On Architectural Materials, Damage, and Repair

https://www.arch.virginia.edu/events/care-and-violence-architectural-materials-damage-and-repair

A friend visited and I wanted to take them to something fun/exciting. What better thing of interest is a seminar from the Architectural School titled “Care and Violence: On Architectural Materials, Damage, and Repair.” The thing I really appreciate about Architectural seminars is how lucidly they reveal social/political/economic structures through materiality or the built environment. In other social study fields, it is done so by examining bodies, institutions, markets, ideology, actors, ontologies, theories, and so forth up the abstraction ladder. Architectural studies has a bit more clarity because they can point out the reification of these “abstract forces” and how they manifest materially in the world.1

However, I do have some critiques on the idea of social theory, regardless of the field it is in. Because the employment of interpretation and meaning assignment to the world is itself privileged, the realm of high arts and academia, when discussing meaning, seems a bit questionable. We have all experienced a sense of cultural gatekeeping, the usage of theoretical jargon, and a need for such fluency to be “in”. Anyway, I left the talk with a sense of ivory-towerism toward the seminar. It may be because I fell asleep, but it also may be due to the heavy use of theoretical terms: neoliberalism, colonialism, environmental justice, biopolitics, vinyality, pollution as colonialism, white domesticity, and such. But it was definitely because I stayed up until 4 a.m. on the day off to do laundry.

The Seminar

My usual format for blogs about seminars starts with the raw retelling of what was covered, but it ended up being the reflection section, so yeah, here we go. The lecturer was Meredith TenHoor, an architectural and urban historian and Professor in the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute. The lecture was on the bodily and environmental impacts of building materials through the case of vinyl and toxins. 

It started with the history of vinyl and its use in suburban development. They then talked about the side effects vinyl causes, but how the marketing to housewives hid the harmful effects. This concept of white domesticity (white neutrality/benign usage of goods that overlook the origins/impact of production) is used throughout the seminar to highlight some problems of consumption.

Next was taking a look at the producers of vinyl, specifically one company called Congoleum. I don’t think the company itself took part in any colonialist extraction, but I think it was chosen because of how similar the name was to Congo. It was around here that I started to doze, so my recollection would be a bit hazy. But, what I got from vinyl production in relation to colonialism is through considering the bodies and impacts of production. 

As vinyl production produces a LOT of chemicals, it has long-term impacts on the communities where they are produced. Vinyl production has led to cases like Cancer Alley, where many industrial chemical material plants pump out chemicals that have long-term impacts on the local communities. The lecture ties it back into colonialism by considering the implications of deciding what land is fit for discarding waste and where waste should end up. The answer given is historically colonized places like Africa and India, or using a term I don’t think I should: the Global South. It gets worse because the recycling of these materials, or attempts to, often releases more toxins into the local environment. 

On top of the discussion of vinyl production and its lifecycle, TenHoor also considered the human behind the production process. Taking a look at the bodies involved in vinyl production shows again another story of exploitation. The workers creating vinyl end up being exposed to a whole swath of harmful chemicals. Their socioeconomic background is usually low-income, and they are migrants who are subject to labor exploitation. The lecture also brings up the more egregious case of how forced labor in the Uyghur region produces ~20% of vinyl coming out of China.

The final slide asked the audience to consider what can be done about vinyl production, specifically for architects. Is self-regulation sufficient enough to halt the production of these materials? There is a worry that it follows the neoliberal paradigm. What about economically regulating vinyl? The concern is that there are so many ways the global supply chain can “combat” that. It’s open-ended.

Seminar Notes


  1. This doesn’t mean it is better or really any clearer than social theory. Most art/performance pieces require a description of what they are, or else I wouldn’t know the true intent. However, some art plays on that interpretation itself, etc. etc. ↩