The seminar explores the intersection between textile arts and architecture, beginning with Gottfried Semper’s inquiry into architecture’s tectonic origins in textile arts. The course is organized in three parts. The first part mines different techniques, typologies, and geographies born out of that intersection and considers them in tangent with issues of colonialism, geopolitics, and labor through a broad historical and geographic scope from prehistory to the present. Tents, textile factories, and weaving techniques are studied in tandem with primary readings that range from Marco Polo’s The Travels (1298) to Mahatma Gandhi’s Wheels of Fortune (1921). The second part surveys the role of textiles in twentieth-century modern architecture through case studies of collaborative projects by Mies van der Rohe, Lilly Reich, Eero Saarinen, and Alexandre Girard; Kevin Roche, Sheila Hicks, Rem Koolhaas, and Petra Blaisse; and others; and pays particular attention to the boundary between architecture and interior design by highlighting the role gender has played in that division. The third part focuses on the role textiles play in conversations about sustainability and looks into material innovation in that area. Limited enrollment