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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Modernism's Magic Hat: Architecture and the Illusion of Development Without Capital

Modernism's Magic Hat: Architecture and the Illusion of Development Without Capital

Muzaffar, Ijlal

Paperback

Series: Lateral Exchanges: Architecture, Urban Development, and Tran

General ArchitectureArchitecture History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1477329668
ISBN13: 9781477329665
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: Jul 16 2024
Pages: 312
Weight: 1.14
Height: 0.96 Width: 6.09 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Examines the role of architecture in the history of global development and decolonization.

In Modernism's Magic Hat, Ijlal Muzaffar examines how modern architects and planners help resolve one of the central dilemmas of the mid-twentieth-century world order: how to make decolonization plausible without accounting for centuries of capital drain under colonial rule. In the years after World War II, architects and planners found extensive opportunities in new international institutions--such as the World Bank, the UN, and the Ford Foundation--and helped shape new models of global intervention that displaced the burden of change onto the inhabitants. Muzaffar argues that architecture in this domain didn't just symbolically represent power, but formed the material domain through which new modes of power acquired sense. Looking at a series of architectural projects across the world, from housing in Ghana to village planning in Nigeria and urban planning in Venezuela and Pakistan, Muzaffar explores how architects and planners shaped new ideas of time, land, climate, and the decolonizing body, making them appear as sources of untapped value. What resulted, Muzaffar argues, is a widespread belief in spontaneous Third World development without capital, which continues to foreclose any global discussion of colonial theft.

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