Rebecca Choi, “White Man’s Got a God Complex"

In 1976, Chicago developer Charles Shaw bought nearly one million cubic feet of air above the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art for 17 million dollars, relieving the Museum of their debt problems. Bought under New York City’s Transfer of Development Rights, Shaw used his rights to air space in the construction of a 56-floor apartment tower on 53rd Street. Mayor Beame hailed the “self-help project” a success, claiming that the transaction showed “how government and the private sector can cooperate in achieving the common goal of improving lives in the city.” Transfer of air rights was not new, however the relationship between architects, Harlem, and MoMA in presenting experimental, bureaucratized architectural visions to the public is specific to the late 1960s. This talk discusses these visions and the context of Harlem, where a range of surreptitious and highly choreographed mechanisms of abstraction were tested out and exhibited at MoMA in a demonstration plan for the neighborhood in 1967.

Dr. Rebecca Choi is a postdoctoral fellow and visiting lecturer at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta Institute) at the ETH Zürich. Her research considers how movements for racial justice have had a pivotal role in the making of urban America. Choi is currently working on a book project which expands and deepens her doctoral work, Black Architectures: Race, Pedagogy and Practice, 1957–68. Developed through oral histories and alter-institutional archives, Black Architectures is an atlas of resistance that pushes for greater intersectionality between architecture, critical race theory and environmental studies. She has contributed writing to Harvard Design Magazine, The Avery Review, ARDETH Journal, and Places Journal.