6 May 2025
8:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM CEST
Cruel Opportunities in the Apartheid City:
LAURIN BAUMGARDT
Rice University
Respondent: Jessica Ilunga, Keio University
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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).
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Images of Modern Switzerland.
LISA HENICZ
Università della Svizzera Italiana
Respondent: Elif Kaymaz,
Middle East Technical University
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Junkers plane above Zürich-Sihlfeld, Walter Mittelholzer, 1925.
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.
8:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM CEST
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.
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Images of Modern Switzerland.
Aerial Photographs of Walter Mittelholzer
LISA HENICZ
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.
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.
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.