The Human Settlement: Erwin Anton Gutkind's fascination with Africa and critique of modern design

Elisa Dainese

Planning Perspectives, 2024, vol. 39, issue 5, 983-1006

Abstract: In the immediate aftermath of the devastation and frustration of the Second World war, several architects and planners in Europe and North America took on the task of expanding their disciplinary boundaries and providing accounts of ‘others’. As they investigated various understandings of human life and the social dimension of the built environment, the interest shifted from the paradigms of modern design to the complexity of distant cultures and the variety beyond the Western tradition. Among those who challenged narrow perspectives was Erwin Anton Gutkind, a planner, architect, and theorist of German origin. Examining his unpublished manuscript, entitled The Human Settlement, and its long chapter on Africa, this article demonstrates how Gutkind pushed the theoretical and geographical limits of the historical research on architecture of his time to develop a project that offered a strong critique of modernist attitudes, internationalist models, and nation-state narratives. The essay also reflects on both Gutkind's exposure of colonial and neocolonial strategies of modernization and westernization on the continent and his problematic representation of local and non-colonial architecture in Africa. The manuscript's merits and limits reveal the significant friction that arose between Gutkind's strategies for including underrepresented voices and his reliance on biased perspectives.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02665433.2024.2329462 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rppexx:v:39:y:2024:i:5:p:983-1006

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rppe20

DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2024.2329462

Access Statistics for this article

Planning Perspectives is currently edited by Michael Hebbert

More articles in Planning Perspectives from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().