This graduate seminar explores the world history of architecture through the twin lenses of circumstance and confrontation. Moving beyond the standard binary of "West versus Rest," the course questions Eurocentric conventions by investigating the internal fractures of the West through marginalized centers, revealing how the modern condition is defined less by a stable canon than by shifting borders, territorial anxiety, and the "decline" of established spatial orders. The seminar balances this political reality of conflicts with the aesthetic possibility of convergence. We trace how architectural forms migrate and persist across geopolitical divides. From the ritual circumstances of the cave and the labyrinth to the confrontations of walls and borders, students will learn to read architecture not as a static object, but as a site where historical ruptures and visual rhymes converge. Part I: Circumstance examines sacred space as a negotiation between earth and sky. We begin with the horizontal—how movement and ritual inscribe meaning into the land—and the "palimpsest" cities like Jerusalem. We then pivot to the vertical, analyzing how civilizations from Teotihuacan to Gothic Europe construct and connect the ground to the heavens. Part II: Confrontation focuses on moments where forms are redefined by conflict. We investigate urban flashpoints: the mercantile friction between Venice and Istanbul, the marginalized centers of Prague, and the divided topography of Berlin. We examine architecture as a tool for "securing the volume"—defining territory, enforcing borders. Finally, we address the acceleration of global flows, tracing the formation of buildings and cities as a series of negotiations between the local and universalizing forces. Treating architecture as a medium through which societies negotiate identity and memory, the seminar reflects on what it means to write—and inhabit—a world history of architecture.

Richard Ingersoll, World Architecture: A Cross-Cultural History, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Caroline Humphrey and Piers Vitebsky, Sacred Architecture (Thorsons, 1997).