Building a Political Architectural History

“In the 1970s I became a licensed architect, [but I was also] teaching at Berkeley, MIT, later UCLA,” explained architect and historians Dolores Hayden at a University of Buffalo lecture last Wednesday. “I realized many of the political questions about space were important to me and traditional architectural history didn’t address them.”

Reflecting on her career, Hayden spoke about her decision to study (and build toward) a more social history of architecture. “I found that I could travel to socialist towns and figure out why people were building towns like this,” she said. In these towns, Hayden found valuable records and documents. “I pursued this project,” she continued, “and in the process I came across some articles that [demonstrated that] communitarian socialism could happen in domestic spaces.” She soon found herself steeped in the study of building patterns and documentations of social conditions. “You could talk about tenements and warehouses and certain neighborhoods,” noted Hayden; “[I realized that] people could build a much more political architectural history.”