PAST TALKS 2025


4 February 2025
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: Qiran Shang, University of Pennsylvania


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.


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Thinking Like a River:
Land, Water & Territorial Imagination in Colonial Punjab (1849-1920)


JAVAIRIA SHAHID
Columbia University

Respondent: Sonali Gowri Dhanpal, Columbia University

 

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.


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.

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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.





7 January 2025
8:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM CET


DocTalks x MoMA


The Rural Reinvention:
Emerging Taobao Villages and the Infrastructural Modification of the Invisible China



SOFIA LEONI
Politecnico di Torino


Respondent: Gianni Talamini, City University of Hong Kong


Photo by Sofia Leoni, shot during fieldwork on March 15, 2024. This image captures a local advertisement promoting e-commerce entrepreneurship in rural Junpucun. The phenomenon of rural e-commerce growth, exemplified by Taobao villages, has been strongly encouraged through targeted marketing strategies. Some of the slogans include: Tired of life as a migrant worker? Why not come home and work on Taobao.com?” “You can run a store online and it won’t affect your personal life.” “Visit Taobao if you want to live a better life.”


In recent years, China’s e-commerce revolution has expanded beyond urban centers, integrating remote regions into the country’s economic and political framework. This profound shift addresses the “three rural issues” identified in 2006: declining agricultural productivity, the widening urban-rural divide, and insufficient rural infrastructure and services. By combining national policies with localized implementation, these challenges have catalyzed a unique form of urbanization, often shaped by the interplay of public and private initiatives.

At the forefront of this transformation are Taobao villages, a grassroots revitalization model enabled by Alibaba’s C2C, e-commerce platform. Predominantly located in less developed coastal and central regions, these villages have experienced significant economic and spatial transformations driven by digital commerce. To qualify as a Taobao village, at least 10% of households—or a minimum of 100 shops—must engage in online trade, generating annual revenues exceeding CNY 10 million. This integration of e-commerce has disrupted traditional economic systems while reshaping spatial practices and mobility infrastructures. For instance, streets are frequently appropriated as informal public spaces, adapting organically to the demands of commerce and community life.

This research investigates the infrastructural and socio-economic changes occurring in Taobao villages through a multi-scalar approach that bridges spatial analysis and infrastructural studies, with a particular focus on logistics and the informal dynamics underpinning platform economies. Fieldwork conducted in three case studies—Junpucun in Guangdong Province (specialized in clothing and leather goods), Wuchuchen in Zhejiang Province (focused on tea and bamboo), and Dongfeng in Jiangsu Province (producing furniture and “fake Ikea” products)—uncovers how digital platforms facilitate new forms of entrepreneurship and spatial organization while simultaneously reshaping traditional rural identities.

The findings reveal a dual reinvention of rural labor and space. On one hand, traditional socio-economic structures are adapting to accommodate new entrepreneurial practices tied to global supply chains. On the other, digital infrastructures are reframing the role of logistics, relying heavily on human labor and localized knowledge to sustain platform ecosystems. These dynamics highlight the coexistence of modern and traditional systems, challenging binary perceptions of urban versus rural. At the same time, the study calls for a pluralized understanding of rural areas as spaces of negotiation and hybridity, where old and new forms of infrastructure, labor, and spatial practices intersect. By doing so, it sheds light on how rural China actively participates in global economic processes, redefining itself as a dynamic and adaptive entity in the digital era.


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China’s Two Tropical Architectures:
Climate, Thermal Technocracy, and Global Socialism in Guangzhou and Dar es Salaam, 1955-76


ZHIJIAN SUN
National University of Singapore

Respondent: Yiping Dong, Xi’an Jiaotong – Liverpool University

Collage showing socialist China's two tropical architectures in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and in Guangzhou, China

This paper offers a critical understanding on the entanglement between environmental history, built environment and geo-politics, by scrutinizing socialist China’s engagements in the built environment of the decolonizing tropical world, which is still marginal to existing narratives on tropical architecture around the (post-)colonial network and global socialism. Based on archival research and fieldwork in China, Tanzania and the UK, it reveals the concurrency and coconstitution between knowledge production and practice of China’s two tropical architectures in the mid-to-late 20th century, i.e. its overseas architectural aid in the decolonizing Tanzania (one of the largest but unnoticed African recipients of China’s aid), and its subtropical modernist architecture in Maoist Guangzhou (a stronghold for China’s subtropical building research), and thus how the Chinese socio-cultural construction of the tropics challenges established discourses on global tropical architecture. Instead of attributing architectural production merely to the genius of certain individuals, it attends to a much broader framework of socialist state-run institutions operating both within and beyond China, in which not only architects and planners, but also meteorologists, physicians, thermal engineers and Party cadres were all active agents for global flows of resources and knowledge. Drawing on theories of techno-political regimes and critical temperature studies, it develops the notion of “thermal regimes” to capture the interdependence between the use of thermal technologies and institutions of socio-political power. Through case studies of Guangzhou Textile Factory (1958) and China-aided Friendship Textile Mill (1968), it scrutinizes how an interlinked set of climatic knowledge, thermal comfort standards, architectural technologies and a body of expertise transcending Cold-War rivalries were marshalled by Chinese and Tanzanian actors, driven by a common appetite for industrial modernity, towards the technocratic control of environmental parameters, state intervention of human bodies, and extensive exploitation of natural resources and human labor.


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