1 – Colonial heritage: wars, nationalisms and identities

 

Martins JC-Mapera

CECS - Universidade do Minho , lazifand@gmail.com

 

Armindo Armando

CECS - Universidade do Minho e Universidade Zambeze; armandoarmindo21@gmail.com

 

In the former colonies, the various vestiges are changeable and impactful and influence the way in which society views its daily life. In this call we intend to focus on the issues of liberation wars and other post-liberation wars in the former colonies. The diverse knowledge in the fields of social sciences, exact sciences and modern identities in the former colonies, among others, highlights the preeminence of colonial heritage. However, colonial heritage not only presents itself as places of visuality, but also as places of memories of colonialism, liberation wars and the construction of identities. With this section, we intend to analyse the political and historical uses of the colonial past in the context of the liberation wars and the post-war period; discuss the social and artistic representations of the liberation and post-war wars today and debate the influence of the colonial past in the construction of identities and places of memory in the former colonies through the wars fought. In the methodological framework, the section will privilege qualitative, quantitative and narrative research. Therefore, the section will include interdisciplinary knowledge areas such as: Sociology, Anthropology, History, Security and Defence Studies, Cultural Studies, Architecture, Geography, Public Policies, Communication Sciences and Economics.

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Keywords: heritage; representations; coloniality and nationalism  

 

Short bio

Martins Mapera, PhD in Cultural Studies, Associate Professor at IsArC - Mozambique, researcher at CECS - UMINHO, mentor of the doctoral programme in Language, Culture and Society at Zambeze University - Mozambique, has conducted several researches with reference to the social representations of the history of Mozambique in Sofala Province: Cinema and School Textbooks, under the project culture past and present.

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Armindo Armando, PhD student in language, culture and society at the University Zambeze - Mozambique vs. University do Minho - Portugal, researcher at CECS - UMINHO, participated in several researches with reference to social representations of the history of Mozambique in Sofala Province: Cinema and School Textbooks, under the project culture past and present.   

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2 – Legacies of Wartime Villagization

 

Rui Aristides Lebre

Department of Architecture and Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra; ruiaristides@gmail.com

 

Tiago Castela

Center for Social Studies and Department of Architecture, University of Coimbra; tcastela@uc.pt

 

In the 1950s, wartime villagization was employed by the British in Kenya and Malaya, as well as by the French in Algeria. Later, Portugal forcibly moved up to 2 million peasants in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea. After political independence, countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, or Myanmar also employed forms of villagization enmeshed with armed conflicts. Various terms were used in late colonialism and after political independence to describe wartime villagization, such as “new villages,” regrouping camps or centers, “new hamlets,” reorderings, strategic hamlets, government villages, among other terms. Wartime villagization, both colonial and postcolonial, can be understood as a military development project to deal with armed insurgency, or escape from the state apparatus, transforming rural lives and landscapes. While research has started exploring the built environment of wartime villagization, very little is known about the role of this legacy for contemporary rural spatialities in Africa and Asia. While many villagization camps were abandoned, others became thriving villages and towns. Papers interested in the spatial conditions and lived experience resulting from colonial and postcolonial villagization or resettlement schemes are welcome.

 

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Short bio

Rui Aristides Lebre is an architect, as well as an historian of architecture and spatial planning. His research addresses the entanglements between space, power and culture, with a focus on Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. He holds a PhD in architecture from the University of Coimbra, where he is an Invited Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture. He is also a Collaborator Researcher at Center for Social Studies, where he is Co-Principal investigator (Co-PI) of the exploratory research project "Regulating the Colonial Rural".

 

Tiago Castela is a historian of architecture and spatial planning. He teaches and does research on the political dimension of space, with a focus on Portugal and southern Africa in the Twentieth Century. He holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an Assistant Researcher and an Invited Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the exploratory research project "Regulating the Colonial Rural", and was the PI for the exploratory project "Urban Aspirations in Colonial/Postcolonial Mozambique".

 

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3 – The City as the (Anti)Structure: Urban space, Violence and Fearscapes

 

Dr Asma Mehan

College of Architecture, Texas Tech University, US; asma.mehan@ttu.edu

 

Dr Krzysztof Nawratek

The University of Sheffield, UK; k.nawratek@sheffield.ac.uk

 

Fear (economic, political, social, religious, and cultural) and violence (criminal, ethnoreligious or political) shape urban space experiences, resulting in physical changes to the built environment. Fear of ‘others and state-imposed violence can lead to exclusion from the urban space of those seen as threatening. These fear-based materials and institutional settings produce a new physical arrangement and social ordering of the city. The recent examples of protest squares and insurgent urbanism around the world highlighted the formation of a social movement space’ through public protests, which has triggered the various state-led strategies to control the urban insurgencies.

Moreover, the historical importance of radical spatialities for mobilization and demonstration and the collective political memory of past revolutions, wars, riots, and conflicts were certain factors for protesters, and images and meanings of urban spaces were (re)appropriated by protestors during the social movement. Most likely due to the fear of wider national uprisings and colonial powers, the authorities in these countries are seeking to institutionalize urban movements by limiting or (de)politicising their spatiality. Through different case studies worldwide, this session aims to focus on and analyse the complex relationships between Anti-Colonialism, Architecture, and Fearscapes to conceptualise the spatial relations during the protests, wars, conflicts social unrests.

 

 

Short bio

Dr. Asma Mehan is a researcher, educator, and architect working at the intersection of architectural humanities and critical urban studies. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University College of Architecture. She is the author of the books “Tehran: from Sacred to Radical” (London: Routledge, 2022) and “Kuala Lumpur: Community, Infrastructure, and Urban Inclusivity” (London: Routledge, 2020). Dr. Mehan was recently appointed as the Coordination Team (CT) leader of the Young Academics network of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP YA). Her scholarly and creative works are focused on architectural humanities and critical urban studies.

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Dr. Krzysztof Nawratek is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Humanities and Architecture at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is an author of City as a Political Idea (2011), Holes in the Whole. Introduction to urban revolutions (2012), Radical Inclusivity. Architecture and Urbanism (ed. 2015), Urban Re-Industrialisation (ed. 2017), Total Urban Mobilisation. Ernst Junger and Postcapitalist City (2018), Kuala Lumpur. Community, Infrastructure and Urban Inclusivity (with Asma Mehan and Marek Kozlowski, 2020) and several articles and papers.

 

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4 – Mapping the Landscape of War/ Resistance and Post-Independence period through Public Art

Milia Lorraine Khoury

Cape Peninsula University of Technology (Cape Town, South Africa); khourym@cput.ac.za;

 

During conflict, our cities become the frontiers from which wars are fought. Dividing the urban landscape into territories of the warring factions, as seen in the Gaza Strip. Thus, this creates a landscape of war and resistance. Memorials and monuments have always acted as an extension of the built environment agenda set-up by the governing regimes/ warring factions, be it in the colonial or post-colonial period. Thereafter, post-conflict the victors remove monuments representing previous regimes and erect memorials to commemorate their victories. This concept is visible in Maputo’s Heroes Plaza/ Praça dos Heróis, built in 1975 following independence. It honours the fallen heroes of the Mozambican revolution. The central monument, a five-point-star formation, acts as both mausoleum and memorial as it enshrines the coffins of martyred sons and leaders of the liberation movement. As a sort of mise-en-scène that plays out, the same plaza design has been reproduced in smaller scale in other cities and districts of Mozambique i.e. Pemba. This session will analyse what role architecture and public art played during wartime i.e. landscape of resistance and the post-independence era from 1974 onwards in Lusophone Africa or other relevant post-colonial territories worldwide. In addition, as part of the decolonialisation exercise this session will additionally discuss/ debate the polemics around the removal of statuary and memorials in the colonial, post-colonial and post-independence periods.

 

Keywords: Landscape of War/ Resistance; Urban Space; Public Art; Public Space; Monuments and Memorials

 

 

Short bio

Milia Lorraine Khoury completed a BTEC Diploma in Foundation Studies in Art & Design at Central Saint Martins College (London) in 1999. In 2003 and 2008, she obtained a BA Fine Arts degree and a Masters of Philosophy in Fine Arts degree from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She has taught at tertiary level since 2003 and has published several articles on art, design and architecture and has presented papers at both local and international conferences within this field. She has also acted on the scientific committees of several international conferences. Currently, she lectures in History/ Theory of Art & Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town. 

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5 – The Architectures of War in Lusophone Africa and Beyond

Lisandra Franco de Mendonça

Lab2PT, University of Minho; lisandramendonca@gmail.com

 

Throughout the bloody and protracted Colonial/Liberation Wars in Angola (1961–1974) and Mozambique (1974–1974), the European built environments of the main cities, such as Lourenço Marques (presently Maputo) and Beira, came to embody what current scholarship on twentieth-century architecture in Africa misleadingly tends to identify as ‘Modern Diaspora’ (or “laboratories of modernity”)1, failing to articulate the historiographical challenges of specific material translations with a complex interplay of actors and the colonial agenda. Rather, both modernization (intended for the settler population and translated in urban and territorial infrastructures upgrade) and forced villagisation (a strategy of war employed by the Portuguese army to destroy rural bases of African rebellion against the colonial regime), were a part (but not a peculiarity) of the Portuguese colonial project.

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This session especially looks forward to papers that address the historiography of colonial architectural and spatial repertoires facing “two distinct times: the time of what is enunciated” (in this case the period of African liberation wars and independencies) “and the time of the enunciation, which is the current time, now”2 (that translates the way we look at these heritages and repercussions across the post-independence nation projects). Topics may include but are not limited to building materials and techniques, housing production and demographic colonization, agricultural settlements, and architectural controversies. Examples from different colonial contexts are welcome. The session’s goal is to shed light on the architectural and urban-related consequences of late European colonialism and on its perception broadly.

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1 - On this argument, see, for instance, Tom Avermaete and Maristella Casciato, Casablanca Chandigarh. A report on modernization, with photographic missions by Yto Barrada and Takashi Homma, Introduction by Mirko Zardini (Montreal: Canadian Center for Architecture; Zürich: Park Books, 2014), 43, 45; Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, “Between metropole and colony: rethinking a research agenda,” in Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Eds.), Tensions of Empire: Colonial cultures in a bourgeois world (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997), 1–56, here 5; Gwendolyn Wright, The politics of design in French colonial urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

2 - João Paulo Borges Coelho, “Memory, History, Fiction: A Note on the Politics of the Past in Mozambique” (Paris, EHESS, October 21–22, 2010). https://www.ces.uc.pt/estilhacos_do_imperio/comprometidos/media/jp%20borges%20coelho%20text.pdf

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Short bio

Lisandra Franco de Mendonça, researcher at the Lab2PT, University of Minho, she is engaged in a research project entitled “Architecture of Decolonization—Postcolonial Urbanity and After: The Epistemological Shift in Modern Architecture Culture and Conservation Approach.” She is a former Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow and obtained her double PhD degree in architecture and urbanism, and in history and restoration of architecture from the Universities of Coimbra and Sapienza of Rome. She was awarded a MSc in restoration of monuments (Sapienza University of Rome) and a degree in architecture (University of Porto).

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6 – Under Golden Suns: Revisiting Late Modernist Typology Experiments

Rui Seco

CITAD - Research Center for Territory, Architecture and Design; ruisecoc@gmail.com

 

“It was the ATBAT 'Grille' from Morocco […] with its golden suns on wands and new language of architecture generated by patterns of inhabitation that seized us” would remember Allison Smithson about the impact of the panels presented at CIAM 9 by the 'Atelier des bâtisseurs' (Smithson, 1991).

To the new generations in the 1950s, the liberty experienced by architecture in North African territories under French rule was a hope for modernity that among others Team 10 would pursue.

Typology experiments with space, pattern and structure, comprising duplexes, semi-duplexes, elevated streets and pathways, mat architecture, courtyards, terraces and other features, in diversified layouts, were performed in different realities and territories.

The reinforced colonial development dynamics boosted by the administrations of many subdued territories, paradoxically paved a liberty space for architectural experimentation. From Le Corbusier to Michel Ecochard, Vladimir Bodiansky or George Candilis, in the French case, from Vieira da Costa to Simões de Carvalho, Alberto Soeiro or Amâncio Guedes, in the Portuguese one, are examples of architects that, among many others, experienced the possibilities of these broad experiment fields set in the period across colonized territories, with important resonances in homeland production and in the reflections and debate that engaged the new generations.

This session welcomes studies exploring and reflecting on these experiences, produced or influenced by colonial contexts. How did these ideas and projects contribute to the new paths of architecture in the third quarter of the 20th century? Did they play a role in composing the framework and underlying issues that prompted the end of the modernist period? Could they still today inform the debate on the city and its architecture?

 

Short bio

Rui Seco, architect, urban planner, teacher, editor and researcher on architecture and urbanism, studying the city, modern architecture and the evolution of concepts and urban models throughout the twentieth century. Post-graduated in Planning and Design of the Urban Environment (FAUP); MSc in Architecture, Territory and Memory (FCTUC); PhD candidate (FCTUC). Holded scholarships by the Marquês de Pombal Foundation and FCT. Lectured architectural design, urban theory and city history in Coimbra Arts College (EUAC); cofunder and editor of A[#] architecture journal. Currently research fellow at CITAD.

 

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7 – Architecture of Repair

Emilio Distretti

University of Basel; Royal College of Art; emilio.distretti@unibas.ch

 

This session examines the intersections between the architectural heritage connected to colonial histories of violence and warfare, and the curatorial practices of its preservation. With the creation of a European modernity and the birth of the nation state, heritage making became intrinsically tied to destruction and marginalization: minorities have been systematically excluded from political communities, while the colonized world was stigmatized as non-modern and backward. In this context, architecture has been instrumental in perpetuating civilizational narratives and materializing class based and racialized inequities of non-European ‘others.’ By acknowledging the violent dimension of architecture, this session seeks to explore how a critical understanding and re-interpretation of architectural heritage can initiate a process of repair for those communities that have been affected by different scales of exclusion, and violence and war, and through which structural injustices can be acknowledged and cultural bonds reconceived. This session explores critical research methodologies that deploy the public dimension and function of architecture as a space for repair from colonialism and its aftermaths (with its racialized, social and economic inequalities), and as a space for critical knowledge production around preservation. Rather than adding another external gaze that wants to control the process of heritage making, Architecture of Repair seeks to uncover how local communities affected by colonial histories of violence and warfare actually undertake this repair. The main objectives of this session are twofold: 1) to discuss architectural heritage from an illustration of hierarchies, exclusion, violence and victimhood to an active space for critical knowledge production a resource by which contested histories and processes could be reconstructed, analysed and better understood; 2) to mobilize the concepts and practices of repair and desegregation of experiences of heritage making to (re)connect life-worlds, sociality, subjectivities and communities that bear the scars of modern violence and exclusion.

 

Short bio

Emilio Distretti is a researcher, writer and an educator. He is Postdoctoral Fellow at Urban Studies, at the University of Basel. Emilio holds a Ph.D. in Aesthetics and the Politics of Representation from Portsmouth University (UK). Previously, he was the Director of the Urban Studies and Spatial Practices program at Al Quds Bard College in Palestine. His research takes on interrelated avenues on colonial architectural heritage, postcolonial and decolonial politics in the Mediterranean and in the Horn of Africa. He collaborates with DAAR - Decolonizing Architecture Art Research.

 

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8 - Of other spaces: heterotopias and the strategy of siege

Nuno Tavares da Costa

DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte; nmtcosta@gmail.com

 

In his 1967 lecture, entitled “Des espaces autres”, Michel Foucault proposes a new kind of spatial figure: the heterotopias. These are real places, characterized by juxtaposing multiple meanings, with and outside all other sites, which are simultaneously represented, contested, and perverted. Other places, places of alterity, that are neither here nor there, simultaneously physical and mental, acting as mirrors of the society. Forward in his conference (that keeps a remarkable actuality), Foucault speculates on possible categories of heterotopias and advances with some examples: prisons, cemeteries, museums, theatres, fairgrounds, brothels, and colonies, among others.

In the colonial context, particularly during war periods, these places can also be read as spatial and temporal delimitations, establishing their own rules and hierarchies, where space is governed by a logic of oppositions: between good and evil, one and the other, in and out, included and excluded, obedience and disobedience. Most of these relations are still fostered by the hidden presence of the sacred. They have implicit an idea of closure, of siege, either to surround physically or to pursue diligently and persistently, mostly with the objective of capitulation, of one to the other. Spaces like labour and refugee camps, barracks, colonies and compounds, religious facilities, the Brazilian senzala or the house of bandeirantes, are spaces committed to the ideas of power and struggle, where life is suspended as part of a strategy of occupation, exploitation, and loss of identity.

In this session, we are interested in studying and discussing how these colonial politics and strategies of siege, through these other places (heterotopias), interfere with the development of the colonized countries and with the collective memory of its inhabitants, influencing their decisions and creative production. But also, to address the implications of this colonial politics that rebound in the colonizer metropolis, both in the past and in contemporaneity.

 

Short bio

Nuno Tavares da Costa, architect and investigator. Studied Architecture at FA-UTL and holds a Ph.D. in Architecture from ISCTE-IUL. He develops his activity between practice, as Senior Project Architect for the last 20 years, and as an integrated Ph.D. researcher at DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte. His main interest lies in architecture as a process. His studies and research address the relations between architecture and urbanism practice with the questions of consciousness (ethics), resistance, insurgency or intellectual disobedience, as critical motivations toward a continuous cultural transformation.

 

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9 – Modernity and the city: norms and forms of urban transition in colonial contexts

Regina Campinho

Universidade de Coimbra; regina.da.luz.campinho@gmail.com

 

In 1989, with his book French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment, anthropologist Paul Rabinow revolutionized the current understanding of modernity through his study of space, power and knowledge in France, from the 1830s through the 1930s. Delving in French society’s construction of norms and search for forms adequate to understand and to regulate what came to be known as modern society, French Modern was, nevertheless, a pictureless book.

Concurrently, the historical-geographical approach to cadastral analysis and the study of urban morphology, focusing mainly on mapping the evolution of the built landscape and its links to territorial management, has been providing for some exciting contributions to current knowledge regarding the norms and forms of European modernity. Authors working on empire-building through similar perspectives have namely focused on the forms of public action through the study of early public works departments, transport and communication infrastructures, and the role of engineers in shaping the modern city. However, and with some exceptions from architectural and urban historians, there hasn’t really been a concerted effort to engage in mapping this transition: we now know quite a bit about its norms, but how about the forms of colonial modernity?

This session will focus on mapping urban transition in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries depicting, through relevant and innovative illustrations, the transformation of pre-industrial landscapes into modern cities in colonial contexts. Special attention will be paid to the infrastructural instruments (housing, public buildings, street layout, potable water and sewerage network, transports, etc.) used to bring the modern ideals of order and sanitation to the city, as well as to the roles and hierarchy of the actors involved, not forgetting to look at how (or if) these modern forms have determined, transitioned and/or adapted to the landscape of the contemporary city under the postcolonial administration.

 

Short bio

Regina Campinho has recently defended her PhD thesis on ‘Heritages of Portuguese Influence: Architecture and Urbanism’ at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, co-directed at the Nancy School of Architecture, France, entitled "Modernizing Macao: Public Works and Urban Planning in the Imperial Network, 1856-1919". Her research focuses on the connections between urbanization and globalization in the long 19th century European imperial context. Since September 2021, she has been working for the heritage conservation services of the French Ministry of Culture.

 

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10 - By Sword and Cross: Christianizing Missions and Global Empire

Ralph Ghoche

Assistant Professor, Barnard College; rg2169@columbia.edu

 

María González Pendás

Assistant Professor, Cornell University; mg995@cornell.edu

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Second wave colonialism, beginning with the conquest of Algiers in 1830 and the establishment of the British Raj in 1858, has often been depicted in contrast to early modern Iberian imperialism as a largely secular practice, one in which science, industry, reason—and not god —paved the way for colonization. But just as utilitarian tactics were deployed for old and new conquests alike, religious zeal was an equally considerable force in the expansion and consolidation of colonial empires in the 19th and 20th centuries. In fact, sword and cross continued to be waged in unison: religion played direct roles in colonial confrontations—in military advances and armed conflicts—and indirect roles in the formation of a colonial mindset. On the one hand, religious and missionary movements, often aided by military authorities and tacticians, left visible marks on landscapes, helping European and American colonialism redefine the tools, technologies and rhetoric of imperial might. Alongside the construction of colonial military, civic and industrial infrastructure, Christian patrons opened parishes, schools, universities, orphanages, hospitals, farms and factories; they shaped the urban fabric of colonial cities and the territorial environments of hinterlands. At times, they also waged demolition campaigns with the intent to advance the conversion of colonial subjects. On the other hand, and perhaps more fundamentally, Judeo-Christian ideals of redemption were key to justifying the universalizing and civilizing rhetoric so central to the cultural domination of colonized populations. Hence, while the power of religious authorities was transformed or curtailed on European soil in the name of secularization, it was tactically expanded overseas.

This session aims to contribute to these discussions by looking at the role played by religious movements in colonial and postcolonial conflicts and in the formation and destruction of spatial environments from the 19th century onwards. We invite contributions that look at sites of religious colonial activity as well as papers that examine conflicts over secularism in relation to formerly colonized groups as these played out architecturally, questioning its role in the ongoing project of Christian epistemic hegemony—a doctrine aimed at colonizing bodies and minds even in the absence of colonialism on the ground.

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Short bio

Ralph Ghoche is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Barnard College, Columbia University. He holds professional and post-professional degrees from McGill University and a PhD from Columbia. His research is centered on French colonial architecture in Algeria during the 19th century, with a focus on the urban interventions of the Catholic Church in Algiers. Ghoche has also written widely on French architecture and its relationship to theories of ornament, archeology and aesthetics in the 19th century, which is the subject of his forthcoming book by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

 

María González Pendás is an architectural historian of modernity and coloniality of the Spanish transatlantic world. She is Assistant Professor at Cornell University and previously taught at Vassar College, Cooper Union and Columbia. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia and a Masters in Architecture from the Polytechnic University in Madrid. She has received fellowships from Society of Architectural Historians, Graham Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Columbia’s Provost Addressing Racism Seed Grant Initiative and was a member of Columbia University's Society of Fellows in the Humanities.

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11 - Diasporic Imaginations and Alternative Futurities

Aslihan Gunhan

Cornell University; aslihan8@gmail.com

 

Ana Ozaki

Cornell University; anagisele@gmail.com

 

Whether through 19th-century neo-baroque architectures by Afro-Brazilian returnees in West Africa, or, through early 20th-century translations of medieval architectures by Armenian exiles escaping the Ottoman Empire, we see diasporic laborers as agents of postcolonial infrastructures. The Afro-Brazilian neo-baroque architecture provided a vision of futurity and self-emancipation in the homeland, despite the British colonial rule. Exilic Armenian architects fleeing the Ottoman Empire after the genocide utilized medieval Armenian architectural motives of the Southern Caucasus, where they never lived, as a way to re-imagine a homeland in France, Ethiopia, or Egypt.

Rather than reproducing narratives of migrations of colonizers to colonized lands, we focus on histories of forced exiles and returnees inspired by visions of self-emancipation, futurity, anti-colonialism, and translations of homelands. Using diasporic thinking, this session aims to highlight migrant agencies through counter-histories of labor not exclusively associated with exploitation, but for racial and ethnic enunciations. 

This panel is not limited to African returnees or West Asian diasporas but hopes to encompass a comparative understanding of resistance, agency, and freedom, through alternative archives and affective histories. For a conversation on global histories of emancipatory futurities and diverse understandings of homeland, we invite papers that focus on postcolonial agencies and peace imaginaries after colonial wars and forced displacements resulting from partitions, imperial dissolutions, among other discriminatory practices.

 

Short bio

Aslihan Gunhan is a Ph.D. candidate whose research investigates the histories of modernity in the late Ottoman Empire with questions of migration, dispossession, and violence. Gunhan's work has been supported by the Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship (SSRC IDRF), the Fulbright Program, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Einaudi Center, and Society for the Humanities. She received her B.Arch. and M.Arch. degrees from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She serves on the SAH Graduate Student Advisory Committee and previously held a research position at MoMA and teaching positions at Cornell and Middle East Technical University (METU).

 

Ana Ozaki is a Ph.D. candidate with the dissertation, "New Brazils in Africa: Architecture, Race, and Climate in the Brazilian Atlantic (1910–1974)," that aims at confronting the inadequacies of area studies that disregard Brazil's historical connections to Africa and the intellectual contributions by Afro-Brazilians to Brazil's architectural history. Before coming to Cornell, Ozaki worked as an architect in Brazil and has taught courses at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Universidade Positivo, Curitiba, and Barnard College, New York City. Ozaki holds a B.Arch. and a B.F.A. from Parana's Federal University, Curitiba, Paraná and the School of Music and Fine Arts, respectively, and an M.Sc.Arch. and an M.C.P. from the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.

 

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12 - The role of large construction companies in housing through colonial and postcolonial perspectives

Inês Lima Rodrigues

DINÂMIA'CET - Iscte; rodrigues.ineslima@gmail.com

 

During the second half of the twentieth century onwards, large construction companies played a significant role in the process and discourse of housing, shaping the built environment in different geographical regions and political contexts. Although usually associated with the work of construction companies, it has received little attention in architectural history. On the one hand, they were responsible for spreading the International Style and constructing modern housing worldwide. On the other hand, these firms acted as agents of power between state administrations, professional organisations, financial institutions and the general public, contributing to architectural research. Moreover, many of these firms played a leading role during conflict, dealing with environments of constructed public works and military proposals defining colonial occupation strategies. Contributions that address the role of construction companies in the architectural production of housing, either from a historical or theoretical perspective, analyses of their importance in colonial strategies and their action in independent territories are welcome. Potential topics may range from the study of the organisational structure and operational know-how of a construction company; research on the production of a specific building element or system; private involvement extended to state-sponsored housing; influence on housing strategies inherent to military operations during colonial periods to their role during the decolonisation process. This session welcomes a range of contributions in distinct geographical contexts and further developments between architecture and construction, from a specific case study to broader urban contexts that promoted housing corroborating military strategies during the colonisation period and, in some cases, assisted in post-independence reconstruction.

 

Short bio

Inês Lima Rodrigues. Architect and researcher, PhD in Modern Housing of Portuguese Influence, with recognised merit as “Premi Extraordinari Doctorat-UPC”. She currently publishes book chapters articles and participates in international conferences. She is a member of Dinâmia’Cet, developing Postdoctoral research on Angola’s modernity; Co-PI of the R&D project “Middle-Class Mass Housing in Europe, Africa and Asia” and researcher in the R&D project “Archwar”, funded by FCT and WG’1 Leader in the COST Action 18137. She carries out Architectural project practice as a parallel activity to research.

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13 – War affairs: the entanglements between architecture and military apparatus in colonial Africa

Francesca Vita

FAUP/DINÂMIA´CET-Iscte; francesca.vita0@gmail.com

 

Beatriz Serrazina

CES/III-UC; beatriz.serrazina@gmail.com

 

Military strategies were critical to build the colonial space since the first camps were settled and fortresses were built in Africa. The interplay between military and architecture apparatus at the service of Empires showed itself in many modalities and layouts, until their strong impact during the wars for independence in the 20th century. Military purposes, theories and agents not only shaped the bureaucratic apparatus, but they extended their purposes and modus operandi to the landscape itself (Henni, 2018). On the one hand, army officers at times fulfilled positions in the administration of the colonies, from national to local governors, ruling different aspects of civil life and shaping the civil environment accordingly. On another hand, soldiers were often expected to perform as settlers, thus simultaneously fighting with guns and bricks.

This session focuses on the entanglements between military and architecture in shaping the built environment during conflicts from the late XIX century until late colonialism. We are looking for papers that explore how the military apparatus embraced architecture practice –design strategies, planning tools, etc– and in which way the architecture apparatus, mostly embodied by Public Works Departments, colluded with military purposes. We seek a diverse range of geographies in the African continent, encouraging contributions of both theoretical reflections and practical case studies. In this session, we are interested in unearthing the intersections and contaminations between architecture and war/army purposes focusing on the space produced and the tools employed in conflicted areas by both colonial and uprising parties.

 

 

Short bio

Francesca Vita is a PhD candidate in “Architectural Heritage” at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (PT), sponsored by FCT grant. In 2015, she spent one year in Guinea-Bissau laying the groundwork for her future researches on domestic space in urban and rural environments, from civilian to military contexts. Her PhD focuses on the colonial production of mass-housing for African population and its contemporary legacy in Guinea-Bissau. Since 2019 she has been disseminating her studies on colonialism, domesticity and violence in international conferences, while integrating the DINÂMIA’CET (ISCTE-Lisbon) as collaborator.

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Beatriz Serrazina is a PhD student at CES/III-UC. Her research focus on the role played by private companies in the production of colonial space in Angola, exploring overlooked architectural protocols, built forms and transnational connections. Current research interests span architectural and planning history, (post)colonial heritage and circulation of knowledge. She is a research fellow in the project “ArchWar: Dominance and mass-violence through Housing and Architecture during colonial wars. The Portuguese case” (DINÂMIA’CET). Contributions include the co-organization of the exhibition “Colonizing Africa: Reports on Colonial Public Works” (Lisbon, 2019) and several publications.

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14 – Nuclear Imperialism and Colonialism

Samia Henni

Cornell University; arch@samiahenni.com

 

Since July 1945, at least eight nations have detonated more than two thousand nuclear bombs around the world, contaminating human and nonhuman lives and environments. Other nations have secretly developed and constructed nuclear reactors and military research centers. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), nuclear weapons have been tested in Algeria, Australia, China, French Polynesia, India, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, the United States of America, and Uzbekistan. To carry out their nuclear weapons research and detonate their atmospheric and underground atomic bombs, civil and military authorities have designed and built massive infrastructure and constructions in deserts, oceans, and other sites across the globe. The ICAN asserts that more than 60 sites bear the devastating scars of atomic bombs.

This session seeks abstracts that explore the lives and afterlives of the built environments that served, or still serve, to sustain and maintain the production, development, and implementation of atomic weapons of mass destruction around the world, including plutonium and uranium extraction and production sites, nuclear weapons facilities sites, research institutes and laboratories, testing sites and bases, firing ranges, radioactive wastes sites, atomic memorials, and tourist attractions. The aim of this session is to investigate and expose the relationships between architecture, planning, colonialism, imperialism, health effects, environmental disasters, and nuclear weapons, which are the most destructive and devastating military weapons ever invented.

 

Short bio

Samia Henni, born and raised in Algiers, she is a historian, a theorist, an educator, and an exhibition maker of the built, destroyed, and imagined environments. Her research and teaching address questions of colonization, wars, extraction, deserts, forced displacement, and gender.

Currently, she is working on an edited volume, Deserts are not Empty (2022), that traces the human-made transformation of deserts; a book project, Colonial Toxicity: The French Army in the Sahara (2023), that investigates France's nuclear weapons program in the Sahara; and a long essay titled Exposing the Colonial (2022). She is the inaugural Albert Hirschman Chair (2021-22) for Identity Passions Between Europe and the Mediterranean at the Institute for Advanced Study (IMéRA) in Marseille. She is an Assistant Professor of History of Architecture and Urban Development at Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art and Planning; and a Visiting Professor (Fall 2021) at the Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich.

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15 – Learning from (and for) Africa. Architecture, colonialism and conflict

Leonor Matos Silva

DINÂMIA´CET-Iscte; leonormatossilva@outlook.com

 

According to “The Guardian”, its first report on global warming is from 1890.[1] This is the exact year of the “British Ultimatum” for the Kingdom of Portugal. At the time, the two nations were struggling for control of a land corridor between Angola and Mozambique, outlined by the famous Pink Map. The future was escaping the colonisers, while it was being reported in small sections of newspapers.

Debating today’s Africa requires discussing the state of its ecosystems, regardless of any socio-political filter. It is known that the African continent has been and will probably be the most affected by global warming. It is also recognised that the large internal migration flows that are already occurring as a result of drought, violent conflicts and economic vulnerability have been increasing. When it comes to very long-term planning, Africa represents a wide field of action beyond all individual interests.

This session will address some of the most urgent issues covering the African territory, prioritising research work & learning methodologies in respect to (and for) Africa. Among the topics to be addressed are architecture, colonialism and conflict. Architecture plays a fundamental role in the convening of infrastructures and the organisation of their provisioning, proposing solutions to poverty and other extreme difficulties. For its part, colonialism and conflict cannot be seen as separate aspects of African culture. The first, linked to domination, can be understood as a deprivation of the individual of his freedom only to be truly liberated through education and knowledge; the second, directly linked to violence, is also a gap in well-being conditions, of which women and girls are the most susceptible. Other territories around the world, particularly those close to Ecuador, may present similar experiences; contrasting, comparing and commenting on additional realities is the third and final objective of this session.

 

[1]   The climate crisis? We’ve been investigating it for more than 100 years. The Guardian, 02/10/2022. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/02/climate-crisis-guardian-investigating-pledge-decades-1890

 

Short bio

Leonor Matos Silva, PhD in architecture (ISCTE) funded by FCT. Postdoctoral fellowship from the R&D project “Middle-Class Mass Housing in Europe, Africa and Asia”. Member and former Grant Holder Manager of the COST-Action MCMH-EU. Signatory of an Agreement for the study and disclosure of FAUL’s historical archives. Commissioned to work on the R&D project “Coast to Coast – Late Portuguese Infrastructural Development in Continental Africa (Angola and Mozambique)”. Presently Co-PI of the Exploratory Project “Women architects in former Portuguese colonial Africa: gender and struggle for professional recognition (1953-1985)”. Integrated researcher and a Scientific Committee member at Dinâmia’CET, and a member of the Portuguese Association of Architects.

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