Sam Dodd

Boom and Bust Brick

February 17, 2024

Summary:

Summary of Group Discussion by Mychelle Moritz

Select Readings:

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Chapter 1) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot 

In St. Louis Even the Old Bricks are Leaving Town by Robert Reinhold

Post /Socialist Affect: Ruination and Reconstruction of the Nation in Urban Vietnam by Christina Schwenkel

This is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth (Chapter 1) by Jedediah Purdy

How Clay Was Found Three and a Half Miles Under the Ocean by H. Fuetterer

The Grid Book by Hannah B Higgins 

Some Reflections on Architecture and Construction by Eladio Dieste

Walking Past Abandoned Houses, I Think of Eric by Barbara Costas-Biggs

Becoming Past: History in Contemporary Art (Introduction) by Jane Blocker

On the Architecture of America by Author Unknown

Discussion Guide:

‘Architectural Ceramics: Boom and Bust Brick’ Discussion Guide

About the topic

By tracking the lifespan of a brick – one of architectural history’s most durable building materials – we can also track how hegemonic systems are produced and reproduced over time. Consider two examples from the history of American building:

Euro-American settlers moving westward across North America often plotted their settlements directly overtop Indigenous earthen mounds. Written accounts tell of the settlers’ intention to build their courthouses, jails, and schools out of bricks to ensure that such structures would survive multiple generations.

In 1978, the New York Times reported on “great neatly stacked piles of weathered red bricks stand[ing] by the railroad tracks that hug the Mississippi River.” The bricks had been salvaged from 19th century manufacturing sites in St. Louis – once proclaimed a Gateway to the West – and were being shipped to “places like Savannah to restore historic buildings and to Texas to make patios for the new houses springing up around Houston.”

As part of the series about “Architectural Ceramics,” this State of Ceramics will take up the brick to question how claims to place come to belong to some people but not others, and how “boom-and-bust” economies leave their mark in the built environment. To do this, we’ll focus on the dynamic qualities of bricks used in the history of American building, asking how they have settled, shifted, and otherwise moved within fluctuating geographies produced by unstable social valuations. 

What is it about the affordances of brick – its materiality, its production, its form – that worked so well to emplace America’s violent myths and spatial imaginaries? How might those of us who work with ceramic objects take up the same old brick without reifying the same old structures? Are other futures made possible by the brick we can hold in our hands? In this session, we will grasp at some dynamic bricks to ask where they’ve been and imagine where else they might go.

About the Lead Historian

Sam Dodd is an architectural historian, curator, and educator. He is currently an assistant professor of art history and criticism at Stony Brook University. His work looks at everyday sites and objects within the American built environment, focusing on questions of spatial justice, material culture, and community engagement. Sam is currently working on a book about brickmaking and social reproduction – research that has led him into collaborations with a fiber artist (to co-curate an exhibition), a filmmaker (to make a short film), and a printmaker (to host a print exchange, forthcoming). He has published broadly, including essays in Art Journal, Journal of Design Issues, and the Journal of Architectural Education.