An Inter-Institutional Platform
for PhDs, PostDocs and ECRs in
Architectural History and Theory,
Landscape and the City
for PhDs, PostDocs and ECRs in
Architectural History and Theory,
Landscape and the City
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Regular Talks
︎︎︎Online Sessions Link︎︎︎
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DocTalks x MoMA
︎︎︎Online Sessions Link︎︎︎
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︎︎︎Online Sessions Link︎︎︎
25 March 2025
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
ROBIN HUEPPE
ETH
Respondent: Anny Li, Harvard University
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Left: Mound Lübarser Höhe by Märkisches Viertel, 1989, Right: Mound Kienberg by Marzahn, 1990 ©Bundesarchiv, Bild 180
EDMOND DRENOGLLAVA
University of Cincinnati
Respondent: Federico Marcomini, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History
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“The Waiter” – the so-called mural on the facade of the Hotel “Luboteni”. Source: Spomenik Database postcard archive.
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
TO COVER A MOUND
Post-War Land Governance in and around
Berlin's Mass Housing Estates (1945-1990)
ROBIN HUEPPE
ETH
Respondent: Anny Li, Harvard University
Left: Mound Lübarser Höhe by Märkisches Viertel, 1989, Right: Mound Kienberg by Marzahn, 1990 ©Bundesarchiv, Bild 180
Mounds
of rubble and waste emerged as companion infrastructures to the housing estates
of former East and West Berlin. In the neighborhoods of Marzahn (East) and Märkisches
Viertel (West), they conceal a complex narrative of power, resistance, and negotiation
in the pursuit of modern urbanization. Architectural histories often depict
Berlin's post-war expansion as a disruptive break from the periphery's
agro-industrial past, portraying it as an inevitable progression towards grands
ensembles. However, they frequently overlook the specific institutions and
their actors whose rejected, revised, and adopted land development plans reveal
how they used their power to control, divide, and displace.
This paper explores the governance of mass housing estates through a land-oriented approach, focusing on the mounds' transformation through various regimes. The design concept drew from a 1946 landscape master plan envisioning a linear city along Berlin’s glacial river valley, utilizing war rubble and disposed material to emphasize plateau edges. The covering topsoil of each mound narrates the story of the two neighborhoods from the ground up, considering the medium-term temporality of two transient state systems. By investigating the impact of tenure, funding, and political constraints on development plans, the story illuminates how governing institutions such as state and district planning offices wielded their power to divide and seize control of the land, leading to demolitions and accumulation of matter.
After considering the post-war context of migration and farmland buyouts, the evolution of the mounds from topographical concealment technologies to managed park-like pastorals is shaped by diverse design, labor, and planting practices. This study reads the rapid, bureaucratically layered development in West Berlin alongside the centralized, state-led approach in East Berlin, emphasizing transactions and shared dynamics. Through two detailed case studies, it unpacks the complexities of land governance, offering a different understanding of Berlin's mass housing estates by analyzing landscape as both a medium of power and a site of negotiation.
This paper explores the governance of mass housing estates through a land-oriented approach, focusing on the mounds' transformation through various regimes. The design concept drew from a 1946 landscape master plan envisioning a linear city along Berlin’s glacial river valley, utilizing war rubble and disposed material to emphasize plateau edges. The covering topsoil of each mound narrates the story of the two neighborhoods from the ground up, considering the medium-term temporality of two transient state systems. By investigating the impact of tenure, funding, and political constraints on development plans, the story illuminates how governing institutions such as state and district planning offices wielded their power to divide and seize control of the land, leading to demolitions and accumulation of matter.
After considering the post-war context of migration and farmland buyouts, the evolution of the mounds from topographical concealment technologies to managed park-like pastorals is shaped by diverse design, labor, and planting practices. This study reads the rapid, bureaucratically layered development in West Berlin alongside the centralized, state-led approach in East Berlin, emphasizing transactions and shared dynamics. Through two detailed case studies, it unpacks the complexities of land governance, offering a different understanding of Berlin's mass housing estates by analyzing landscape as both a medium of power and a site of negotiation.
***
The Waiter’s Wall: The Neo-Constructivist Microhistories in the 1960s Kosova
EDMOND DRENOGLLAVA
University of Cincinnati
Respondent: Federico Marcomini, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History
“The Waiter” – the so-called mural on the facade of the Hotel “Luboteni”. Source: Spomenik Database postcard archive.
The internal colonial (hi)stories surrounding socialist Yugoslavia, in all of it, in its paradoxes and tenaciousness, are an intense global microhistory. The narratives emerging from Kosovar cities can be included among the neglected narratives, whereas those of avant-garde artists and artworks originating from Kosova are among the undiscussed and unacknowledged accounts—constituting the marginal of the marginal. To map out a more expansive international, and in this case, an “intra-national”1 constructivist network of individuals, ideas, and coalitions, this study analyzes the neo-constructivist mural called “The Waiter” (1961) displayed on the south-eastern elevation of the 1960s building, Hotel “Luboteni” (Fig.1.).
This unheeded example reveals the tension between the abstract, idealized art and the often practical, utilitarian architecture that mirrored the broader struggle within Yugoslav society to balance ideological purity with real-life constraints. In Kosova, hence in Yugoslavia as elsewhere in the world, with the economic depression and the rise of propagandistic governments, the painting entered the domain of architecture and flourished. Leger, Duty, and Delaunay in Paris, and Pollock, Gorky, and de Kooning in New York covered ‘architecture’ with their art.2 In the case of Hotel “Luboteni,” the mural is conceived as tectonic and allows architecture not just to include the figurative but to become the figurative, dematerializing architecture.
This only leads the study to raise two important questions about the ontological and cross-pollinative status of art and architecture (of the country) itself: first, how permeable was Kosova’s cultural space in receiving neo-avant-garde tendencies; and second, if and when representation becomes architecture, does the translation from drawing to building have a particular character in neo-avant-garde practice, retaining the qualities of idealism? The research, then, endeavors to illuminate and redefine one among many histories of a micro-zone and that of a micro-community aiming toward the end of history (in inverted Fukuyama terms)—all this microhistory is therefore not diminutive, it is not “micro” at all and is worth knowing for.
1Referring to activities, issues, or policies that occur within the boundaries of a single nation and its domestic context. Although Yugoslavia was a multi-state federation, many of its policies were implemented intranationally within each republic, allowing for distinct regional dynamics to emerge while still operating under a unified federal framework.
2This was done in and on various pavilions at the 1937 Paris Exposition Internationale and at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. On the latter, see Barbara Cohen, Trylon and Perisphere, New York: Abrams 1989.
This unheeded example reveals the tension between the abstract, idealized art and the often practical, utilitarian architecture that mirrored the broader struggle within Yugoslav society to balance ideological purity with real-life constraints. In Kosova, hence in Yugoslavia as elsewhere in the world, with the economic depression and the rise of propagandistic governments, the painting entered the domain of architecture and flourished. Leger, Duty, and Delaunay in Paris, and Pollock, Gorky, and de Kooning in New York covered ‘architecture’ with their art.2 In the case of Hotel “Luboteni,” the mural is conceived as tectonic and allows architecture not just to include the figurative but to become the figurative, dematerializing architecture.
This only leads the study to raise two important questions about the ontological and cross-pollinative status of art and architecture (of the country) itself: first, how permeable was Kosova’s cultural space in receiving neo-avant-garde tendencies; and second, if and when representation becomes architecture, does the translation from drawing to building have a particular character in neo-avant-garde practice, retaining the qualities of idealism? The research, then, endeavors to illuminate and redefine one among many histories of a micro-zone and that of a micro-community aiming toward the end of history (in inverted Fukuyama terms)—all this microhistory is therefore not diminutive, it is not “micro” at all and is worth knowing for.
1Referring to activities, issues, or policies that occur within the boundaries of a single nation and its domestic context. Although Yugoslavia was a multi-state federation, many of its policies were implemented intranationally within each republic, allowing for distinct regional dynamics to emerge while still operating under a unified federal framework.
2This was done in and on various pavilions at the 1937 Paris Exposition Internationale and at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. On the latter, see Barbara Cohen, Trylon and Perisphere, New York: Abrams 1989.
15 April 2025
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
Jermayne MacAgy.
PAMELA BIANCHI
École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville
Respondent: Ekin Pınar, Middle East Technical University
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
Jermayne MacAgy.
Shaping Knowledge Through Space
PAMELA BIANCHI
École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville
Respondent: Ekin Pınar, Middle East Technical University
Exhibition view, Totems Not Taboo. An Exhibition of Primitive Art, curated by Jermayne MacAgy, February 26-March 29, 1959, Cullinan Hall at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Jermayne MacAgy became the director of the Contemporary Arts Association in Houston in 1955 after having been for the previous 14 years at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco as curator and acting director.
During her four-year tenure, she organized twenty-nine exhibitions that all translated her innovative understanding of museum layout and architecture. “Pioneering curator of modern art […] who managed to ignore design systems — or tried to work outside of systems of taste” (Hopps 2008: 22-24), MacAgy suggested a new comprehension of art history through aninnovative display set-up. Together with Alfred Barr, she was a student of Paul J. Sachs in his training program for art museums at Harvard University. Active in the mid-twentieth century, when, especially in America, a distinct museum and curatorial approach was being defined thanks to the contribution of the de Menils and the Arensbergs, MacAgy embodied the desire of the time to free art and architectural processes from univocal images, formal representations and contemplative acts, proposing a more interdisciplinary idea of creation attentive to the phenomenological experience.
MacAgy called into question the status of the artefact and the common object which she both understood as mnemonic signs of a shared cultural heritage, thus anticipating the topics that would be later developed by Szeeman’s a-historical approach or by the curatorship of Rudi Fuchs and William Rubin. Fostering defamiliarized contexts and settings and understanding the display as a significant gesture meant to mean, she used potted plants, gravel and claybeds, temporary fabric, structural mobile walls and pedestals of different sizes to dramatize the exhibition space.
Yet, today, her work is still unknown to many. Apart from the archives of the Menil Collection inHouston, very little literature from the mid-century exists. No comprehensive historiographical study has been conducted on her work other than a catalogue in 1968, which, however, does not offer any precise critical-analytical study. Consequently, the paper aims to deepen a historical-critical study to inscribe her work into the contemporary debate and eventually start a process of historicization of the central contribution she was able to instil in the museographysystem of the time.
***
Between Idea and Building:
Art, Architecture, and Identity in the Whitney Museum of American Art
LAUREN MCQUISTION
University of Virginia
Respondent: Özgür Esra Kahveci,
Istanbul Technical University
View of Marcel Breuer designed Whitney Museum of American Art (1966).
Image by Lauren McQuistion (2022).
Image by Lauren McQuistion (2022).
Museums are canonizing machines. As an institutional typology associated with the production of cultural knowledge, museums use their architecture to project institutional authority and permanence in support of activities constructing narratives of shared cultural history. Since its formalization as a museum in New York City in 1930, the Whitney Museum of American Art’s mission has been dedicated to the institutionalization of works by living, American artists. While this priority has acted as a guiding principle, it is also a highly mutable concept which has manifested itself most visibly in the relationship between the Whitney and its architecture. Unlike other museums that have renovated, expanded, and, in some rare cases, demolished and rebuilt architecture, the Whitney has relocated multiple times, using radically contrasting architectural interventions to reinvent itself institutionally.
Each architectural iteration of the Whitney has marked a moment of solidified relations between the museum as an institution, the possibilities for the exhibition and reception of American Art, and the experience of the Whitney by its publics. This position ultimately contradicts the museum’s stated notion that “the Whitney is an idea, not a building”, a bifurcation between the concept of the museum and the museum’s architectural expression that has ultimately had significant consequences for the Whitney’s institutional authority, successes, and critiques over the course of its history.
The Whitney’s architecture does not stand alone as an object of history but is instead a significant component of a still emerging assemblage of people, practices, and objects. The institution cannot be understood without its architecture and vice versa, posing questions regarding the intersection of spatiality and the practices of curating, preserving, and presenting American Art, and by extension, architecture’s role in the formation of “American” cultural identity represented through these processes and facilitated by institutional spaces.
Each architectural iteration of the Whitney has marked a moment of solidified relations between the museum as an institution, the possibilities for the exhibition and reception of American Art, and the experience of the Whitney by its publics. This position ultimately contradicts the museum’s stated notion that “the Whitney is an idea, not a building”, a bifurcation between the concept of the museum and the museum’s architectural expression that has ultimately had significant consequences for the Whitney’s institutional authority, successes, and critiques over the course of its history.
The Whitney’s architecture does not stand alone as an object of history but is instead a significant component of a still emerging assemblage of people, practices, and objects. The institution cannot be understood without its architecture and vice versa, posing questions regarding the intersection of spatiality and the practices of curating, preserving, and presenting American Art, and by extension, architecture’s role in the formation of “American” cultural identity represented through these processes and facilitated by institutional spaces.
29 April 2025 (TBC)
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
ANTEA LEKA
Technical University of Munich
Respondent: Saimir Kristo, Barleti University
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Pyramid of Tirana. Source: Elie Gardner for The New York Times.
Current challenges such as rapid urbanization, resource depletion, and socio-economicinequalities are pressuring cities to rethink their development strategies and administrative approaches. The research project explores the future of urban transitions with a focus on scarcity, analyzing its impact on spatial development in European cities. The main goal is to assess administration policies, planning strategies, and spatial development from 1995 to 2020 through the lens of scarcity. The study considers political, economic, demographic, and social factors aswell as community engagement. It is divided into three main parts: understanding the concept ofurban scarcity, case studies, and recommendations.
A critical dimension of this research is its relation to environmental justice, particularly how scarcity exacerbates inequities in urban environments. Scarcity disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, leading to unequal access to resources such as water, green spaces, and housing. This imbalance reinforces socio-economic inequalities, posing ethical and governance challenges for cities.
The case of Tirana, Albania, and its latest developments offers a unique perspective within this study. Rapid urbanization and unregulated development in Tirana, especially after the fall of communism, have created deep-seated spatial inequalities. Informal settlements on the city's periphery, lack of green infrastructure, and uneven access to basic services like water and waste management illustrate how scarcity-driven urban transitions can undermine environmental justice. At the same time, recent urban regeneration projects, such as the transformation of Skanderbeg Square, show the city's efforts toward addressing these inequalities, though theirimpact remains uneven across socio-economic groups.
The research aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on future cities amidst climate change and poly-crisis by addressing how scarcity and its consequences shape urban development, what actions are taken at public and community levels, and the importance of resilience and collaboration for sustainable urban futures in Europe.
***
ANGELIKI BARAS
Athens School of Fine Arts
Respondent: Saimir Kristo, Barleti University
![]()
Clip from the film ”Small Crime” (2007) by Christos Georgiou presenting the reaction of the two protagonists against the illegal initiative of the local rulers of the island, to exploit a plot in order to create the largest Water Park in the Mediterranean. On the banners are written the slogans “Your water slides elsewhere” and “Pebbles only to those who like them”, expressing in this way the contrast of touristic constructions that alter the natural environment, with the purity of nature that very few will understand. Source: Christos Georgiou.
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
City in the Face of Urban Scarcity: Navigating Urban Form and Architectural Responses to Resource Challenges in Tirana (1995-2010)
ANTEA LEKA
Technical University of Munich
Respondent: Saimir Kristo, Barleti University
Pyramid of Tirana. Source: Elie Gardner for The New York Times.
Current challenges such as rapid urbanization, resource depletion, and socio-economicinequalities are pressuring cities to rethink their development strategies and administrative approaches. The research project explores the future of urban transitions with a focus on scarcity, analyzing its impact on spatial development in European cities. The main goal is to assess administration policies, planning strategies, and spatial development from 1995 to 2020 through the lens of scarcity. The study considers political, economic, demographic, and social factors aswell as community engagement. It is divided into three main parts: understanding the concept ofurban scarcity, case studies, and recommendations.
A critical dimension of this research is its relation to environmental justice, particularly how scarcity exacerbates inequities in urban environments. Scarcity disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, leading to unequal access to resources such as water, green spaces, and housing. This imbalance reinforces socio-economic inequalities, posing ethical and governance challenges for cities.
The case of Tirana, Albania, and its latest developments offers a unique perspective within this study. Rapid urbanization and unregulated development in Tirana, especially after the fall of communism, have created deep-seated spatial inequalities. Informal settlements on the city's periphery, lack of green infrastructure, and uneven access to basic services like water and waste management illustrate how scarcity-driven urban transitions can undermine environmental justice. At the same time, recent urban regeneration projects, such as the transformation of Skanderbeg Square, show the city's efforts toward addressing these inequalities, though theirimpact remains uneven across socio-economic groups.
The research aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on future cities amidst climate change and poly-crisis by addressing how scarcity and its consequences shape urban development, what actions are taken at public and community levels, and the importance of resilience and collaboration for sustainable urban futures in Europe.
***
The Film “Small Crime” as a Lens on Τhirassia’s Marginalized Communities and Environmental Justice
ANGELIKI BARAS
Athens School of Fine Arts
Respondent: Saimir Kristo, Barleti University
Clip from the film ”Small Crime” (2007) by Christos Georgiou presenting the reaction of the two protagonists against the illegal initiative of the local rulers of the island, to exploit a plot in order to create the largest Water Park in the Mediterranean. On the banners are written the slogans “Your water slides elsewhere” and “Pebbles only to those who like them”, expressing in this way the contrast of touristic constructions that alter the natural environment, with the purity of nature that very few will understand. Source: Christos Georgiou.
The film “Small Crime” (2007) by Christos Georgiou, although fictional, depicts with particular sensitivity characteristic everyday situations that occur in the communities of the island of Thirassia. It is an almost “anthropological” approach and outline of the small island of Thirassia, which together with Thira make up the island complex of Santorini. Thirassia is a place that faced and faces problems of survival, while it is exposed to local, national and international crises. The unequal relationship between Thirassia and Thira, both on an economic and socio-political level, is a decisive factor for the course of development of the island, presenting at the same time particular research and even artistic interest.
The paper attempts to use the film “Small Crime” as a tool to present the coexistence of development and depopulation of the island, a coexistence that summarizes the history of development of many places in Greece, shedding light on issues related to irregular practices for tourist exploitation of the island, but also issues of environmental justice. On the one hand, the film offers explanations regarding the stereotype of the “stuck local” that usually accompanies the identity of “small places” like Thirasia. On the other hand, in an inventive way through the plot, it presents the operation to abolish the “authentically traditional” on the altar of profit from tourism, illuminating the invisible competition between touristized Santorini with its luxurious resorts and “deserted” Thirassia with its nudist beaches. The inevitable beauty of Thirassia, with its unique color palette, is not highlighted in the same picturesque way that would happen on a tourist island, but critically, leading thinking in directions that raise debates around the environmental values of a place.
The paper attempts to use the film “Small Crime” as a tool to present the coexistence of development and depopulation of the island, a coexistence that summarizes the history of development of many places in Greece, shedding light on issues related to irregular practices for tourist exploitation of the island, but also issues of environmental justice. On the one hand, the film offers explanations regarding the stereotype of the “stuck local” that usually accompanies the identity of “small places” like Thirasia. On the other hand, in an inventive way through the plot, it presents the operation to abolish the “authentically traditional” on the altar of profit from tourism, illuminating the invisible competition between touristized Santorini with its luxurious resorts and “deserted” Thirassia with its nudist beaches. The inevitable beauty of Thirassia, with its unique color palette, is not highlighted in the same picturesque way that would happen on a tourist island, but critically, leading thinking in directions that raise debates around the environmental values of a place.
6 May 2025
8:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM CET
Cruel Opportunities in the Apartheid City:
LAURIN BAUMGARDT
Rice University
Respondent: Jessica Ilunga, Keio University
8:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM CET
Cruel Opportunities in the Apartheid City:
Meantime Designs and Public Housing in Cape Town
LAURIN BAUMGARDT
Rice University
Respondent: Jessica Ilunga, Keio University
Plans and diagrams of RDP’s predecessor apartheid-era model, also colloquially known as “matchboxes” or as the NE51 series of low-cost houses—“NE” standing for “non-European,” “51” referring to the year of design, followed by a prototype number. Source: Elk, Clifford (Eds.) Metropolis: Architectural Students Congress, University of the Witwatersrand (April 1986).
As one of the most ambitious national public housing programs in the world, post-apartheid South Africa’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) produced millions of standardized, non-participatory and non-adaptable, freestanding brick houses, to all known as RDP houses. Three decades into South Africa’s new democracy, it has become most apparent that RDP housing has perpetuated apartheid’s monofunctional urban environments, and that formerly disenfranchised black communities were at no stage given a chance to negotiate and participate in the design and construction process of the RDP model. Although largely silent, absent, or sidelined from public housing policy and design discussions, architects and other built environment professionals and activist collectives have not only strongly criticized RDP’s minimal and fixed design and standard housing model, but have also proposed and circulated alternative visions, imaginaries, and spatial practices to challenge South Africa’s most rigid and segregated housing environment. By researching how architectural professionals, academics, activists, and residents viewed and evaluated the RDP house, and aimed to move beyond it, this talk not only contributes to understanding the microhistories of South Africa’s housing programs but also to how professionals and urban dwellers are rethinking the critical potential of design worldwide, and how they are addressing this challenging 21st century moment that desperately demands new socialities, housing designs, and resource distribution. To address the urgent housing needs of Cape Town’s most vulnerable communities, who continue to be caught in a state of meantime limbo, this talk introduces the notion of “meantime designs” that functioned as social and political counter- imaginaries, and as negotiating devices to discuss concrete alternatives to South Africa’s long failed and exclusionary public housing standards. “Meantime designs,” however, not only challenge but also run the risk of further perpetuating spatial inequalities and exclusionary housing politics.
***
Images of Modern Switzerland.
Aerial Photographs of Walter Mittelholzer
LISA HENICZ
Università della Svizzera Italiana
Respondent: Elif Kaymaz,
Middle East Technical University
Università della Svizzera Italiana
Respondent: Elif Kaymaz,
Middle East Technical University
Junkers plane above Zürich-Sihlfeld, Walter Mittelholzer, 1925.
ETH Library Zurich, Image Archive / LBS_MH01-004777.
ETH Library Zurich, Image Archive / LBS_MH01-004777.
After the First World War, a coinciding of technological improvements within the fields of photography, aviation, and print media facilitated a surge in civil aerial photography. My dissertation studies the impact of aerial photography on urban design and architecture in the first half of the 20th century, with the Swiss aeronaut Walter Mittelholzer as its central figure.
By tracing Mittelholzer's life and oeuvre, the doctoral project delves into the multifaceted aspects of his contributions to urban planning and the documentation of urban development. Through the exploration of his meticulously captured images of Swiss industrial complexes, towns, and infrastructure, I investigate the role of aerial photography as a tool for urban planning. By analyzing the intentions behind commissioning aerial photographs and their subsequent use in planning practices, the research project seeks to elucidate Mittelholzer's impact on shaping the Swiss self-image and contextualize the Swiss developments internationally. Furthermore, it scrutinizes Mittelholzer's agency as both an author and aeronaut, examining his relationships with contemporaries and industrialists as well as the public reception of his work.
The examination of Mittelholzer’s aerial photographs proceeds from two opposing directions: his diaries, notes and travel reports (the documentation and conception) on one hand and contemporary publications on architecture and urbanism (the reception) on the other. Selected case studies will exemplify my investigations and archival findings.
In addition to analyzing the impact of Mittelholzer’s photographs, I contextualize his figure internationally by comparing his activity, his impact, and his reception with the ones of his contemporaries. In conclusion, my research documents Mittelholzer’s aerial photography as a catalyst for urban planning and modernization in Switzerland. Ultimately, this dissertation aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of aerial photography in shaping urban landscapes and national identities during the inter-war period.
By tracing Mittelholzer's life and oeuvre, the doctoral project delves into the multifaceted aspects of his contributions to urban planning and the documentation of urban development. Through the exploration of his meticulously captured images of Swiss industrial complexes, towns, and infrastructure, I investigate the role of aerial photography as a tool for urban planning. By analyzing the intentions behind commissioning aerial photographs and their subsequent use in planning practices, the research project seeks to elucidate Mittelholzer's impact on shaping the Swiss self-image and contextualize the Swiss developments internationally. Furthermore, it scrutinizes Mittelholzer's agency as both an author and aeronaut, examining his relationships with contemporaries and industrialists as well as the public reception of his work.
The examination of Mittelholzer’s aerial photographs proceeds from two opposing directions: his diaries, notes and travel reports (the documentation and conception) on one hand and contemporary publications on architecture and urbanism (the reception) on the other. Selected case studies will exemplify my investigations and archival findings.
In addition to analyzing the impact of Mittelholzer’s photographs, I contextualize his figure internationally by comparing his activity, his impact, and his reception with the ones of his contemporaries. In conclusion, my research documents Mittelholzer’s aerial photography as a catalyst for urban planning and modernization in Switzerland. Ultimately, this dissertation aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of aerial photography in shaping urban landscapes and national identities during the inter-war period.
20 May 2025
08:30 AM EST / 14:30 PM CEST
DocTalks x MoMA
Field Work: Tina Modotti and the Free Schools of Agriculture, México, 1926-1932
NIKKI MOORE
Wake Forest University
Respondent: Adam Jasper, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Tina Modotti, Pandurang Khankhoje y el aspects del campo de experimentación de la Escuela Libre de Agricultura Emiliano Zapata / Pandurang Khankhoje and the look of the experimental fields of the Emiliano Zapata Free School of Agriculture, 1930. Source: Fototeca Nacional INAH, Pachuca, Mexico.In 1928, Tina Modotti photographed two men in a dry field holding a bedsheet behind an ascending row of maize plants in Mexico’s Central Valley. On the left stands a student from one of the region’s Indigenous communal farming villages; on the right, India’s ex-pat and México’s first geneticist, Pandurang Khankhoje. One of fifty images recently bequeathed by Dr. Savitri Sawhney to the Fototeca Nacional in Pachuca, México, this little-known work by Modotti, Teozinte (Euchlaena Mexicana), (1928), documents a series of experiments in which decolonial Indigenous agricultural science and art activism were made one. Each newly bequeathed image marks an uncharted moment in Mexico’s scientific, aesthetic, and political postrevolutionary development: namely, the emergence of thirty Free Schools of Agriculture. Supported by Mexican modernists Diego Rivera, Xavier Guerrero and Modotti, and run by First Nation’s teachers, the Free Schools were an educational organization that centered Indigenous land restitution goals via demonstrations of agricultural abundance, self-sufficiency, and what we now call environmental justice.
Too often seen as a passive eye documenting the work of others in the Mexican avant-garde who tokenized ancient First Nations aesthetics, this paper argues that with the addition of Dr. Sawhney’s collection both Modotti and her photography emerge as protagonists championing a complex visual politics of living postrevolutionary Indigenous agency and thriving. As such, Modotti’s work with the Free Schools of Agriculture necessitates a rethinking of the photographer’s oeuvre, as she leveraged her lens, published photos, and circulated prints to reclaim the image of the region’s First Nations from the photographic categories of discrimination they had endured in the press, while celebrating each community’s stake in México’s modern future.
***Too often seen as a passive eye documenting the work of others in the Mexican avant-garde who tokenized ancient First Nations aesthetics, this paper argues that with the addition of Dr. Sawhney’s collection both Modotti and her photography emerge as protagonists championing a complex visual politics of living postrevolutionary Indigenous agency and thriving. As such, Modotti’s work with the Free Schools of Agriculture necessitates a rethinking of the photographer’s oeuvre, as she leveraged her lens, published photos, and circulated prints to reclaim the image of the region’s First Nations from the photographic categories of discrimination they had endured in the press, while celebrating each community’s stake in México’s modern future.
A Map of Hong Kong’s Hidden Music Peripheries: Post -1980s
DIEGO CARO
University of Navarra
Respondent: Adam Jasper, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Music studio located in an industrial building, Hong Kong. Source: Diego Caro.
Floor 26 of Ho King Commercial Centre in Yau Ma Tei, the elevator stops. At the end of the corridor, the sound of a heavy metal band, detuned screams buffered by the cracked plywood door of a tiny music studio. Outdated factory buildings in Kwun Tong, industrial architecture gradually surrounded by new commercial and residential complexes; their precarious wait for urban renewal has offered an opportunity for young musicians to establish music studios, classrooms, or improvised bedrooms where music and teenage discoveries mingle with the noise of machinery. Tiny, closed shops with an infinitude of colorful objects that repose after a long day of sales, evoking a sense of initiation into Hong Kong’s underground music scene. The queue is the origin of casual conversations around an orange metallic cube that turns black, green, or purple in the inside, where the combination of sounds and lights acts as a social condenser via the affective power of music.
This research project maps the musical peripheries that coexists with the boisterous rhythm of Hong Kong from within. It encompasses visiting and studying spaces for music, drawing and photographing these often ephemeral venues, analyzing them in reference to the city´s real estate dynamics and sociopolitical context, interviewing the main stakeholders, and reading the stories behind the music to decipher the role of art production in the current context of Hong Kong. By wandering around the spatial networks formed by hundreds of musicians scattered in unexpected secluded venues around the city, this research seeks an alternative understanding of the diverse struggles over placeness in the city through the lenses of emergent culture, showcasing artist’s “tactics” to counter the commodification of creativity in a tightly controlled bureaucratic society.
This research project maps the musical peripheries that coexists with the boisterous rhythm of Hong Kong from within. It encompasses visiting and studying spaces for music, drawing and photographing these often ephemeral venues, analyzing them in reference to the city´s real estate dynamics and sociopolitical context, interviewing the main stakeholders, and reading the stories behind the music to decipher the role of art production in the current context of Hong Kong. By wandering around the spatial networks formed by hundreds of musicians scattered in unexpected secluded venues around the city, this research seeks an alternative understanding of the diverse struggles over placeness in the city through the lenses of emergent culture, showcasing artist’s “tactics” to counter the commodification of creativity in a tightly controlled bureaucratic society.