Race mindedness in the physical architecture of Winnipeg's former civic auditorium

Abstract

Centred on the architecture of the Winnipeg Civic Auditorium, this thesis tangentially investigates the presence of Anglo-Saxon race mindedness in a place civic planners call the metropolitan centre of North America (Watt, 1932). The introduction situates the building tangentially in Manitoba's history. By thinking about the Civic Auditorium in a tangential manner I aim to attack the linear and sequential framework found in Eurocentric historical accounts. Doing this, my thesis criticises western architectural history and welcomes Indigenous reinterpretations of civic planning and urban aesthetics. I aim to philosophically attack the informational rhetoric of the cultural turn (Fabian, 1983). My thesis participates in the production of a material turn discourse, wherein the important philosophical relationship between objects and occidental culture is demonstrated (Otter, 2010; Bennett & Joyce, 2010; Hamilton, 2013). It utilises the Civic Auditorium as a touch stone to demonstrate the important ways that architecture has agency in the production of racism.