Staff / George Epolito
Senior Lecturer
0161 247 6944
BS & BArch, Rensselaer Troy, NY, USA
MArch, SCI-Arc Los Angeles, CA, USA
The underlying theme of my research deals with situations of marginalisation, particularly set within the context of the Americas. Initial investigations explored the opposing conditions of marginality versus centrality in spatial and material expressions at the urban, building, and haptic/tectonic scales. As I started my academic career in the United States, this focus shifted more to socio-economic and cultural issues of marginalisation regarding the spatial layout of American cities. Displaced into the margins both physically and socially, I was teaching at a historically black university in rural Alabama where the genres of African-American music and literature, as well as environmental racism, were central to my research. These various aspects of the everyday in African-American life were seen for their potential in informing new ways of designing the American city, as a alternative means to the mainstream’s obsession with emulating Euro-centric ideals of urban form making.
This research evolved to include more culturally diverse mixtures of people in Latin America, as I became a visiting professor at the Universidad de Puerto Rico. Hispanic cultural issues in the Americas now entered into the mix as music, dance and the urban design strategies of the Spaniard’s Law of the Indies would become my new areas of enquiry. This research led me to expand the cultural complexity to include Italian immigrants as I again found myself as a visiting professor in Tampa, where I researched the urban neighborhood of Ybor City, once known as the marginalised Latin Quarter for its mixture of (Afro)-Cubanos, Spaniards and Italians.
The focus of my latest research efforts has now been set within the context of the Río de la Plata Basin of South America, building upon my previous interests of the intersection of African, Native American, Iberian, and Italian influences. Prior to arriving at the MSA, my two yeas as Academic Director for Clemson University’s Study Abroad Programme in Geona, Italy afforded me the opportunity to better understand the role of Italian influence in this region of Latin America which is defined by Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. Each of these nations, including Italy, found itself in the midst of debates in the formation of nationally unified cultural identities in art and architecture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the cases Argentina and Uruguay, artists and architects of Italian heritage/education were central figures in this formation, while in a less accepting Brazil, they were kept as marginalised figures.
The role of politics in determining who is deemed the authentic representative of cultural production in art and architecture is of particular interest to me, feeding my current enquires: How and when does a marginalised culture reverse its role and become an integral part of a society’s mainstream culture? Do the resulting products reflect hybridisation of the originally competing cultural identities, a coexistence of varying influences, let us say, or do they become physical and psychological manifestations of dominance and intolerance? How have these issues affected the sociological and material realisation of important cities such as São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Toronto, to name a few?
Common to all my research activities has been my physical displacement into the context in which I have been researching. The idea of investigating displaced peoples trying to find their way through negotiating their role in unknown contexts, led me to form the BArch Unit displace / non-place at the MSA. Students are displaced into the Latin contexts of Italy (and hopefully Latin America in the future) in order to question their own preconceived notions of design. The sites have typically lost their meaning, non-places, relegating them to the margins of contemporary cities.
Research
A selection of recent research outputs.Book Chapters
Epolito, G., 2005. 'Chiaroscuro - Crossing the [Swarthy] Color Line into White Ethnicity'. In SOUTH Volume 1, 1, 18 - 29, Clemson School of Architecture, Clemson, SC.
Presentations
Epolito, G., 2009. 'Parallel Expressions: Revealing the Artistic Contributions of Italian Immigrants in South America During the Era of Simon Rodia', Art and Migration: Sabato (Simon) Rodia and the Watts Towers of Los Angeles, International Conference, University of Genova, Italy, April 2-5, 2009.
Epolito, G., 2006. 'Italianità – A Search for Cultural Identity through Art and Architecture in Italy and the Rio De La Plata Basin', American Association of Italian Studies Conference, Genoa, Italy, 23 - 26 May 2006.
Epolito, G., 2006. 'New York City Of Architectures: Lo Skyline Della Città: The Body In Relation To Architecture', The Landmarks of New York New York City of…., Italian Consulate Agent of Genoa, Italy, 13 July 2006.
Epolito, G., 2002. 'Coexistence: The Influence of Italian Immigrant Culture in Latin American Landscapes', ACSA 2002 Southwest Regional Symposium, University of Texas at San Antonio - San Antonio, Texas, Nov. 2002, in ACSA 2002 Southwest Regional.
Epolito, G., 1999. 'Coexistence through the layering of oppositions - a theoretical approach to design', ACSA 1999 Southeast Regional Meeting, Universidad Politechnica de Puerto Rico - San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 1999, in ACSA 1999 Southeast Regional.
Other Outputs
Epolito, G., Schreiber, S., Green, T. and others, 2002. 'Hurricane Loss Reduction for Housing in Florida', An interdisciplinary, funded research project involving three universities - Florida International, South Florida, and Clemson..