Architecture Beyond. European architecture beyond Europa

As a concept or idea Europe is a project, the task of thinking and accomplishing universality. Eurocentrism as a concept is specifiable only within the context of modernity and is crucial for thinking modernity. Modernity is here understood as an attitude, as a way of relating to contemporary reality. The efforts to incorporate postcolonialist criticism into architectural discourse, during the last four decades, have been proved risky, as they cannot avoid the peril of “provincializing” Europe. In order to write a history that is not based on the western canon, it is necessary to avoid labels such as “other” or colonial. By depicting Europe and the West as a homogeneous power of domination over the rest of the world, postcolonial criticism turns ‘Europe’ into the blind spot of its own discourse. The fallacious character of dichotomies, such as western/nonwestern or Eurocentric/non-Eurocentric, becomes evident if we think that various societies have adopted aspects of western modernity without fully adopting them, fitting them into the indigenous culture. Europe, as a concept, represents the potential for an enlightened resistance in a world that is progressively becoming dominated by the mono-perspectivism of globalism. Placing Eurocentric narratives under critical scrutiny, an attitude which is symptomatic of the development of architectural history since the dissolution of colonialist models, is accompanied by the questioning of the earlier zeitgeist theories, which, for a long time, had served to legitimize modernism. What seems to be at stake nowadays is the complicity of architecture with structures of power and dominant ideological agendas in society. The tension between the scientific ethos of the task of the historian, which demands a commitment free of preconceptions and value judgments, and the political function of the project of history, which is based on a certain social order, has always existed since the emergence of the profession of the historian and was reflected in the educational mission of the nineteenth century university. Enlightenment is defined by a modification of the preexisting relation linking will, authority, and the use of reason. The very notion of Enlightenment is related to the task of the historian and to the concept of Europe. The task of rethinking the role of Europe in the formation of architectural history cannot but be related to an institutional analysis of the evolution of architectural history’s position within the universities and the production of knowledge at large. Bannister Fletcher's History of Architecture on the Comparative Method (1896) is a good illustration of the Eurocentric biases of architectural historiography, periodization, and classification. Spiro Kostof’s A History of Architecture (1985), including non-monumental and non-western traditions in his architectural survey, is an attempt to rethink the western canon. Kostof made a significant effort to present nonwestern architecture as an important factor in our understand-ing of western architecture, but his point of view still remains Eurocentric. Ákos Moravánsky, in Com-peting Visions. Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture, 1867-1918 (1998), intends to dissect the tight web of biographical, cultural, and aesthetic cross-connection. For this reason, he chooses a thematic structure, exploring architectural history in clusters, rather than through a linear development toward a monolithic modern form. Jean-Louis Cohen, in The Future of Architecture since 1889 (2012), adopts a narrative structure, deriving from Fernand Braudel’s conception of multidimensional “planes”, and manages to take into account multiple, overlapping temporalities. In my opinion, the most important challenges facing the architectural historian attempting to enunciate a non-Eurocentric or nonwestern discourse are the following: an overwhelming majority of the buildings that have an important place in scholars’ collective memory, and in what we could call the epistemology of architecture, are designed by architects whose approaches are based on Eurocentric or Western values. Secondly, the majority of archival resources contain material that is either representative of Eurocentric or Western values, or comes from architects who were legitimized according to Eurocentric or Western values, thus playing a dominant role within Eurocentric or Western contexts. Thirdly, the protocols that define what is evaluated and legitimized as scholarly research are based on Eurocentric or Western criteria. These three dimensions of the problem make the task of narrating a history that takes critical distance from Eurocentric or Western principles very difficult. One possible path could be to show the interaction between the different factors that contributed to a built result, revealing the non-realized episodes of a project and the controversies that preceded or accompanied its realization, having access to primary sources, that is to say archival materials, representing all the agents. That is to say, historians who aim to narrate certain events while avoiding a Eurocentric approach and revealing the many agents that took part in their realization should found their survey on sources coming from different archives that represent western and non-western or Eurocentric and non-Eurocentric perspectives, since archives are also constructed according to criteria that - in most cases - are Eurocentric or western.

Architectural Histories, 2018

Artl S Bulletin, 2014

for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. Recommended Citation Popescu, Carmen. "At the periphery of architectural history-looking at Eastern Europe." Artl@s Bulletin 3, no. 1 (2014): Article 2. CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk

Fabrications, 2016

This special issue of Fabrications on "Networks and Flows", provides an opportune moment to reflect upon some ongoing initiatives with respect to the historical theme of networking in architecture. In what follows we provide some perspective on the growing significance of this methodological shift towards understanding architecture in its regional and global capacity, especially as it has developed in the European academy over the past five to ten years. This report focuses on the activities of a European Union collaborative known as "European Architecture Beyond Europe". The collaborative was formed in 2010 and funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology program (COST), and ran for four years up to May 2014. Referred to by COST as an "Action", this collaborative was designed to establish a network of academic researchers from across the EU with common interests in the history of imperial, colonial, and transnational architectures. 1 Although the funded meetings and activities of the Action only lasted a short period of time, the creation of a specialist scholarly periodical ABE Journal (Architecture Beyond Europe) has since continued the Action's agenda and sustained cooperation across a number of EU member states. 2 An account and rationale of the Action's formation and activities are given here, with a view to reiterating the importance of understanding networking and its consequences in architectural scholarship, and also how further exploration in this area continues to shape the future of research in colonial and postcolonial architecture and urbanism. 3 This account is followed by three perspectives by each of the authors relating to their own experiences in this area of research. COST Action "European Architecture Beyond Europe": Motives and Rationale Established in 2010, the COST Action "European Architecture Beyond Europe" aimed at articulating a broader understanding of the transfer of European architectural ideas, knowledge, and expertise across the globe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By focusing on specific vectors of transmission, largely in the context of European imperial expansion, and

The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice, 2017

The 40th anniversary of European Architectural Heritage Year (1975-2015) / Un Avenir pour Notre Passé. 40e Anniversaire de l'Année Européenne du Patrimoine Architectural (1975-2015), herausgegeben von / edited by / édité par Michael Falser and Wilfried Lipp (ICOMOS Österreich/Austria/Autriche), = Monumenta III, Berlin, hendrik Bäßler Verlag, 2015, 674 pp., EUR 39.90 (hardback), ISBN 978-3-945880-03-6 'A Future for Our Past' was the motto of the European Architectural Heritage Year (EAHY) 1975. On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, a weighty volume bearing the same title has been edited by Michael Falser and Wilfried Lipp, Austrian members of the International Scientific Committee on Theory and Philosophy of Conservation and Restoration of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and published in the 'Monumenta' series of the joint Austrian, German, Luxembourg and Swiss national committees of ICOMOS. Representing an important celebration of a major European event, the book is introduced with prefaces from institutional authorities and the editors, followed by five constituent parts. The first, entitled 'Contexts' , comes in two German, two English and one French-language essays on the origins of EAHY 1975. The second, on the 'Participating Countries' , is the most extensive with 21 contributions of which 11 are in German, 7 in English and 3 in French. The third is devoted to the 'East-European Countries and the Campaign of 1975' , gathering one German and five English-language essays that deal with Finland, the German Democratic Republic (GDR; the former East Germany), the USSR, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Croatian part of former Yugoslavia. The fourth is dedicated to the 'Non-European Reception of the EAHY 1975' , and seven essays in English and two in French explore EAHY's impact on the U.S.A., Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, the Maghreb countries, the Levant, China, Japan and Australia. And the fifth, on 'Thoughts about the Afterlife of EAHY' , consists of one French and five German-language papers that reflect on EAHY's legacy from today's perspective. An extensive annexe includes the 1975 'European Charter of Architectural Heritage'-the 'Amsterdam Declaration'-which was signed at EAHY's crowning event, the Amsterdam Congress in October 1975, and has been a pioneer of historic urban regeneration; and lastly a facsimile of the 'Memorandum for the Council of Europe' by Ludwig Weiss. This last, dating from 1963, gave the impetus to celebrate this major European event and impressively documents the long preparatory period. The annexe is followed by lengthy information about the two editors and is accompanied by a list presenting the contributing authors. Michael Falser and Wilfried Lipp succeeded in mobilising illustrious authors for their book.

Paths, tracks of explorations, research paths, sometimes tortuous, often crossed, constructed step by step. Knowledge, diversity of knowledge built over time, tacit and explicit, cultural landscapes in the world. Projects, experiments for a future that moves from relationship with the places and interpreted traditions. The series explores architecture and design, tangible and intangible culture in places near and far, on objects and ideas, on knowledge and beliefs. Lands, knowledge, culturally, socially and environmentally sustainable innovation, scenarios of present and future challenges. Sentiers, pistes d'exploration, parcours de recherche, parfois tortueux, souvent entrecroisées, explorés pas après pas. Savoirs, diversités des connaissances façonnées dans le temps, tacites et explicites, paysages culturels du monde. Projets, expérimentations pour un futur bâti sur la spécificité des lieux et l'interprétation des traditions. Cette collection est une enquête sur l'architecture et le design, les cultures matérielles et immatérielles, les lieux proches et lointains, les objets et les idées, les connaissances et les croyances. Territoires, connaissances, innovations soutenables au niveau des cultures, des sociétés et de l'environnement, scénarios des défis présents et futurs.

2011

With the support of This publication is the result of Terra [In]cognita-Earthen Architecture in Europe research project, developed in the framework of Culture 2007-2013 Programme of the European Union. This project has been funded with the support of the European Commission. This publication refl ects the views only of the authors and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use, which may be made of the information contained therein.

Key-words: Eastern Europe/ architecture/ peripheries/ contextualization/ decontextualization/ new methodologies

This session addresses the practice of writing architectural history in Europe's 'peripheral' regions in the 19th and early 20th century. Since the first 'general' histories of architecture were in fact predominantly focused on German, Italian, English and French architecture (and the monuments of Classical Greece), it is our aim to critically analyze Eurocentrism from the hitherto neglected perspective of Europe's 'margins'. Rather than looking at local and national architectural histories per se, the session is concerned with how these can be placed in a wider geographical and disciplinary framework. The contributions address the troublesome relationship between the local, the national and the general, reflecting on the construction of Europe's centers and peripheries with questions such as: To what extent were the surveys on local architectural history aimed at 'filling the gaps' in general histories? What other approaches were developed, and how convincing they were in providing alternative narratives?

2020

Europe is also architecture. When Jacques Derrida counts philosophy, democracy and the Enlightenment, architecture is an essential gap. There is a number of artistic expressions, but amongst them architecture, as the space that we live in, plays an exposed role. Architecture is a criterion, a tradition that truly belongs to Europe. A debate on the architectural artistic representation of Europe from the past to the future will consolidate a place for Europe in the world. And this place does not, at least not in the principal sense, yield to the imperialist tradition. On the contrary, Europe’s architecture consists mainly of civilian or clerical buildings. Built architecture though is subject to its deterioration, while the intellectual achievement of architectural projecting and design are what will be left of Europe’s history. Architectural ideas are almost timeless as they always negotiate ourselves in our environment. But ideas are rarely acknowledged as deserved. In most cases, ...