Development Design

Erica Morawski is Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Her research and writing center on the history of design in the Americas, with a particular focus on the Caribbean and Latin America. She is dedicated to investigating how design mediates relationships between state and populace through approaches that seek to privilege underrepresented histories. Focusing primarily on the Hispanic Caribbean within a global context, her work traverses the nature of these relationships across different scales, from a designed object to larger national or international frameworks of trade, manufacture, and knowledge systems. She is a member of the Society of Architectural Historians, Design History Society, and Vernacular Architecture Forum.

Richly illustrated and well written, Development Design contributes new insights by highlighting how hotels in the Hispanic Caribbean were not merely symbols of imperial imposition or touristic fantasy but were also instrumental in driving innovations in modern hotel design and projects of nationalism and geopolitics. Morawski’s work is a comprehensive and carefully studied investigation of Caribbean architecture in its historical context.