on the designs, programs, materialities, construction, and uses of buildings across the world, including Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The course resulted in an online database of gifted buildings, with the use of which students curated four virtual exhibitions.

The course:

• Provided the students with an overview of relevant case studies of gifted architecture from the last 150 years, including examples from Europe, North America, Africa and Asia.
• Furnished students with a set of conceptual tools to study these architectures, both historical and contemporary, based on debates in anthropology, history of economy, Cold War studies, and human geography.
• Offered students a solid historical and conceptual basis for a critical understanding of global urbanisation processes today, in which philanthropic and gifted architecture play an increasing role.
• Allowed students to gain an operative knowledge of Omeka, an open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions;
• Provided students with an experience of individual and group research work.