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
21 January 2025
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
Architecture school for others:
Howard University; and the inclusive architectural pedagogy (1970-1990)
ALI JAVID
University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
Respondent: Eleonora Antoniadou, Royal College of Art
The design studio’s fundamental question at Howard university:
“What is the most appropriate forms for Others architecture to take?” Image Source: The Hilltop, the student newspaper of Howard University, 1971
Howard University, a leading centre for training African-American students since 1924, has always been a hot-bed for protests against racial discrimination and gender inequality, but after 1968, it also
became a base for Third World students protesting against colonialism and cultural-economic hegemony by Western powers in their countries. This atmosphere of the university attracted many
Third World students and teachers from the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East to participate in
its faculty of architecture during the 1970s. Subsequently, by gradually changing the faculty, the curriculum, and even the subjects of the projects, the School of Architecture endeavoured to address
Third World countries' needs to shape their future. This presentation examines Howard's inclusive architectural pedagogy in the 1970s, which was implemented under the slogan "Education for All,"
and investigates its pedagogical response to the participation of students of multiple races and ethnicities from the Third World. Finally, the presentation will chart the impact of its pedagogy upon
the subsequent work and approaches of Iranian architectural alumni, Kamran Diba and Khosrow Moradian, during the political crisis and the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
***
Women as Patrons of Architecture in 17th century Mughal Empire:
The Legacy of Nur Jahan
FARHAT AFZAL
DAAP, University of Cincinnati
Respondent: Gül Kale, Carleton University
Jahangir and Prince Khurram entertained by Nur Jahan (detail), India, ca. 1617.
© National Museum of Asian Art.
Islamic architectural history is often visually depicted in ways that contextualizes its significance in the contemporary world. This is illustrated using images showing scenes such as men performing ablutions inside mosque complexes or a group of male students sitting around a teacher in a madrasa. Rather than depicting monuments as empty and isolated, such depictions help to show how people interact with architectural spaces in the Islamic world. This approach is particularly valuable in contextualizing the architecture for people who are not familiar with the Islamic culture. However, many of these images mostly depict men, which often raises the question of “Where are the women?” While scholarship on women in the Islamic world haveincreased in the past several decades, primarily due to the increase in gender studies in western countries, scholars from both Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds agree that the approach for gender studies developed in the West cannot be thoughtlessly applied to the non-West. In addition, there has been a dearth of scholarship on women and the visual culture of the Islamic world from the pre modern period. Which then raises the next question of, “Where are the women in art and architecture of the Islamic world?” This study thus aims to highlight the contributions of a woman who greatly influenced the artistic traditions of the pre modern Islamic world: Empress Nur Jahan, wife of Emperor Jahangir, the fourth ruler of the Mughal Empire. It will investigate how her architectural patronage in 17th-century India served as both a representation of her power and her position as a spiritual sovereign, a concept that ties political power with sainthood.
4 February 2025
8:00 AM EST/ 2:00 PM CET
DocTalks x MoMA
8:00 AM EST/ 2:00 PM CET
DocTalks x MoMA
In Front of Everyone’s Eyes:
Cruising Infrastructure in Berlin’s Hasenheide and Whole Festival
CAROLINA SEPÚLVEDA
Harvard University
Respondent: TBA
Cruising: Whole Festival at Ferropolis, 2024. Credit: Tomás Eyzaguirre
The research begins with the premise that queer bodies and their collective associations are intricately shaped by their continuous interaction with the urban environment. Similarly, urban life is formed and contested by the diverse collective actions that subjectivities play in the public sphere, serving as indicators for measuring cultural currents. Cities, in this manner, are molded by infrastructures, demonstrating how sets of processes, policies, and practices converge differently in specific places and at particular times.
The proposal delves into the interaction between queer individuals and urban infrastructure within Berlin’s parks. Here, I explore the concepts of “body as infrastructure,” “infrastructured bodies,” and “queer infrastructure” to explain the dynamics between queer bodies, collective affects, and the urban environment. The study focuses on two moments of collective revolt against infrastructure in different time periods. Firstly, I scrutinize the Turnplatz, the first open-air gymnasium inaugurated in 1811 within Hasenheide Volkspark, which faced closure in 1819 following an uprising culminating in the assassination of poet Kotzebue. Secondly, I link Hasenheide's historical Turnplatz to its contemporary role as a cruising site—a practice involving seeking sexual encounters in public areas, typically among men—ultimately connecting it to the genesis of the WHOLE Festival, a three-day queer event situated in Ferropolis, so-called the “city of iron,” featuring cruising areas alongside music stages and darkroom spaces.
The evolution of Hasenheide park from a site emphasizing bodily rigor and discipline in the 19th century to a renowned venue for bodily pleasure through cruising or public sex reflects a broader cultural transformation in contemporary Berlin. Lastly, these cases shed light on the interplay of inclusion and exclusion dynamics arising from the intersection of identity formation, infrastructure, and modern life.
***
Thinking Like a River:
Land, Water & Territorial Imagination in Colonial Punjab (1849-1920)
JAVAIRIA SHAHID
Columbia University
Respondent: TBA
Left: The Bar Before Colonization: Caption: “Here the Bar is seen in its natural condition before the introduction of canal irrigation. At this site the jungle growth in the foreground is less than usual. The ragged clumps of trees are characteristic.”
Right: The Bar After Colonization. Caption: “This illustrates what Government waste lands will look like when irrigation is developed in a few years’ time. This illustration speaks volumes.” (Source British Library)
During the pivotal decades spanning India's subjugation to the British crown in 1857 and its eventual partition in 1947, the arid wastelands of Punjab underwent a profound transformation under the sway of colonial governance and economic imperatives. Once inhospitable desert wasteland, these lands were transfigured into fertile fields dedicated to the cultivation of lucrative cash crops (sugarcane, wheat & cotton) and the mobilization of labor.
British engineers and planners, discerning India's hydrological challenge not as one of water scarcity but of its erratic abundance at the wrong time, embarked upon a monumental endeavor to tame the Indus. Their ambition was succinctly articulated by Geoffrey de Montmorency, Governor of the Punjab from 1928 to 1933, who envisioned nothing less than to "make the desert bloom." The solution they proposed: perennial canal irrigation and alluvial planning—a strategic approach to reining in Punjab's tumultuous environment by orchestrating land utilization in harmony with the rhythms of irrigation and water management, negotiated against the caprices of rivers, rainfall, and soil. My dissertation project traces the intricate web of transformations wrought by this endeavor in the Chenab Canal Colony. Here, I examine how the architecture of mandi towns served as the nexus for the convergence of imperial networks spanning the Indian subcontinent, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Indian Ocean world, between the dynamics of extraction between colonial power and the indigenous knowledge and labor. By shifting the focus from notions of improvement to considerations of depletion, this project reconfigures our understanding of water and land and their intrinsic value within the imperial paradigm.
18 February 2025
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
“Forever Hidden”: Architectures of epistemological resistance at the New York World’s Fair 1939/40
MAGDALENA GRÜNER
Universität Hamburg
Respondent: TBD
Deep-sea diorama in the New York Zoological Society pavilion, New York World’s Fair 1939/40, size and materials unknown, Princeton University Library Special Collections, William Beebe Papers, box 12, folder 9.
The pavilion of the New York Zoological Society at the 1939/40 World’s Fair was a veritable twentieth century cabinet of curiosities: electric eel “Electra” sending out Westen Union telegrams, the Bronx Zoo’s famed giant panda “Pandora,” a number of titillating birds and fish labelled as the “crown jewels” as well as habitat groups of different sizes. The highlight of the exhibit, however, was the area dedicated to William Beebe’s deep sea dives on the Bermuda Oceanographic Expeditions, which were the site of the first crewed descents to the ocean-depths, conducted with a diving device called the “bathysphere” in the early 1930ies. This spherical part of the building housed not only the bathysphere itself, but also a series of deep sea dioramas, modeled after pictures painted by expedition artist Else Bostelmann. Within the sphere, a show of light and darkness, of seeing and not-seeing, of science and fiction awaited the audience. While this exhibit can be understood as a model of the bathysphere, the deep sea, and of being present in the deep sea all at once, it also articulates scientific epistemology that embraces non-knowledge, imagination, and fantasy as crucial vehicles of knowledge-making. The aim of my paper is to argue that the bathysphere exhibit is one of the displays on the 1939/40 World’s Fair grounds that undermined the general message of the fair which emphasized a science based on technocratic principles as the key to a prosperous future. Instead, it proposed a science that met its subject of investigation with curiosity rather than rationalist domestication, with awareness of its own limitations rather than claims of absolute authority, with playful engagement rather than entitled mastery.
***
Creating a Social Environment for Coexistence: American Architectural Discourse and
Korean Architects/Urban Planners during the Cold War
MAN JOONG KIM
Binghamton University
Respondent: TBD
Left diagram: Kim Tai Soo, Van Block Housing, Progressive Architecture (January 1969) Right floor plan: Woo Kyu Sung, Roosevelt Island, AIA Journal (July 1975)
Throughout the 1960s, new perceptions of the environment were ignited by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Martin Luther King Jr.’s advocacy for the Fair Housing Act. The built environment should have shifted its focus toward ecological and spatial justice. Simultaneously, architecture students from Korea, who longed to embrace modernist architecture, encountered challenges from postmodernist claims on their campuses. Faculty and students in U.S. schools were relatively progressive and sought to engage with the discourses demanded by society, while Korean students adjusted themselves to the novel North Atlantic framework through theory and practice. However, the narrative was not exclusively characterized by progressive tendencies. During the Cold War, the United States—as a state, institutions, and schools—actively sought to intervene in domestic urban crises as well as challenges within the Third World with architecture.
This study will examine how architecture students from Korea—specifically Kim Tai Soo, Woo Kyu Sung, and Kang Hong Bin—received education in the United States and how the reinterpreted and recontextualized their experiences from the U.S. in Korea as architects and urban planners. Furthermore, it will explore how architecture and urban planning that embodied publicness became a significant discourse and how this had supported their careers. The participated from the early stages of new interdisciplinary fields such as urban design and architectural theory, fulfilling a role of avant-garde.
This study will examine how architecture students from Korea—specifically Kim Tai Soo, Woo Kyu Sung, and Kang Hong Bin—received education in the United States and how the reinterpreted and recontextualized their experiences from the U.S. in Korea as architects and urban planners. Furthermore, it will explore how architecture and urban planning that embodied publicness became a significant discourse and how this had supported their careers. The participated from the early stages of new interdisciplinary fields such as urban design and architectural theory, fulfilling a role of avant-garde.
4 March 2025
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
DocTalks x MoMA
Salt and Land
YOSUKE NAKAMOTO
ETH Zürich
Respondent: TBA
Influx Tidal Salt Field, Mitajiri, Yamaguchi Prefecture, 1953This thesis investigates the modernisation of the salt industry in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea region, focusing on the concept of "metabolic rift" derived from Marx's critique of capitalist agriculture. It examines how salt, a vital resource historically embedded in Japan's maritime culture, has shaped the evolving relationship between land and society, from traditional methods of production to contemporary industrial processes. The research traces the historical evolution of salt production, beginning with the premodern tidal influx method, which relied on natural environmental conditions and fostered reciprocal trade between coastal and inland communities. This labor-intensive practice tied salt production deeply to the rhythms of nature and established salt as an economic and cultural link between regions. However, the introduction of mechanised methods, such as the gravity flow and ion-exchange membrane processes in the 20th century, marked a shift towards greater efficiency and standardisation. These technological advancements, driven largely by government monopolisation and the demands of global markets, transformed the salt industry from a locally integrated system into an industrialised, globalised process.
The thesis argues that this shift toward industrial efficiency and reliance on imported salt represents a broader environmental and cultural estrangement, or "metabolic rift," disconnecting local communities from the land and sea. The loss of traditional salt fields signifies not only an economic shift but also the erosion of cultural practices and environmental stewardship linked to Japan’s coastal landscapes. Ultimately, the thesis advocates for a comprehensive reevaluation of Japan's coastal history, which has often been marginalised in favour of prevailing agricultural narratives. By positioning salt as a critical lens for examining the country’s environmental and economic transformations, it emphasises the need to restore Japan's maritime heritage as an essential component of understanding the nation’s cultural landscape.
The thesis argues that this shift toward industrial efficiency and reliance on imported salt represents a broader environmental and cultural estrangement, or "metabolic rift," disconnecting local communities from the land and sea. The loss of traditional salt fields signifies not only an economic shift but also the erosion of cultural practices and environmental stewardship linked to Japan’s coastal landscapes. Ultimately, the thesis advocates for a comprehensive reevaluation of Japan's coastal history, which has often been marginalised in favour of prevailing agricultural narratives. By positioning salt as a critical lens for examining the country’s environmental and economic transformations, it emphasises the need to restore Japan's maritime heritage as an essential component of understanding the nation’s cultural landscape.
***
The Desagüe Debates: Water and Drainage in Enlightenment Mexico
REBECCA YUSTE
Columbia University
Respondent: TBA
Axolotl. Amphibia. Amybystoma. Torner Collection of Sessé and Mociño Biological Illustrations, courtesy of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 6331.1253.
This paper examines the role that the desagüe, or drainage system, played in the modification of the environmental conditions of the Valley of Mexico in the late Enlightenment. Begun in the sixteenth century, the desagüe was designed to protect Mexico City from the seasonal floods of Lake Texcoco. Drainage continued for the following two hundred years, using technologies and procedures learned in mining and extraction projects elsewhere in Mexico to uncover useful, productive, arid land. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the effects of systematically eliminating water from the valley began to emerge. Creole scientists, in particular Jos. Antonio de Alzate (1737-1799), became increasingly concerned with the climatic effects of this changing environment. They observed and wrote about the atmosphere, weather patterns, flora and fauna, and the cultural and societal changes suffered by the indios who lived in surrounding villages. These scientists, many of whom worked in opposition to the Bourbon crown, articulated a deep skepticism towards these neo-mercantilist imperial projects, instead proposing a more conservation-minded approach to land and water management. The desagüe, then, becomes an early site to think about the relationship between human activity and climate change. It offers a case study in the longue-dur.e of environmental and ecological history. As the work of these creole scientists demonstrates, an ecological dissent emerged alongside techniques of land control and disruption. Calling into question the need to so drastically change the natural world, these scientists were ultimately silenced, as the imperial reformist projects marched forward in the name of progress, eventually draining the lake completely and forever altering the environmental identity of the valley.
18 March 2025
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.
25 March 2025
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
The Waiter’s Wall: The Neo-Constructivist Microhistories in the 1960s Kosova
EDMOND DRENOGLLAVA
University of Cincinnati
Respondent: TBD
“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.
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.
2 This 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.
2 This 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.
***
To
Recover the Moon:
Land and Water as Instruments
of Control in East Berlin’s Chinese Garden (1985-1999)
ROBIN HUEPPE
ETH
Respondent: TBD
The Chinese Garden in Berlin Marzahn, photograph by Manfred Durniok, 1999
Constructed
in the 1990s as Europe’s largest Chinese garden on the terrain of the former
East Berlin Garden Show (Berliner Gartenschau) 1987, the “Garden of the
Recovered Moon” materially embodies the shifting dynamics of Sino-German
relations and the integration of East and West Germany. A symbol of regained
harmony and unity, it emerged as a late manifestation of China’s resurrected diplomatic
relations with East Germany in 1985. As the Garden Show transitioned to West
German management post-reunification, it became entangled with broader economic
interests, tied to the Berlin-Beijing city partnership, trade agreements, and
the exchange of land and resources.
Situated at the foot of a mound of war rubble and construction debris, the garden’s design concept of a Chinese scholar’s garden (Gelehrtengarten) aimed to connect landscape, architecture, and philosophy through the semiotics of arranged water features, rocks, pavilions, bridges, and plants to frame visual experiences and program specific ways of seeing. However, this artificial harmony masked the hidden traces of war buried beneath less than one meter of topsoil. The involvement of Manfred Durniok, a West German filmmaker with ties to both East Germany and China and Berlin-Beijing partnership commissioner, underscores how architecture and landscape became shaped by scripted narratives and projections arising from geopolitical desires, transitioning from a place marked by destruction and displacement to one of transnational ties and renewed economic prosperity.
By relying on archival material, secondary literature, and site visits, this study explores how this transnational governance materialized in the garden’s construction process. It examines how Sino-German agreements transformed the accumulated detritus of collapse into a site symbolizing economic growth, revealing their consequences on East Berlin’s mass housing landscapes. By analyzing the garden’s conception, transition, and execution, this study attempts to show how political decisions reshaped the built environment before, during, and after reunification.
Situated at the foot of a mound of war rubble and construction debris, the garden’s design concept of a Chinese scholar’s garden (Gelehrtengarten) aimed to connect landscape, architecture, and philosophy through the semiotics of arranged water features, rocks, pavilions, bridges, and plants to frame visual experiences and program specific ways of seeing. However, this artificial harmony masked the hidden traces of war buried beneath less than one meter of topsoil. The involvement of Manfred Durniok, a West German filmmaker with ties to both East Germany and China and Berlin-Beijing partnership commissioner, underscores how architecture and landscape became shaped by scripted narratives and projections arising from geopolitical desires, transitioning from a place marked by destruction and displacement to one of transnational ties and renewed economic prosperity.
By relying on archival material, secondary literature, and site visits, this study explores how this transnational governance materialized in the garden’s construction process. It examines how Sino-German agreements transformed the accumulated detritus of collapse into a site symbolizing economic growth, revealing their consequences on East Berlin’s mass housing landscapes. By analyzing the garden’s conception, transition, and execution, this study attempts to show how political decisions reshaped the built environment before, during, and after reunification.
15 April 2025
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
Jermayne MacAgy.
PAMELA BIANCHI
École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville
Respondent: TBD
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: TBD
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: TBD
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.
6 May 2025
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
Cruel Opportunities in the Apartheid City:
LAURIN BAUMGARDT
Rice University
Respondent: TBD
10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET
Cruel Opportunities in the Apartheid City:
Meantime Designs and Public Housing in Cape Town
LAURIN BAUMGARDT
Rice University
Respondent: TBD
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: TBD
Università della Svizzera Italiana
Respondent: TBD
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 / 15:30 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.