Architectural Historiography Research Articles

Sport Architecture. Technological evolution models and paradigms

The paper focuses on technological evolution applied to sports architecture, considered as urban infrastructures. A field of research – that has not been given its due importance both by architectural historiography and by technological culture – despite the fact that sports architecture has always represented privileged places of formal, technical and engineering experimentation. Some design experiences in the field of sports venues – from the twentieth century to the contemporary age – have instead represented significant steps of technological development. In particular, the latest generation of sports infrastructures, represent the architectural typology where it is possible to find, concentrated, paradigms such as those of resilience, flexibility, sustainability technologies for adaptive skins and many others innovative parameters.

Entangled histories of Architecture and Dispossession in The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (2011)

This paper addresses how documentary film may attend to, mediate, and negotiate the histories of the entanglement between housing and dispossession. For this purpose, it focuses on Chad Freidrichs’ 2011 documentary film The Pruitt-Igoe Myth that centers the accounts of Pruitt-Igoe’s African American residents. As it is well-known, the media images as well as the initial scholarly accounts of the demolishment of the housing complex have largely served as an icon of reactions against modernist architecture. The majority of later accounts, while steering the conversation away from a sole focus on architecture, singled out one or two aspects of this intricate tangle and approached the residents of the complex as passive victims rather than active agents. Here, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth constitutes a unique case not only within the popularized and highly mediatized conceptions of but also the extensive scholarship on the building complex. The paper argues that, in its centering of the first-hand accounts as well as documents of lives that unfolded in the building complex, this documentary offers us a more open mode of architectural historiography that centers the complex intersections of structural racism, dispossession, and built environment.

Superblock Model for Social Housing in the context of the Modern Movement Review: Lucio Costa’s proposal for Alagados

The approach to the urban development plan by Brazilian architect Lucio Costa for the Alagados neighborhood (1972) emphasizes the dimension of social housing in its urban planning, highlighting the incorporations carried out in response to the revisions of the modern movement. The study contextualizes revisionist approaches in urban plans, focusing on housing clusters in superblocks and their relationship with public facilities, bringing out the organicist paradigm, aiming for flexibility in urban planning. An approach is taken that includes a specific architectural historiography and design theory, reviewing Lucio Costa’s proposal through the analysis of documents, plans, and works. Given the disagreement between social housing policy based on utopian ideals and real estate interests, Lucio Costa’s superblock proposal presents its adaptable morphology, concluding that the implementation of Lucio Costa’s proposal could possibly have provided substantial positive results to Alagados.

Documentary collection of José Vial: Contributions to the study of the School of Architecture of Valparaíso

This article presents the work on the personal documentary collection of the architect José Vial Armstrong (1926-1983), part of the founding group of the School of Architecture of Valparaíso. This was based on identifying, reviewing, organizing, and classifying almost a thousand unpublished theoretical documents, providing new insights into his individual work and role within the group. Considering the proposal to revisit the sources of modern architecture, according to Panayotis Tournikiotis (2014), this article aims to demonstrate how the study of Vial's documentary collection would make the author visible in the historiography of modern architecture in Chile, as well as to understand the role of the architect within the School to which he belonged, and, therefore, to review new information about this institution.

¿“Arquitectura fascista” en España? Una discusión sobre su pertinencia conceptual y sobre su desarrollo fáctico en la posguerra española.

The historiography of 20th-century architecture has systematically avoided using the term “fascist architecture” in the case of Spain, unlike its counterparts “Nazi architecture” in Germany or “Fascist architecture” in Italy. A discussion is held on whether or not this conceptualisation is relevant, and four approaches to the problem are proposed: ultra-nationalism, palingenesis, totalitarianism, and Catholicism. The results show that Spanish architecture between 1931 and 1953 provides theoretical and material evidence of the process of fascistisation before and during the Spanish Civil War, and subsequently its slow de-fascistisation thanks to professional contact with the international environment and to the singular factor of national Catholicism.

Managing Luso-Utopia in Guinea-Bissau: Imperial Fictions and Dwelling Practices in Late Portuguese Colonialism (1945-74)

Portugal ruled Guinea-Bissau (then Portuguese Guinea), one of the last European colonial empires, until 1974, when the fifty-year dictatorship was overthrown and the colony dismantled. Until that time, its power had been maintained through the productive nationalist fiction, commonly referred to as luso-tropicalism, that the Portuguese created peaceful multi-racial colonial cultures through miscegenation. This paper examines the spatial production of this fiction as a concrete political utopia in the empire’s last phase in Africa, from 1945 to 1974, by looking at how colonial spatial practices in Guinea-Bissau contributed to both the assembling and the disassembling of empire. Grounded in original archival and field research conducted in Guinea-Bissau from 2019 to 2023, this paper asks what architectural and urban planning practices supported the fruition of a luso-tropical horizon. This involves analysing not only experts and their designs, but also how these contributed to everyday experiences of space through which Portuguese and Guineans dwelled in the luso-tropical utopia. Dwelling is here understood as both a set of architectural practices that define housing and city as well as the lived experience of urbanity. This approach enables a critical examination of how Portugal’s enduring imperial fiction was produced, managed, and lived in colonial spatialities, while also identifying the residue from colonialism that has persisted from these dwelling experiences into the present. This article, thus, expands the field of colonial architecture historiography by presenting a little-known case study which exposes architecture’s ties to governance, violence and resistance; it also assesses the political effects and residues of a colonial utopia in the present, by addressing the lived experience and agency of Guineans in architecture history.

Theoretical formation in the field of critique: a critical reading of Chinese architectural anti-waste campaign in 1955

ABSTRACT This study appraises the ideological criticism that emerged in the Chinese architectural sphere during the anti-waste campaign of 1955, which marks a pivotal moment in the history of modern Chinese architecture. Within this timeframe, architects and architectural scholars such as Chen Gan, Shui Fengman, and Liu Dunzhen, respectively questioned, defended, and criticized Liang Sicheng’s architectural ideas. Their articles were published in prominent Chinese publications including People’s Daily, Wenyi Bao [Art News], Jianzhu Xuebao [Journal of Architecture], and Xin Jianshe [Journal of New Construction]. By delving deep into the conceptual framework and the logical structure of these long-neglected critique articles, this study unveils the intricate debates in Chinese architectural practice and theoretical concepts during the 1950s. The findings highlight that the ideological critique during the anti-waste campaign not only reflects the infiltration of politicized rhetoric into the architectural domain but also assumes a profound significance in terms of the early attempts of Chinese architects to re-evaluate architectural historiography through the lens of Marxist theory. This pivotal event laid the foundation for the gradual formation and consolidation of a series of discursive patterns within the Chinese architectural community, exerting a lasting influence on contemporary architectural discussions and writings in multifarious ways.

On Photographic Monumentalism: Nineteenth-century Representations of Architectural and Historical Sites

Abstract This article addresses the intertwined history of photography and architectural historiography in the nineteenth century. Focusing on European photography of Egyptian antiquity and Palestine’s biblical sites, it elaborates how a commemorative form of historiography deploys photographic images of what came to be known as the “historic monument” to construct notions of patrimony, historical heritage, national identity, and imperial mission. The second part of the essay discusses photographic monumentalism in Qajar, Iran, and Ottoman Turkey as different responses to Orientalist representations of Middle Eastern architecture by Europeans.

Places of memory and contemplation: The rational and the emotions as fundamental elements to the conception of architecture integrated in the landscape

Throughout the history of Western culture, landscape has been transformed according to the search for the representation of an image of paradise, and it has acquired and absorbed principles dictated by the mental, cultural, social and political framework in which it is involved. Suburban villas are contextualized interpretations of ways of using and occupying the landscape, organized and built by cultural and economic elites, creating places where landscape and architecture complement each other in a hasty manner. The research focused on the suburban Villa of Renaissance influence as a reference and on framing and contextualizing it in the historiography and culture of Architecture and Landscape in Portuguese historical areas. The evolution of the concepts of suburban Villa, garden, villegiattura and ideal Villa was addressed. The research was conducted on the relationship between the mind, the rational, and the emotions of those who inhabit/perceive space and those who design it. From the demonstration of the adequacy of the same structuring, compositional and programmatic principles resulting from a cultural and historical evolution to new times and regional cultures, and their framing in times of artistic and Cultural Revolution, the same conceptual principles, spatial orders and types of relationship with the landscape were adapted to avant-garde compositional grammars in other architectural types and urban structures. This study proves the existence of an important contribution to Modern and Contemporary Architecture and Landscape Architecture, of an architectural culture synthesized in the analysis of the cases treated. A contribution also to teaching and professional practice, from the identification of recent works that reveal the same principles, spatial orders, approach to place and relationship with the landscape.

Of Ghosts and orphans: Traces of local architects in the new city of Jerusalem in the early modern era and the challenges of architectural historiography on the fringe of the Empire

AbstractThis study, inspired by postcolonial and post‐structural theories, attempts to highlight the difficulty of conducting architectural research in early modern Jerusalem, a setting in which there are gaps in the historical record. One particular gap—the practice of local architects—is portrayed through two characterizations: Orphans—existing buildings that are historiographically detached from their genealogy—and Ghosts—individuals assumed to have practiced architecture, yet their existence appears only in traces. The study wishes to explore why local architects disappeared from the historiography of early modern Jerusalem. The methodologies include a narration of the fragments that were found during a literature review, archival research, site visits, interviews, and correspondence with scholars and archivists. The study suggests that local architects were overlooked because of orientalist perceptions, disappearance of evidence, and inaccessibility or illegibility of documents. Therefore, it recommends institutional collaborations and methods, which will acknowledge the historian's subjectivity in future research.

La expresión tectónica de la arquitectura vernácula: el caso de Lapinha da Serra (MG)

The architecture historiography and analysis dedicated itself to the great erudite and monumental architectural works, especially to modern architecture. This also happened with the analysis from the perspective of tectonics. In this scenario, vernacular architecture was placed on the sidelines of critical architecture analysis, especially under the tectonic approach. Therefore, in this work, it sought to elucidate the systematic movements that vernacular architecture presents with the concept of tectonic. Thus, a case study of a vernacular adobe residence located in Lapinha da Serra, district of Santana do Riacho (MG) was carried out, the case study evidenced the omnipresent character of tectonics in vernacular architecture.

History in the making. Built and Thought: with regard to the Historiography of Architecture

Abrumados por la acelerada proliferación de un cada vez mayor conjunto de formatos a través de los cuales, también los temas que ocupan a los historiadores de la arquitectura y el urbanismo, son sometidos a un proceso de escrutinio constante al servicio de la creación de contenido bajo parámetros de producción y rendimiento —una forma de conocimiento que anula el pensamiento, encontrándose la mayor parte de sus síntomas en la universidad—, uno no puede por menos de sentir cierto alivio al toparse con un libro, publicado con motivo de la celebración de un encuentro de investigación sobre historiografía de la arquitectura, que no sólo es capaz de cuestionar dicha rescisión desde su condición objetual —un único formato que funciona como una herramienta analógica de acción y que establece una relación entra autores y lectores (no consumidores)—, sino que lo hace, además, inquiriendo cuál sea la manera en que dicha historia ha sido y está siendo pensada.Es decir, no juzgando el pasado, sino interrogándolo, tal y como parece ser el objetivo de los historiadores de la arquitectura, toda vez que su trabajo ha alcanzado una autonomía que se justifica por el asentamiento de unos fundamentos epistemológicos propios.AbstractOverwhelmed by the proliferation of an increasing number of formats through which the themes that occupy historians of architecture and urban planning are also subject to constant scrutiny at the service of creating content controlled by parameters of production and performance — a form of knowledge that cancels thought, with its symptoms most prevalent in universities — one cannot help but feel a certain relief when coming across a book, published on the occasion of a research meeting on the historiography of architecture, that is not only capable of questioning this rescission objectively but also does so, inquiring what is the way in which this story has been and is being thought. It is a unique format that works as an analogue tool for action and that establishes a relationship between authors and readers (non-consumers). Or in other words, not by judging the past, but by interrogating it, as seems to be the aim of architecture historians every time their work has achieved a level of autonomy that is justified by the establishment of its own epistemological foundations.

Urzędnicza kariera Bonifacego Witkowskiego (1800–1840) – przyczynek do dziejów biurokracji budowlanej w Królestwie Polskim

The Administrative Career of Bonifacy Witkowski (1800–1840) – A Contribution to the History of Building Bureaucracy in the Kingdom of Poland Biographies of architects have a well-established tradition in the Polish historiography of architecture. This also applies to the historiography of Polish architecture at the turn of the 19th c., which predominantly revolves around biographical studies. However, architectural biographies of this period often concentrate on the architects active in big cities, while their colleagues working in provincial areas receive comparatively less research attention. The lack of in-depth exploration of this subject has a detrimental impact on our comprehensive understanding of the Polish architectural culture of that period, particularly its social aspects. Another notable trait of Polish architectural biographies concerning the turn of the 19th c. is the focus on the architects’ creative output (e.g. projects, buildings). Researchers have hitherto paid relatively less attention to tracing the trajectory of individual careers and specific conditions that shaped their development. The inclusion of these aspects in academic discourse offers valuable insights into the social and political backdrop that influenced architectural activity. This holds particular significance in relation to the era of the constitutional Kingdom of Poland (1815–1830), which witnessed a rapid development of modern bureaucracy in the field of building and architecture. This article delves into the well-documented case of Bonifacy Witkowski. Notably, he was among the first graduates of architecture from the University of Warsaw, and within a few years of his graduation, he attained the position of a chief provincial builder in the Province of Mazovia.

Inhabiting the Atmosphere: The Architecture of the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium

Abstract Drawing on both archival research and recent scholarship, this article examines how medical thinking and a scientific understanding of the atmosphere shaped the design of the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, designed by Pfleghard & Haefeli from 1905 onward. While the sanatorium is noteworthy in terms of both its construction and its reception in the historiography of modern architecture, this study reassesses the rationale behind the design. Proposing an environmental cure, the institution did away with the idea of architecture as a protective wrapper, and instead presented the atmosphere itself as the primary realm for human habitation. This study thus situates the sanatorium in the atmosphere rather than in the landscape, even though the building appeared to grow from the ground. Conceived with the atmosphere as its proxy envelope, the sanatorium was designed to expose its patients to the celebrated air of Davos, praised for its purity and perfect stillness.

Trauma as Evidence: Rifat Osman on Edirne

Early twentieth-century Ottoman-Turkish architectural history discourse is subjugated by state-oriented readings, and the prescriptions of the sociopolitical ideologies of the epoch. The agency of the individual is confined within the ramifications of these programmatic concepts. In lieu of such a discourse, this article considers Rifat Osman (1874–1933) and the agency of the individual as a source for architectural historiography. Trained as a medical doctor, Rifat Osman developed an interest in the architectural heritage and everyday life of the city of Edirne, now in western Turkey. He amply recorded his observations. Exploring the motives behind this unusual interest, I argue that Rifat Osman’s experience of Edirne, in particular as he witnessed the fall of the city to Bulgarians during the Balkan Wars (1912–13), transformed his engagement with the city and its history. This rendered the traumatic imprint of war traceable in his accounts. Through concepts of antiquarian sensitivity and war-induced trauma, I question how Rifat Osman’s anxiety is transmitted to the collective memory of the city, and in return, how architectural history becomes instrumental in the recovery from trauma.

The Architectural Pedigree of İznik’s 14th-Century Green Mosque in Turkey

A monument constructed in the dynastic beginnings of the Ottoman Empire, the 14th-Century Yeşil Camii (Green Mosque), was one of the first buildings sponsored after the conquest of the Byzantine city Nicaea (İznik). Commissioned by Çandarlı Kara Halil Hayreddin Pasha (1364-1387), the mosque became a landmark of a burgeoning Ottoman government that soon reigned over three continents. With the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the centuries-old Ottoman Empire, with all its institutions, was abolished. The Türk Tarih Tezi (Turkish History Thesis) became the propaganda of the nation-state, denoting a national spirit among Turks in all periods of history. In this historicist reading, the Green Mosque became a beacon signifying the zeitgeist of pure national building forms for the Turks. In the late 1930s, the secular appraisal of this thesis began to wane in favor of a religious-ethnic reading. Imperial monuments with an Islamic past came to befit the locus of Turkish identity. Nevertheless, the ideological transformation of the Green Mosque transcended any objectifying vision. The nationalist lens shifted, emphasizing Muslim-Turks over the Turkish race and iterating a formal revelation of the Green Mosque that has perpetuated the long-standing understanding of the building. This essay presents the Green Mosque in view of the texts written by prominent architects and historians, against the backdrop of crossing boundaries between architectural historiography and nationhood of space, from early beginnings to late 1980s.

Brown over Rietveld

In the post-war historiography of Dutch modern architecture, the monograph of Gerrit Rietveld written by the American architectural historian Theodore Morey Brown (1958) played a pioneering role. The Work of G. Rietveld, Architect was the first monograph of a by then already internationally renowned Dutch architect and since it was written in English it was also the only source of detailed information about Rietveld for an international readership. Brown was the first art historian in the Netherlands to write a dissertation on a living architect; as such, his book signalled the start of modern architectural history as practised by art historians. Yet despite the fact that it is almost impossible to overstate the significance of Brown’s study, the book remains until this day a curiosity. Why was the first scholarly work on Rietveld written by an American scholar and published in the English language? Who was Theodore Morey Brown and how did he end up at a Dutch university in the 1950s? This article examines the history of Brown’s book: its genesis from a research initiative by post-war Dutch professors of art history to the contents of the final book. It also discusses the international historiographical debate in which Brown participated. Brown’s book heralded a new era in the relationship between the art historian and the architect, one that was connected with the challenge to write contemporary history from an ideologically engaged attitude. As an ‘operative history’ Brown’s book was distinguished by its collaborative nature. While it was a book about a single architect written by a single historian, in the background there was a ‘team Rietveld’ consisting of, among others, the historian Pieter Singelenberg and the designer Truus Schröder-Schräder, who were vital to its creation. Only with the help of these people could the work of Rietveld be made accessible to a foreign scholar who, upon arrival in the Netherlands, did not speak the Dutch language. This article argues that Brown’s book was important not only for the historiography on Rietveld. The book also had an institutional significance as it ushered in the study of modern architectural history by art historians in the Netherlands.

THE PAVILION PLAN AND HARMINC – THE INTERWAR ARCHITECTURE OF THE MARTIN HOSPITAL

The health and social policies of the First Czechoslovak Republic and the modernization of healthcare facilities in Slovakia are closely linked to the work of both Michal M. Harminc and his son Milan A. P. Harminc. The latter’s life and works are almost completely unexplored within Slovak architectural historiography, even in reference to his contribution […]

‘In line with the modern conception of much mental illness’: psychiatric reforms and architectural design contributions in post-war England

This article examines the history of, and specialist design principles behind, two Admission Units that were added to two existing mental health hospitals in post-war England: Fair Mile Hospital, in Cholsey, near Wallingford, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire) and Fulbourn Hospital, near Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, completed in 1956 and 1964 respectively. Their commission and realisation fell within a period of critical psychiatric reforms, some of which first emerged in the first half of the twentieth century with further developments peaking after the Second World War. Although the two buildings preceded subsequent interdisciplinary advancements that specifically fed into the correlation between buildings and healthcare, namely, environmental psychology and evidence-based design, they emerged at a time when prominent hospital architecture studies were embracing a research culture and aimed at merging an interdisciplinary approach with modernist architectural principles. Yet these two buildings, and numerous other similar units, have been virtually absent from existing scholarship, both general architectural historiography and studies of specialist healthcare architecture. The study here uses literature review of architectural historiography, historic policy and guidance documents, and archival material, as well as review of graphic material comprising photographs, architectural drawings and diagrams. The discussion opens with a brief overview of the general policy and psychiatric context within which the two units were commissioned and erected. This is then followed by a closer inspection of the two buildings, which brings to light both similarities and differences. Discussed in parallel to principles outlined in healthcare architecture guidance published at the time, this comparison highlights the complex and nuanced associations between architectural design and mental healthcare, as well as the way these evolved in this particular time period. Specifically, by looking closely at national and international guidance on healthcare architecture developed by the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health, key shifts in the role that architecture could play beyond a medical model of mental healthcare and in support of a psychosocial approach are discerned. Finally, the article also makes the case for further research that broadens and deepens studies of the post-war history of this field as well as comparisons both to the inter-war and to the contemporary periods.

Situating Slums in Hegemonic Urban Discourse: A Historiography of English-Language Architecture and Planning Journals

Over recent years, the political critique of the characterization of slums has progressively developed within hegemonic urban planning discourse. In planning history, however, the emergence of slums remains associated with the narrative and geographies of underdevelopment in the context of modernization theory. To deconstruct this narrative and thus contribute to the decolonization of planning discourse, this paper undertakes a historiographic analysis of English-language journal publications dealing with different forms of subaltern urbanism. I show how the concept of “slums” has progressively broadened in meaning to encompass an ever-larger array of derogatory concepts, and that the term “slum” is limited to certain geographical hotspots, thereby contributing to geopolitical biases and knowledge gaps. Through the content analysis of publications, I am able to outline a historical periodization of hegemonic planning themes and proposals addressing slums in diverse geographies, along with critical views on their underlying perspectives.