Race and the Built Environment in the Iberian World, 1400-1800

The histories of architecture in the Iberian World have largely focused on European architects, engineers, and builders (i.e. master masons and carpenters) who travelled from Europe to colonial contexts in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Similarly, the globalisation of architectural design trends, or how design ideas travelled, has been chiefly studied through the dissemination of European architectural treatises across all these regions. Imperial legislation on the building and artistic trades across the former Spanish and Portuguese empires limited and often prohibited minorities from partaking in the trades. Yet recent literature shows that architects and builders of Amerindian descent dominated the building trades in Mexico City and Quito (Mundy 2015; Webster 2011), even as several imperial systems enacted legal mechanisms to silence local, Black, and Indigenous knowledge of structures, materials, and design.

This roundtable discussion brings experts in the field whose recent research overturns assumptions about the role that religious and racial minorities played in the building trades and in cities across the Iberian World. Speakers will discuss architecture, race, segregation and builders across cities and regions of the Iberian World including, Goa, Mexico, Brazil, The Philippines, and Portugal. 

This roundtable discussion includes some of the contributors to the roundtable article with the same title edited by Dr Laura Fernández-González and that will be published by the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians in the September 2024 issue.

Speakers include (in no particular order): Professor Barbara Mundy, Tulane University; Dr Miguel Valerio, Washington University in St Louis; Dr Sandra Pinto, University Nova, Lisbon; Dr Sidh Losa-Mendiratta, University of Coimbra, Portugal; and, Amy Chang, PhD Candidate, Harvard.

Chair: Dr Laura Fernández-González, University of Lincoln.

Laura is Associate Professor in the History of Art and Architecture at The University of Lincoln, an expert in architecture, urbanism and the arts of the Iberian World. Laura's book Philip II of Spain and the Architecture of Empire, (PSUP, 2021) has been commended with an Honourable Mention in the Eleanor Tufts Awards, 2022. She is currently at work on a major book project on four key port-cities of the Iberian world, namely, Lisbon, Goa, Seville and Havana.

This is an online event. Please see details below:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://durhamuniversity.zoom.us/j/94518461164?pwd=NnJoZHNneVYyNEFHL050YjYyM1hKUT09

Meeting ID: 945 1846 1164
Passcode: 998024