We are twenty-one years into the twenty-first century. The world has never been more connected with the advent of new technologies, yet historical inequalities still run rampant. These inequalities manifest themselves in different ways. Global travel, for example – despite the ubiquity of aeroplanes nowadays – is still only widely accessible to citizens of “developed” countries due to prohibitive visa restrictions. In architectural education, many institutions still prioritise a Eurocentric curriculum, the architecture of non-Western populations largely ignored. Another perpetuation of prejudiced systems is Orientalism – and exploring this concept through an architectural lens is useful for interrogating contemporary design approaches and approaches of the future.
The term Orientalism was borne out of cultural critics Edward Said’s 1978 text of the same name, in which he argued that the dominant European political ideology formed the notion of the Orient in order to subjugate it. Said explained that the concept embodied a distinction between the “East” (the Orient) and the “West” (the Occident) so as the West could control and authorize views on the East. In short, it is a binary viewpoint, a system of representation whereby cultures of the East are portrayed as primitive and uncivilised, in contrast to Western cultures which are “progressive” and “civilised.” This, in effect, justified European and American imperial projects – from the expropriation of resources from North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia to exploitative expropriation of cultural heritage.
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