C. Greig Crysler
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies; Arcus Chair of Gender, Sexuality & the Built Environment; Professor of Architecture
- Education
- Ph.D., Graduate Program in the History and Theory of Art and Architecture, Binghamton University
- AA, Diploma, Architectural Association School of Architecture
- B.E.S., School of Architecture, University of Waterloo
- Biography
C. Greig Crysler completed his professional training in architecture at the University of Waterloo, Canada and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, UK. He teaches courses in the History, Theory and Society of Architecture. Crysler is also Arcus Chair for Gender, Sexuality and the Built Environment, and currently serves as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies for the College of Environmental Design. His research focuses on two areas of investigation. The first examines the institutions and practices of architectural theory in the context of the changing social, economic and political forces of the global present. Crysler’s book, Writing Spaces: Discourses of Architecture, Urbanism and the Built Environment (Routledge, 2003) examines emerging debates around globalization and transnational cultural processes, as they emerged in a range of journals between 1960 and 2000, and considers their implications for architectural theory. These arguments are developed further in the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural Handbook of Architectural Theory (Sage, 2012), which he co-edited with Hilde Heynen and Stephen Cairns. A second area of area research operates at the intersection of space, power and identity through case studies of architecture and cities. Recent publications include his 2019 book, Spaces of Fear: Bodies, Walls, Cities (co-edited with Maria Moreno Carranco, was published in 2019 by Publicaciones UACHE of the Universidad Autónoma Metroplitana, in Mexico City), which examines the relationship between embodiment, affect and the aesthetics of fear in North American cities. A second collection, also co-edited with Moreno Carranco, entitled Mexico City: Materiality, Performance and Power, was developed as part of a year-long teaching program led by Crysler through UC Berkeley’s Global Urban Humanities Initiative. A sequence of material conditions (earth, water, concrete, pigment, blood, waste and rubble) provide the framework for situated histories of Mexico City.
Crysler’s forthcoming monograph, co-authored with Shiloh Krupar, entitled Waste Complex: Governing through Austerity, Race and Debt, also explores the materiality of power, through case studies of cities whose toxic histories of environmental crisis and debt have generated new spaces of biopolitical citizenship. The book will be published in 2020 as part of the Society and Space series edited by Stuart Elden for Sage Publications. Through his leadership as Arcus Chair, Crysler has translated his commitment to equity and social justice in design education into frameworks for student and faculty engagement, public discussion and alternative forms of pedagogy related to issues such as dispossession, queer theory, and activism. In recognition of his efforts, he received the Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence and Equity in 2017.
- Courses Taught
Arch 130: Introduction to Design Theory and Criticism
Arch 139/239: Design and Difference: Spaces of Queer Theory
Arch 139/239: Spatial Politics and the Global City: Design, Dispossession and Dissent
Arch 281: Introduction to Methods of Architectural History, Theory and Society
Arch 139/239: Mexico City: Materiality/Performance/Power
Arch 139/239: Mexico City: Histories/Spaces/Cultures
Arch 139/239: Architecture, Ethics and Activism
- Selected Publications
C. Greig Crysler and Shiloh Krupar, Waste Complex: Governing through Austerity, Waste and Debt, co-authored book manuscript [forthcoming in 2020 from Sage Publications, as part of the Society and Space series, edited by Stuart Elden]
C. Greig Crysler et al., “Introduction,” and "Strange Dust: The Matter of Fear at Ground Zero," in C. Greig Crysler and Maria Moreno Carranco, Espacios de Medio: Cuerpos. Muros, Ciudades/Spaces of Fear: Bodies, Walls, Cities [Mexico City: UAM Press, 2019], pp. 15-46 and 89-140
“The Paradoxes of Design Activism. Part Three: Exchange,” Field: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Criticism [forthcoming Fall 2020]
“The Paradoxes of Design Activism. Part Two: Scale,” Field: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Criticism [Spring, 2019]: http://field-journal.com/issue-10/the-paradoxes-of-design-activism-expertise-scale-and-exchange-part-two-scale
“The Paradoxes of Design Activism. Part One: Expertise,” Field: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Criticism [Spring, 2018]: http://field-journal.com/issue-2/crysler
C. Greig Crysler and Shiloh Krupar, "Waste Time: Excess Potential in Academic Production," in Reversing the Cult of Speed in Higher Education. The Slow Movement in the Arts and Humanities (New York and London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 141-55
“Groundwork: (De)Touring Treasure Island’s Toxic History,” in Lynne Horiuchi and Tanu Sankalia (eds.) Urban Reinventions: San Francisco’s Treasure Island (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), pp. 175-86
“Between the Cloud and the Chasm: Architectural Journals, Waste Regimes, and Economies of Attention,” in Daniel Maudlin and Marcel Vellinga (eds), Consuming Architecture: On the Occupation, Appropriation and Interpretation of Buildings (London and New York: Routledge 2014), pp. 276-294
C. Greig Crysler, in Crysler et al., Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory (London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012):
“Introduction: Architectural Theory in an Expanded Field” co-authored with Stephen Cairns and Hilde Heynen, Handbook of Architectural Theory (London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012), pp. 1-22
“Time’s Arrows: Spaces of the Past,” The Handbook of Architectural Theory (London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012), pp. 325-339
“Comparative Alterities: Native Encounters and the National Museum,” in Madhuri Desai and Mina Rajagopalan (eds), Colonial Frames/Nationalist Histories (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Press, 2012), pp. 105-36
Writing Spaces: Discourses of Architecture, Urbanism and the Built Environment, 1960-2000 (New York and London: Routledge 2003)