Modern architecture and the built environment have been organized by networks of colonial power. To explore the regimes of this organization, this lecture series suggests shifting attention from colonialism to coloniality. Colonialism commonly denotes a historical system of territorial expansion, political domination, economic exploitation, and cultural hegemony, implemented by European powers from the 15th to the mid-20th century and characterized by military occupation, the imposition of foreign institutions, the extraction of resources, and the subjugation of local populations. In contrast, coloniality is a critical theoretical concept developed in the context of decolonial thought, particularly by scholars such as Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, and María Lugones. It refers to the enduring patterns of power, knowledge, and subjectivity that outlast the formal end of colonial rule. Coloniality operates through the continued global dominance of Western epistemologies, the marginalization of non-Western knowledge systems, and the persistence of racial hierarchies and economic dependency in the postcolonial world. Quijano’s notion of the coloniality of power articulates how colonial forms of domination have become embedded within the project of modernity itself. The lecture series probes coloniality as an analytical framework to understand modernist architecture and urban planning in various geographical contexts. It asks: How are these persistent knowledge systems, hierarchies, and dependencies still organizing architectures? In which architectural institutions, networks, and discourses does the coloniality of power survive or even thrive? Which spatial practices, processes, or techniques may oppose these tendencies? The lecture series invites critical, interdisciplinary, and situated inquiries into the ways in which coloniality continues to shape architectural thought and practice.
The lectures will be in English.
Location: Auditorium at Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM), Schaumainkai 43, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
26.11.2025, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
“Tracing Political Violence in Postcolonial Architecture: The Body Keeps the Score”
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Anoma Pieris [Melbourne School of Design]
10.12.2025, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
“The Favela as Figure: Colonialist Afterlives and Urbanism’s Technocratic Aesthetics in 1920s Rio de Janeiro”
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Adrian Anagnost [Tulane University School of Liberal Arts New Orleans]
04.02.2026, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
“(Zionist) Coloniality under (British) Colonialism: The Architectural and Warfare Modernism of Yohanan (Eugene) Ratner in Mandatory Palestine”
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Alona Nitzan-Shiftan [Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Haifa]
11.2.2026, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
“Architectures of the Archive: Reorganising Memory and Heritage”
With Contributions by Setareh Noorani [Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam] and Prof. Dr. Sung Hong Kim [University of Seoul] and a Guided Tour through the Exhibition “Out of Storage” with Evelyn Steiner [Curator]