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Call for Applications: Reviews Editor (post-1800) for Architectural Histories

The editorial board of Architectural Histories seeks to appoint a Reviews Editor for publications and other research-based outputs covering the history of architecture and the built environment after 1800.

The Reviews Editor is responsible for commissioning, developing and editing reviews for the journal. Taking advantage of the rapid production cycle offered by an online open access publication, Architectural Histories publishes reviews that respond to the latest releases in the field, including book publications, exhibitions and conferences.

Working closely with the Editor-in-Chief and Architectural Histories' pre-1800 Review Editor, the new Reviews Editor will identify publications, exhibitions and conferences of interest and solicit their review from scholars active in the field. For each review commissioned, the Editor will oversee the entirety of the editorial process, from preliminary line-edits to final typesetting. The Editor is expected to deliver 10-15 reviews per year.

The ideal candidate will be well connected with scholars working on all aspects of architecture post-1800. She/he will closely monitor the state of the field, seeking to commission reviews that call attention to lasting contributions to historical and historiographical debate. The Editor should be familiar with good practice in the commissioning and editing of reviews.

This call is open to all scholars working on topics related to architectural history post-1800, regardless of background, discipline or seniority. Applications from scholars working outside the traditional centers of scholarship are strongly encouraged. Applications should consist of a CV (max. 3 pages) and a cover letter (max. 2 pages), specifying the candidate's appropriate skills and qualities.

Applications should be emailed to Petra Brouwer, Editor-in-Chief (editor-in-chief@eahn.org), by no later than 15 June 2020. The new reviews editor will be appointed 1 July 2020 for a four-year term. 

Comprador Networks and Comparative Modernities

Edited by Lawrence Chua

The comprador classes of the 19th- and early 20th-centuries were critical agents of global capitalism. As "middle men" in the colonial enterprise, they enabled the development of imperial trade networks, negotiated the supply of labor that extracted profit from the local landscape, established new patterns of consumption and taste, and facilitated cultural as well as economic exchanges that were critical to the growth of Asian cities. In diverse treaty ports and colonial entrep?ts like Singapore, Batavia, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, compradors drew on a diverse vocabulary of intra- and trans-regional architectural forms, labor, materials, and construction techniques to build homes, offices, godowns, factories, and infrastructural networks that were legible to both European corporations and local populations. The travelling, sojourning perspective of the comprador allows historians to critically examine the fractured, multi-scaled geographies at play across global networks as well as what Raymond Williams has described as "the metropolitan interpretation of its own processes as universals." The articles in this collection create an understanding of treaty ports and colonial cities not only as sites of local and foreign interactions but as incubators of new ideas about architecture and modernity in the global capitalist economy.

Collection Articles
The Colonial Port as Contact Zone: Chinese Merchants and the Development of Godowns along Singapore River, 1827-1905
Ian Y. H. Tan 

Sugar and the City: The Contribution of Three Chinese-Indonesians to Architecture and Planning in the Dutch East Indies (1900-1942)
Pauline K. M. van Roosmalen

Modernizing Macao, the Old-Fashioned Way: Macanese and Chinese Entrepreneurship in the Colonial City, 1877-1884
Regina Campinho 

Imperial Negotiations: Introducing Comprador Networks and Comparative Modernities
Lawrence Chua 

Read the complete collection here. 

Type Projects as Tools: Housing Type Design in Communist Romania

Dana Vais 

This paper investigates so-called type projects and the process of housing typification in Romania under the communist regime (1948-89). It studies designs for housing of particular types ('type projects'), primarily apartment buildings, disseminated through catalogues, that were used as more than just models for construction. They were 'tools', the active interface between political goals and actual buildings, similar to the contexts of contemporary developments in Eastern and Western Europe. Politicians exerted governmental control to ensure an institutional control over the design and production of type projects. A type project, with plans, section, elevation and specifications, contributed to the organization of the socialist lifestyle within family dwellings, led to new urban forms and cityscapes, standardized construction, guided industrialization and sustained the prefabrication of housing, especially large-panel prefabrication. This paper examines how these types entirely determined housing production.

Read the complete article here.

Reviews: Spring 2020

Howard, D. A Review of Ludovica Galeazzo, Venezia e i margini urbani: L'insula dei Gesuiti in et? moderna. Memorie: Classe di scienze morali, lettere ed arti, vol. 144. Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2018.

Tosland, B. A Review of Lukasz Stanek, Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020.

Campbell, I. A Review of Mark McDonald, Architecture, Topography and Military Maps. The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo. Series C. Prints, Part 2, 3 vols. London: The Royal Collection Trust and The British Library in association with Harvey Miller Publishers, 2019.

Wells, M.J. A Review of Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Andrew Peckham, eds., Modernism and the Professional Architecture Journal: Reporting, Editing, and Reconstructing in Post-War Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 2019.

Read all the reviews here.

Redefining the Globe: An Interview with Murray Fraser on Architectural History for the 21st Century

Vimalin Rujivacharakul 

The highly anticipated 21st edition of Sir Banister Fletcher's Global History of Architecturewas published in January 2020 by Bloomsbury in collaboration with the Banister Fletcher Trust, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the University of London. Among many new features is an emphasis on the book's 'global' reach, which reshapes its scope and structure. With all chapters written anew and encompassing architectural histories and sites across the globe over the past 5,500 years, the 21st edition of Banister Fletcher emerges at the forefront of the march towards global architectural history. This is a radical transformation of a classic book previously viewed as the Eurocentric canon's centrepiece.

The following interview with Murray Fraser, general editor of the new edition and professor of architecture and global culture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, explores the paths of his intellectual development, starting with changes from within the 'centre' - the former British Empire and its traditionally defined scope of architectural history - through to his eventual shift towards a global outlook. The conversation also offers a retrospective look at architectural education in the 20th century, now seen as a postcolonial 'tipping point', and discusses recent scholarship that led to the reformulation of Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture. Ultimately, Fraser's intellectual trajectory identifies two critical factors that ushered in the new Sir Banister Fletcher's Global History of Architecture: a seismic change that took place within British architectural education, and the ensuing efforts to redefine architectural history for global audiences.

Read the complete interview here.

Reviews Fall 2020

Kaminer, T. A Review of George Barnett Johnson, Assembling the Architect: The History and Theory of Professional Practice. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.

Bernstein, M. A Review of Maile S. Hutterer, Framing the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019.

Fitzner, S. A Review of Werner Oechslin, Tobias B?chi, Martin Pozsgai, Architekturtheorie im deutschsprachigen Kulturraum 1486-1648. Basel: Colmena Verlag, 2018.

Williams, R. J. A Review of Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), https://gahtc.org/.

Read the complete reviews here. 

Reviews Winter 2020

Bergdoll, B. A Review of Miriam Paeslack, Constructing Imperial Berlin: Photography and the Metropolis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

Fozi, S. A Review of Robert Bork, Late Gothic Architecture: Its Evolution, Extinction, and Reception. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2018.

Higgott, A. A Review of Eva Branscome, Hans Hollein and Postmodernism: Art and Architecture in Austria 1958-1985. London and New York: Routledge, 2018.

Vassallo, J. A Review of Martino Stierli, Montage and the Metropolis: Architecture, Modernity, and the Representation of Space. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2018; and Craig Buckley, Graphic Assembly: Montage, Media, and Experimental Architecture in the 1960s. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

Wheeler, K. A Review of Conor Lucey, Building Reputations. Architecture and the Artisan, 1750-1830. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.

Read the complete reviews here. 

Postmodern Reconciliation: Reinventing the Old Town of Elblag 

Florian Urban

The famous historic Old Town of Elblag in northern Poland was comprehensively destroyed in the Second World War, neglected for several decades in the post-war period, and beginning in 1979, rebuilt from scratch in a postmodern style. The new, flamboyant, historically inspired buildings were promoted by the local head conservationist, Maria Lubocka-Hoffmann, and financed by the fledgling market economy. Developing against the background of an international trend towards old-town regeneration, these buildings grew from different roots than postmodernism in the West. They derived from an expanded concept of historic conservation and the goal to reconcile contradictory desires. These included a contested past in a town that had been German until 1945, a longing for local identity and visible historicity despite historical ruptures, and the establishment of traditional planning principles, such as small scale and mixed use, in a modern environment.

Read the complete article here.

Reviews Summer 2020

Adriano Marinazzo, Stefaan Vervoort, Matthew Allen, Gregorio Astengo, Julia Smyth-Pinney

Marinazzo, A. A Review of William E. Wallace, Michelangelo, God's Architect: The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019.

Vervoort, S. A Review of Matthew Mindrup, The Architectural Model: Histories of the Miniature and the Prototype, the Exemplar and the Muse. Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press, 2019.

Allen, M. A Review of Joseph Bedford, ed., Is There an Object-Oriented Architecture? Engaging Graham Harman. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Astengo, G. A Review of Vaughan Hart, Christopher Wren: In Search of Eastern Antiquity. London: Yale University Press, 2020.

Smyth-Pinney, J. A Review of Maria Beltramini and Cristina Conti, eds., Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane: Architettura e decorazione da Leone X a Paolo III. Milan: Officina libraria, 2018.

Read the reviews here.

Call for applications for the Editorial Board of Architectural Histories

Architectural Histories invites applications for three new members to join its editorial board. Members of the editorial board work with the editor-in-chief to guide potential contributions, from submission through peer review and copyediting stages of publication. Members thus carry considerable responsibility for the content and quality of the journal. The board, in keeping with the European Architectural History Network's mission, also develops the strategy and vision of the journal, maintaining its disciplinary, thematic and geographic diversity and outreach whilst upholding scholarly excellence and integrity. 

Members should be available and committed, willing to devote considerable time to the journal (a minimum of two days per month). They should be well connected in their field(s) of expertise and are expected to seek out and solicit contributions from their various academic networks.

The call for applications is open to all EAHN members regardless of background, discipline or seniority. Scholars who are connected with institutions outside the traditional centres of scholarship as those working with the theory of architecture are strongly encouraged to apply. Applications should consist of a CV (max. 3 pages) and a cover letter (max. 2 pages) specifying the candidate's skills and qualities. 

Applications should be emailed to Petra Brouwer, editor-in-chief (editor-in-chief@journal.eahn.org), and received no later than 1 May 2020. The new members will be appointed on 1 July 2020 for a four-year term.

'The Queering of Architecture History Has Yet to Happen': The Intra-Canonical Outlook of Beatriz Colomina

Evangelos Kotsioris

In this interview, Beatriz Colomina revisits her formative years as an architect and architectural historian, from Barcelona to New York, and from her foundational writings on Privacy and Publicity (1994a) to her recent book, X-Ray Architecture(2019). Retracing the links between Marxism, feminism, theory, pedagogy, media, and modernity, Colomina recounts to Evangelos Kotsioris her seminal approach of modern architecture as media and her research in Le Corbusier's archive. She refers to the social networks of her years in Barcelona and New York that contributed to the development of her working approach. Adopting a tone that is partly autobiographical and partly analytical, she discusses the pleasures and challenges of working with archival texts and images, and the links between the practices of architecture and history writing. For the first time she recounts in detail her student years under Franco's regime in Spain, her experience of New York during the AIDS epidemic, and her contacts with the feminist circles of the 1990s, among others. Such ties echo the development of the field beyond Colomina's individual contribution to it, and they lead to broader reflections about the state and challenges of architectural historiography today.

Read the complete interview here.

Life Between Walls: Race, Subdivision and Lodging Houses in Postwar London

Four solid walls and a roof over one's head. These, from an essentialist standpoint, are the minima of homely existence. What happens then under conditions of speculation and subdivision when domestic walls are no longer stable givens, but become flimsy, mobile and contested? Drawing on a rich seam of popular British films from the late 1950s and early '60s - set in the transitional world of postwar London lodging houses - this paper examines how partition walls refashioned the interior space of the terraced house. Analysis of popular visual culture is supported by archival research centred on local valuation lists, which allow us to read the traces of these sometimes temporary, often illegal structures. The paper argues that partition walls were key to the extraction of value from a declining private rental sector by property traders and landlords. At the same time, these ubiquitous structures formed a series of highly charged thresholds between disparate individuals. Partition walls were instrumental in the 'spatialisation' of race in postwar Britain, serving to heighten an awareness of otherness while simultaneously bringing individuals into uncomfortable proximity. Finally, the paper asks how people overcame or lived between these divisions, and how this affected questions of visibility and representation.

Read the complete article here.

Call for Applications for Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Assistant of Architectural Histories

Architectural Histories, the international, blind peer-reviewed, open access scholarly journal of the European Architectural History Network (EAHN) is now seeking to appoint a new Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Assistant to start on 1 January 2021, each for a four year term. The new appointees will start working with the current team from 1 September 2020 and gradually take over their duties. The positions of Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Assistant are not remunerated and expenses are not covered. The Editor-in-Chief's average workload is one day per week, and the Editorial Assistant's is 4 to 8 hours per week; both are subject to fluctuation.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for all aspects of the journal, with the support of the Editorial Assistant, according to their mutual arrangement. The Editor-in-Chief develops the profile and identity of the journal, safeguarding the quality, relevance and scholarly rigour of its content. The Editor-in-Chief steers the editorial board in all its tasks, including the acquisition and processing of articles. S/he manages the coordination between the different parties involved in the production of the journal (most importantly the copyeditor and publisher) and oversees the processes of management, contract negotiations and payments. The Editor-in-Chief manages the finances of the journal, and actively seeks to broaden and sustain its financial basis by reaching out to the appropriate organizations and institutions. In addition, s/he is the main contact between the journal and its parent organization, the EAHN. S/he chairs the editorial board meeting during the annual EAHN business meetings and at the biennial EAHN conferences. 

Qualifications
The Editor-in-Chief should have a Ph.D. in architectural history (whether from an art history department or a school of architecture). The candidate should be an established scholar who is able to bring a broad personal network of international academic contacts. S/he should have an ample understanding of architectural history across periods and geographies, and should demonstrate an interest in academic work from a variety of scholarly, cultural and methodological backgrounds. The candidate should have an excellent command of the English language, and ideally master several other European languages. The candidate has editorial experience, in particular with periodicals. Since the Editor-in-Chief supervises and coordinates all aspects of the Journal, skills in organization, negotiation and management, and a well-developed sense of responsibility are essential. 

Application
Applications should consist of a CV (max. 3 pages) and a cover letter (max. 2 pages) specifying the candidate's motivation, skills and qualities. Applications should be emailed to the Editorial Search Committee by 29 May 2020, by care of secretary@eahn.org

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
The Editorial Assistant supports the Editor-in-Chief in the communication with the editorial team, the authors, the publisher, the copyeditor and the proof readers. S/he is responsible for managing and coordinating with the publisher the updating of the journal's website as well as for the revision of documents, such as the author guidelines, annual financial reports, and minutes of the meetings. The Editorial Assistant broadens the journal's reach by communicating new articles and calls through mailing-lists and Twitter, actively seeking new communication strategies. The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Assistant work closely together, and convene meetings on a bi-weekly basis.

Qualifications
The Editorial Assistant is a more junior scholar, who has the task of supporting the Editor-in-Chief. The candidate should have the appropriate scholarly, linguistic and organizational skills.

Application
Applications should consist of a CV (max. 3 pages) and a cover letter (max. 2 pages) specifying the candidate's motivation, skills and qualities. Applications should be emailed to the Editorial Search Committee by 29 May 2020, by care of secretary@eahn.org

Looking Back at Distance Looks Back: Reflections on the First Combined Meeting of EAHN and SAHANZ (Sydney, 10-13 July 2019)

Andrew Leach, Lee Stickells

Distance is both conceptual and actual. It is overcome or exploited in all manner of ways that have consequences for the history of architecture. It is fostered in the critical attitude. And collapsed when history is invoked in the present. It shapes the relationship of Europe to its Antipodes, as well as of Europe to its neighbours. Its presence is necessary for claims upon disciplinarity; its absence, the dissolution of disciplinary boundaries. In what ways has distance figured in the history of architecture? What has it altered? What has it prevented? What has it allowed? What does it permit, even now? These lines opened the call for papers for Distance Looks Back, the first combined meeting of the EAHN and SAHANZ (Sydney, 10-13 July 2019, http://distance2019.sydney). This meeting served, first, to break down the distance that keeps the activities of these two highly compatible communities at a remove from one another. It also served to explore the very idea of distance as a practical consideration of the architectural historian's work and as a persistent theme in architectural history and its conceptualisation.

Read the complete position paper here. 

Varietas, Mediocritas and Annehmlichkeit: The Reception of the Classical Tradition in the Work of Josef Frank and Its Viennese Context

Caterina Cardamone

The theoretical work of the Viennese architect Josef Frank (1885-1967) illustrates a continuous reflection on the Italian Renaissance tradition. This study seeks to gain new insights into Frank's complex and optimistic 20th-century 'classicism' and to identify the Renaissance categories Frank used in his written, and to a lesser extent, in his built work as authoritative instruments in his search for a modern architecture.

The starting point of this paper is an analysis of both the classical education Frank received in Vienna at the Technische Hochschule (TH) and his doctoral thesis on Leon Battista Alberti of 1910. The work of his closest colleagues and former students at the TH provided a Viennese context for Frank's anthropocentrism, which is based on classical categories rather than a search for anthropometric norms. Frank's attention to man leads rather to a sort of 20th-century humanism, a 'humane' architecture focusing on imperfection, agreableness, moderation, and variety, which he theorizes in his seminal essay Architektur als Symbol from 1931.

Frank's continuous reflection on the Renaissance tradition is part of the contemporary debate on modern architecture in Vienna and in German-speaking countries. He developed, from his education about history, an alternative model for modern architecture. The aim of this article is to provide a more diverse reading of that debate and to shed light on the many facets of the reception of classical tradition in the 20th century.

Read the complete article here.

Editorial

Architectural Historiography and Fourth Wave Feminism

Torsten Lange and Luc?a C. P?rez-Moreno

Over the course of the last decade, women from all over the world and from different social and cultural backgrounds continued to strive for equal rights in the face of discrimination, sexism, and misogyny. Utilizing new tools and strategies for communication, this 'fourth wave' of feminist thinking and activism is characterized by its commitment to a 'diversity of purpose' that recognises intersectionality as a key issue of our time and questions established sex/gender systems and gender as a binary category. This Special Collection explores the impact of current feminist discourse on architectural historiography. It offers critical debate on the legacy of second and third wave feminism, and asks for the ongoing relevance of the concerns and methodologies. It also highlights the potential of new strategies for documenting and researching the work of women architects, investigating the possibilities of digital tools and networked knowledge. Moreover, the collection considers histories of feminist architectural writing in relation to non-canonical geographies and takes a broader view to include LGBTIQ+ perspectives on the built environment. It offers diverse explorations of these key issues and presents necessary reflections to widen feminist enquiries in architectural discourse.

Read the complete editorial here.

This special collection includes the following new articles: "Reconsidering 'Minor' Archives: The Case of Australian Architect Nell McCredie" by Kirsty Volz; "Emotional Capital and Other Ontologies of the Architect" by Menna Agha; and "Reviews"  by Andrea J. Merrett, In?s Toscano, and Olivier Vallerand.