SHOW: Feb 24-28, Greene 201 LECTURE: Mon Feb 24, 6pm, Greene Gallery

SARAH GOLDFARB: “Architec[ul]ture”

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[Brown’s Presentation]

Alumni, Sarah Goldfarb lectures on ARCHITEC[UL]TURE as “an inquiry into the ethics of architecture in a Third World country striving to create a global identity in the 21st century.”  Goldfarb’s presentation is a reflection on her travels to Morocco as part of the Brown’s Travel Fellowship that she was awarded in 2012.

Nestled along the northwest border of Africa, Morocco is home to one of the most active grounds for the collision and intersection of cultures and styles. A combination of French, Arabic, Berber, and many other influences, the country created an identity which was a fusion of styles made uniquely their own. As a rapidly developing Third World country, Morocco has begun using architecture as a tool to strengthen and build their global identity, and in doing so they have become entangled in multiple contexts; social, political, cultural, educational, and economic, across a multitude of scales. Architec[ul]ture is an inquiry into the ethics of architecture in a Third World country striving to create a global identity in the 21^st century. In countries where the standard of living is generally quite low, contemporary architecture is engaged in a climate that forces it to either respond to the needs of the masses, or to disregard them in favor of an idealized audience; one that is often foreign to the country and its customs. In order to develop a thorough and sympathetic understanding of the current climate, the research begins to ask who is building and who are they building for, questioning the social and political contexts surrounding contemporary projects through multiple cultural lenses. As the contexts surrounding projects seem to grow exponentially greater and more complex, attention must be paid to the perspectives from which research is executed, particularly within countries and cultures that are not our own. In conjunction with students from the Ecole Supérieure d’Architecture de Casablanca, the research was executed through a month-long, cross country venture to explore the current architectural climate throughout Morocco, and the potential repercussions of its trajectory. SARAH GOLDFARB

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