Modern Fetishes, Southern Thoughts

Abstract

This article problematizes the uncritical fascination zwith modern architecture, approached here through the notion of the fetish. Uncritical fascination with modern architecture has caused many architects to disengage from the socio-political realities of Colombia in order to design buildings that look like twentieth-century European precedents. Such an endogamous approach forecloses the possibility for architectural innovation, keeping architects in a vicious circle of repetition. The concept of coloniality is introduced as a vehicle to overcome the limitations of the modernist project, and the reproduction of colonising principles that give priority to European discourses and ideas. Finally, the article further discusses the concept of coloniality through recent debates on African cities and the emergence of ‘postcolonial urban theory’. The aim is to demonstrate that architectural scholarship in Colombia would benefit greatly from an engagement with southern theory, as well as from a greater emphasis on the contemporary urban condition, and the complex history that has lead us to where we are currently.