We present the 110th edition of ARQ magazine. Titled 'Decolonizing,' the issue opens a discussion around a simple question: What does it mean to decolonize architecture?
In recent years, the discipline—understood in its broadest sense—seems to be undergoing a decolonial awakening. An increasing number of historians, theorists, curators, editors, and architecture professionals are reflecting on the relationship between colonial and neocolonial violence and the built environment. From passionate debates over the dismantling of canonical and Eurocentric history courses to a growing number of exhibitions dedicated to the subject, this issue of ARQ reveals how the ideas of decolonization have permeated architectural thought and practice. The essays and projects within these pages explore the association between settler colonialism and architecture, rewrite disciplinary origin stories, examine the relationship between modernism and racism, reconstruct indigenous ontologies and cosmologies, and imagine a non-extractive, sustainable relationship with nature.
