Great Britain is one of the primary examples to observe when working to understand the reach of colonial, European imperialism. Cain and Hopkins observe that the onset of British Imperialism can be read two ways: one as the continuation of an existing system dominated by oligarchical land holders, and second as a consequence of the […]
A Selective Curation and Distribution of Knowledge The Natural History Museum in London established in 1881 was designed by the Architect Alfred Waterhouse under the close guidance of Richard Owen, the Superintendent of the museum at the time. It exhibits a vast range of specimens and is recognized as the pre-eminent center of natural history […]
A 500ft sphere — the proposed resting place for English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton — was designed by French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée in 1784.1 Boullée’s Cenotaph for Newton is rooted in the architecture of multiple cultures, the project context is disregarded, and the reconstruction of nature dominates ideological understandings of the architecture. Therefore, the Cenotaph for […]
A Glance at Belgium and the Misconstrued Perception of its Colonial Past The Royal Museum for Central Africa, currently referred to as the AfricaMuseum, located in Tervuren, Belgium is a colonial museum that was founded by King Leopold II at the very end of the 19th century.[1] The origin of the museum “dates back to […]
Shintō as a distinguished religious belief system from Buddhism, has no fixed dogmas or strict scriptures but more readily preserved and observed through the common social life. Shrine Shintō, Shintō meaning “the way of the kami,” are sacred spaces where people worship the Shintō gods. Shintō rituals stress the harmony between deities, man and nature, […]
Sir John Soane was a prominent neo-classical architect in Britain between the 18th and early 19th century. Possibly his most famed building was the London townhome he inhabited during the latter half of his career. Having begun its renovations in the early 1800’s, Soane lived and worked at Lincoln’s Inn Fields until his death in 1837. During […]
The Cuzco Cathedral, completed in 1654, is the most prominent display of colonial architecture in the City of Cuzco, Peru. Located in the heart of the city, the Spanish constructed the cathedral on top of a site that originally held an Inca palace, a palace that was demolished by an earthquake in the early 1650s1. […]
The weaponizing of architecture in Canada’s longest running residential school. In a report written to Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, providing advice on how to assimilate the native population to the culture of the colonisers, it was observed from the American government’s experience that when children are permitted to return home after school, “the influence […]
The Egyptian Revival Style enjoyed attention in the United States (US) as “an exotic” and as a primarily architectural phenomenon in the mid-nineteenth century.1 Architectural markers from the time—such as the original Library of Congress (1808), and the Washington monument (1848)—point to the problematic nature of colonial power exerting influence through the fetishization of ancient […]
The British Raj Thrives due to Mayo College In 1875, the British founded Mayo College in the town of Ajmer, located in the Rajputana (now known as Rajasthan) area in India. During the days of the British Empire, the area of Rajputana was divided into princely states, each having its own ruler who owed allegiance […]