This lecture is an invitation to reimagine the norms of durational imagination in architecture and urbanism. In our comfort with the long arc of architecture and urban history, we have ignored the potential of small duration as a tool for decolonizing history. Based on a study of seasonally built temporary structures, this presentation demonstrates the connection between duration, architecture, and urban space and as vital elements to reimagine community life.

Swati Chattopadhyay is Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, California, Santa Barbara. An architect and architectural historian, she is the author of Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny (2005), Unlearning the City: Infrastructure in a New Optical Field (2012), Small Spaces: Recasting the Architecture of Empire (2023). She is a founding coeditor of PLATFORM, and Visiting Professor of Architectural History at the Manchester School of Architecture.