The Nature of Organic Nationalism: A Revisionist History of Euro-American Architecture Theory

Tuesday 1 March 2022
à 13:15
Lecture series

Charles L. Davis II is an associate professor of architectural history and criticism at the University at Buffalo.

This talk will trace the racialization of 19th century paradigms of architectural organicism in France, Germany, and the United States through discursive interpretations of bodily concepts of character, physiognomy, and type. It will use the works of Viollet-le-Duc, Gottfried Semper, and Louis Sullivan as physical case studies for reconstructing the social, political, and formal lessons modern architects gleaned from their study of racial anthropology, from western Europe to the United States.

Charles L. Davis II is an associate professor of architectural history and criticism at the University at Buffalo. He received his PhD in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and has an M.Arch and B.P.S. from the University at Buffalo. His academic research excavates the role of racial identity and race thinking in architectural history and contemporary design culture. Charles is co-editor of Race and Modern Architecture (University of Pittsburgh, 2020), which collects 18 case studies on the racial discourses of modern architecture from the Enlightenment to the present. His book manuscript, Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style (University of Pittsburgh, 2019) traces the historical integrations of race and style theory in paradigms of “architectural organicism,” or movements that modeled design on the generative principles of nature.