Taubman College Sean Ahlquist, associate professor of architecture, will deliver a lecture, “Why Architecture Gets It Wrong” on September 29 at 5:15 EDT as part of Syracuse University School of Architecture’s lecture series. The talk is available online via advance registration.
To set the framework for his talk, Ahlquist noted, “We’re at a moment in time where a history of architecture shaped by a narrow set of viewpoints is being more heavily scrutinized for its ramifications in exacerbating social inequities. Personally, I see the prejudice of architectures that compete against my daughter and her worldview constructed through autism spectrum disorder. That architecture fails, at times, its okay but only if it has the capacity to be reshaped. If it can be indeterminately reshaped by otherly actions and social motivations to form a common ground that not just welcomes but is of my daughter’s ‘neuro-atypicality.’ Diversity implies unknowing-ness. This talk will discuss whether architecture can transcend its own authorship and dismiss its desire to narrate from a set of inevitably constrained viewpoints, and unfurl the means that are necessary for architecture to be party to crafting a social and material language of diversity.”
