Forming a portion of the St. Lawrence Market façade in Toronto, its first official city hall is part of a legacy of facadism in Toronto architecture, where buildings are preserved to meet the goal of heritage conservation of facades. As we seek a decolonized society, it is important to question the role our preserved architecture […]
Down one of the many paths of Rio de Janeiro’s botanical garden stands a grand neoclassical portal, the arched entrance, classical columns, frieze and pediment are all that remain of the Imperial Academy of Fine Art (figure 1). The plan of the Academy shows that it was once much larger (figure 2), after being built […]
In the late nineteenth century, Bombay transformed from a city of warehouses to become one of Britain’s finest imperial cities. As trade, wealth, and the population flourished, the colonial government embarked on the long-contemplated project of demolishing the old fort walls, to make room for the envisioned metropolis1. As Preeti Chopra discusses in her book, […]
Changgyeong Palace (Ch’anggyŏnggung)1 first opened its doors to general public in November 1909. What was once the royal grounds of the emperor Sunjong had undergone a renovation by Hirobumi Ito the first Japanese Resident-General in Korea – replacing and altering existing traditional architectures and landscape to build a new botanical garden, a zoo and a […]
The International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and products of Soil and Mine – referred to as the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 – proudly highlighted the United States’ advancements and achievements, featuring its ability to reunite and resurrect after the American Civil War, but also acted as an “effort to lift the country out of a […]
Introduction The role of public architecture serving as a channel for filtering nineteenth-century French ideals is explored in the town hall of Annaba. Public architecture, such as town halls, schools, or chambers of commerce1, were built as a reflection of colonial strength, consequently resulting in many buildings related to administration expressing the “aesthetic revolution imported […]
One of the defining characteristics of 19th century social and cultural thought was a shift in man’s approach towards science and reinterpretation of the relationship between human creation and divine inspiration. The architectural debates that dominated this moment of history are expressed in the Oxford museum’s 1854 competition to create the two-storey natural history museum […]
The Shakers were a religious utopian group that moved from Britain to America in the late 18th century. The Shakers originated in Manchester under the leadership of Ann Lee, who proclaimed herself the female incarnation of Christ.1 Delores Hayden describes in her book Seven American Utopias, that Ann Lee came to the religion after experiencing […]
The architecture of India has evolved throughout centuries, deeply rooted within history, culture, traditions, and religion. The British legacy in India remains among the infrastructure of the nation as colonial buildings in India use their architecture as expressions of control and power. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, formally known as the Victoria Terminus in Bombay is […]
The Indian Residential School (IRS) system operated in British Columbia from 1861 to 1984.1 Over a hundred years, these institutions operated to systematically carry out the cultural, and often, corporeal annihilation of Indigenous people across Canada.2 Of focus in this essay is the inextricable link between the colonizing mission of the Government, and the architectural […]