Modernist Architectural Design and Race in the American City

Speakers

Selena Bagnara Milan

Susan Singh

Arièle Dionne-Krosnick

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Modernist Architectural Design and Race in the American City

This session explores the intersection of modernist architectural design aesthetics and the evolution of Race relations in the American city during the second half of the 20th century. By focusing on three case studies, we consider the architectural figures, typologies and debates which defined this distinctive period in modernist architectural design. The presentation focuses on the role of public space as protest, school design as “progressive” yet segregated politics and urban renewal as monumental planning.

 

Speakers
  • "Caught In The Middle: Ralph and William Zimmerman’s Sarasota School Designs Through The Era of Desegregation"
    Susan Singh 
  • "Urban Renewal and Post-Modern Legacy of Oklahoma City"
    Selena Bagnara Milan 
  • "Dive-In at the Monson Motor Lodge: St. Augustine, 1964"
    Arièle Dionne-Krosnick 

 

Moderator

Hector Fernando Burga

 

All sessions take place at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Exact classroom locations to be announced.

Moderator

Speaker

Susan Singh

Susan Singh is a Ph.D. Architecture student at the University of Texas Austin, focusing her research on the history of modern building technologies. She is a graduate of the Weitzman Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania as well as University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s civil engineering program. Her previous professional experience includes construction consulting in Dallas and exterior envelope forensics at several architectural and engineering firms in Chicago and New York. 

Arièle Dionne-Krosnick

Arièle Dionne-Krosnick is a Ph.D. candidate in Architecture at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her dissertation, “Swimming Pools, Civil Rights, and the American City in the 1960s,” proposes that Black civil rights protests that took place at swimming pools contesting unjust racial and spatial segregation had the potential to radically transform the symbolic and physical built environment of American cities. She was a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2016-2020), and previously worked at the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. She completed her BFA in Art History and Studio Arts (2012) at Concordia University, Montreal and holds an MA in Visual and Critical Studies (2014) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.