The aim of this paper is to analyzes the single-family architecture of Edward Olencki—a faculty of the University of Michigan practicing architecture in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the mid-twentieth century—with the aim of uncovering the social, cultural, and technological strategies that shaped the architectural landscape of the University of Michigan area. By applying computational design methodologies, particularly shape grammars, this research delves into how Olencki’s work contributed to the evolving architectural context of mid-century college towns in the United States.

Born in Chicago in 1922, Olencki was a student of Mies van der Rohe, earning both his Bachelor of Science (1944) and Master of Science (1949) in architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). He worked with Mies as a draftsman and designer from 1943 to 1948, before joining the University of Michigan faculty in 1948, where he later became dean in 1964. Olencki taught courses in construction materials, comprehensive architectural design, and furniture design, while his research interests focused on modern church architecture. In addition to his academic role, Olencki operated his architectural firm alongside his partner, Joseph Albano, designing homes, churches, and commercial buildings in the region. Albano, also an IIT graduate and Mies van der Rohe protégé, joined the University of Michigan in 1947.

This paper is part of a broader study analyzing the work of mid-20th-century faculty-practitioners in U.S. college towns. Many of these faculty-practitioners developed hybrid designs that merged strategies, rules, and elements of European modernism with American traditional architecture. Through this investigation story, the paper reveals a distinct architectural style—what may be termed “college town modernism.” The use of shape grammar as a methodological tool enhances the study of hybridity in architectural design, offering architects and historians new ways to analyze and interpret the unique fusion of influences that shaped these communities.

In the late 19th century, during the Qajar era, British imperial ambitions reshaped Sistan, a borderland region of Iran, by reimagining its geography and redefining its boundaries with Afghanistan. Through maps, photographs, and travelogues, the British projected an “Oriental gaze” that cast Sistan as a barren expanse in need of reclamation, legitimizing their strategic interventions. The construction of consulates, telegraph stations, and imperial banks fortified a “buffer zone” designed to protect British India while extending influence into Persia. This paper examines the British consulate in Nasratabad, Sistan (1900–1903), constructed under supervision of Colonel Chenevix-Trench and Captain Benn, and described as “the most solid and imposing” structure in the region. Drawing on archival records and architectural analysis, it interrogates how the consulate’s hybrid form encapsulates the tension between colonial authority and local agency. Although guided by British ambitions to assert order and permanence, the building’s reliance on indigenous materials and Sistani labor transformed its design. Indigenous methods, including domed brick roofing, badgir (windcatcher), and kharkhana (camel-thorn screens), were interwoven with colonial ideals, producing a structure imbued with hybridity and “in-betweenness.” This study challenges the conventional narrative of colonial architecture as a unilateral imposition of power. Instead, it highlights how the British consulate in Sistan became a space where imperial authority was negotiated, resisted, and reshaped through local knowledge and cultural exchange. Indigenous laborers made significant contributions, subtly transforming the building’s form and function. The consulate, therefore, exemplifies how colonial architecture can serve not only as an instrument of domination but also as a site of resistance, where local practices and identities persist within the structures designed to control them. Ultimately, the British consulate in Sistan stands as a symbol of negotiation and adaptation, offering hybridization as a more complex, layered approach through which to view the legacy of colonial structures in post-colonial discourse.

In contexts where oral traditions and impermanent vernacular architecture once prevailed, colonial and globalized design practices and historiographic methods rooted in permanence often marginalize local knowledge. This disregard—conscious and subconscious— manifests in the contemporary built environment in extremes, from mere decorative and formal connection with the vernacular traditions up to standardized copies of the Western notions of modernization. This paper investigates the impact of colonization and globalization on the built environment in Africa, using Rwanda as the primary case study. Examining who shapes the Rwandan contemporary built environment and the narratives embedded within it, one can begin to critically engage with and understand the past and contextualize the present. Through qualitative research that includes anthropological and historical sources, and postcolonial theory, this study critically analyzes case studies from Rwanda that demonstrate different approaches to local traditions and their contemporary interpretations. This research informs the growing debate on decolonizing architectural methods in Africa and beyond by also highlighting failed attempts at context-based design.

Many architectural typologies in Rwanda today reflect imported constructs of governance, education, democracy, and commerce, raising critical questions about balancing external influences with local traditions. Additionally, architectural historiography, professional practice, and the role of the architect in Rwanda differ from their Western counterparts due to the discipline’s relatively recent professionalization in the country. These challenges are not unique to Rwanda but are prevalent across the Global South. Qualitative research leveraging anthropological and historical sources within the country and work done within the realm of postcolonial theory on the continent. This paper advocates emic and interdisciplinary methodologies in architectural practice, research, and discourse.