Join author and academic Ijlal Muzaffar for a discussion about his recent book, Modernism’s Magic Hat: Architecture and the Illusion of Development Without Capital. 

In this work, published last year by University of Texas Press, Muzaffar looks at how modernist architects working for Third World development agencies resolved one of the central dilemmas of the mid-20th-century world order: how to make decolonization plausible without accounting for centuries of capital drain under colonial rule. 

The countless development projects they designed, from self-help village housing to urban master plans, put in place the assumption that Third World development was only a problem of correct design. 

Contemporary design projects celebrating agency and creativity of the poor ironically perpetuate the belief in spontaneous Third World development without capital, continuing to foreclose the discussion of historical justice and debt.

A Professor of Architectural History at the Rhode Island School of Design, Ijlal Muzaffar holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MARC from Princeton University. He has published widely in journals and edited volumes on the histories of modern architecture in colonial and decolonized contexts. Modernism’s Magic Hat is Muzaffar’s first book.