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The first volume to map multiple positions on architectural modernism across the
developing world, this book offers an international perspective on the practices
and consequences of modernist architecture in the mid-twentieth century.
Presenting fresh case studies from Asia, South America, Africa, and the Middle
East, experts in this volume challenge canonical architectural historiography
which identifies the West as the sole yardstick to measure the beginning and
end, success and failure, of modernism. They show that modernism in Third
World nations took trajectories radically different from those in developed
societies during the same historical period. The intersections between
modernist architecture, globalism, developmentalism, nationalism, and postcolo-
nialism are explored. Chapters illustrate modernism’s part in the transnational
development of building technologies, the construction of national and cultural
identity, and the geo-historical entanglements of nations.
Creating new openings for cross-cultural analysis of modernism, this
provocative book has a key place in the historiography of modern architecture in
non-Western societies.
Edited by Duanfang Lu
First published 2011
by Routledge, 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2011 selection and editorial material, Duanfang Lu; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and
of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Acknowledgements vii
IIllustration credits and sources ix
Contributors 277
Index 281
vi
Acknowledgements
Some of the essays in this volume were first presented at the Society of Archi-
tectural Historians 61st Annual Meeting, held in Cincinnati, Ohio, 23–27 April
2008. The editor and contributors wish to express our sincere appreciation to
conference participants who offered valuable comments and posed insightful
questions. In particular, we would like to thank Professor Nezar AlSayyad, for
being discussant of the session ‘Third World Modernism’ and for his unflagging
support of our volume. Deep gratitude is extended to Professors Swati
Chattopadhyay, Hilde Heynen, Anthony D. King, Jon Lang, Peter Scriver, and
Richard Williams for their thoughtful comments. We are also indebted to Geor-
gina Johnson-Cook, Pamela McLaughlin, Rob Brown, and Marie Lister for their
sensitive work throughout the book preparation and publication process. The
editor wishes to express appreciation for the support provided by a Discovery
Project research grant from the Australian Research Council, the J. Paul Getty
Fellowship, and a small grant from the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Plan-
ning, University of Sydney, which have all helped the production of this volume.
Aspects of the issues discussed in the Introduction were presented in the Depart-
ment of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Department of
Geography at Guangzhou University, the Institute of Postcolonial Studies at the
University of Melbourne, the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University,
and at the Second ‘China Architectural Thought Forum’ in Shenzhen. The editor
wants to thank her hosts and her audiences for their rigourous engagement and
insightful feedback. Many thanks go to Farhan Sirajul Karim and Cassi Plate for
their valuable research assistance. Last but not least, Duanfang Lu would like to
thank her family for their love, support, and patience.
vii
Illustration credits and
sources
The editor, contributors and publisher would like to thank all those who have
granted permission to reproduce illustrations. We have made every effort to
contact and acknowledge copyright holders, but if any errors have been made we
would be happy to correct them at a later printing.
Cover: © Duanfang Lu
Chapter 1
1–3 © Duanfang Lu
Chapter 2
1–5 Source: Warchavchik Family Archive
6–7 © The Instituto Lina Bo e P. M. Bardi
Chapter 3
1 Top Source: Archive ETH Zurich
1 Bottom © Fonds Zevaco, FRAC Orléans
2 © Yannnick Beunard
3 Source: Archive ENA, Rabat.
4 Source: Personal archive of the architects, Rabat.
5 Source: Personal archive of Elie Azagury, now transferred to IFA, Paris
6 © Fonds Zevaco, FRAC Orléans
7 © gta/ETH, Zurich
8 © A+U
9–10 Source: Personal archive of Elie Azagury, now transferred to IFA, Paris
11 © Aziza Chaouni
12 Source: Personal archive of Elie Azagury, now transferred to IFA, Paris
13 © A+U
14 © Fonds FRAC Orléans
ix
Illustration credits and sources
Chapter 4
1 Source: Sert Collection, Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School
of Design
2 © El Arquitecto Peruano.
3 © Miró Quesada family
4a and 4b Source: Luis Sert Collection, Loeb Library, Harvard University
Graduate School of Design
5 Source: Oficina Nacional de Planeamiento Urbano (ONPU) Plan Piloto de
Lima, Lima: Empresa Gráfica T. Scheuch, 1949, p. 28
6 © El Arquitecto Peruano
7 Source: Oficina Nacional de Planeamiento Urbano (ONPU) Plan Piloto de
Lima, Lima: Empresa Gráfica T. Scheuch, 1949, p. 30
8 Source: Modern Architecture in Latin America since 1945, Museum of
Modern Art Exhibition Catalogue, New York, 1955, pp. 132–33
9 © Adolfo Córdova
Chapter 5
1–9 © Yael Aloni
Chapter 6
1–5 © Associated Newspapers Ceylon Ltd.
6 © Anoma Pieris
7 © Jack Kulasinghe, National Housing Development Authority
Chapter 7
1 Source: Vanlı, Mimariden Konuşmak, vol. 1 (2006), p. 211. Used with
permission of the Şevki Vanlı Architecture Foundation.
2 © The Istanbul Metropolitan Branch of the Union of Turkish Chambers of
Engineers and Architects
3 Source: Dostluk, no. 19 (28 August 1957), p. 6
4 Source: Dostluk, no. 18 (14 August 1957), p. 3
5 Source: Bütün Dünya, no. 94 (November 1955), p. 627
6 Source: Arkitekt, vol. 19, no. 3–4 (1950), p. 71
7–10 © The Istanbul Metropolitan Branch of the Union of Turkish Chambers of
Engineers and Architects
x
Illustration credits and sources
Chapter 8
1 © Farhan Sirajul Karim
2 © The British Museum, London
3–6 © MoMA, NY
7 © National Library of India, Kolkata
8 © National Institute of Design, NID, Ahmedabad, India
Chapter 9
1 © George Atkinson
2–4 Source: Colonial Building Notes
Chapter 10
1 © Vandana Baweja
2–3 Source: Redrawn by Simon Barrow, based on an axonometric of the Kuwait
Mat-Building published in Alison and Peter Smithson, The Charged Void:
Architecture (New York: Monacelli Press, 2001)
4 Source: Redrawn by Simon Barrow, based on sun diagrams published in
Tropical Advisory Service, “Climate analysis and design recommendations
for Kuwait Old City” (London, prepared for Peter and Alison Smithson by
Tropical Advisory Service, Department of Tropical Architecture,
Architectural Association School of Architecture)
5 Source: Redrawn by Simon Barrow based on sun diagrams published in
Lorenzo Wong, Climate Register: Four Works by Alison and Peter Smithson
(London: Architectural Association, 1994), p. 47.
Chapter 11
1–2 © The Aditya Prakash Foundation, Chandigarh
xi
Chapter 1
Introduction: architecture,
modernity and identity in
the Third World
Duanfang Lu
1
Duanfang Lu
2
Introduction
mentality, and a unique source of identity. The phrase has proven rhetorically,
politically, and theoretically effective.6 Despite the end of the Cold War, the term
“Third World” remains viable in contemporary geopolitical vocabulary, as seen in
leading scholarly journals such as Third World Quarterly and Journal of Third
World Studies.
This book is concerned with issues related to the development of
modernist architecture in developing societies from the end of the Second World
War in 1945 to the late 1970s, a period which witnessed the steady growth of
Third World solidarity. On the one hand, chapters in this volume demonstrate that
there are multiple ways of being modern, which are not the less perfect, incom-
plete versions of an idealized full-blown modernity, but constituencies with their
own trajectories, discourses, social institutions, and categories of reference. On
the other hand, these studies show that as a result of social production under
similar historical conditions, and representation of similar values and beliefs,
modernist architecture in these societies shared some common characteristics
and trajectories that were sharply different from those shared by developed soci-
eties during the same historical period. This book uses the concept of “Third
World modernism” to describe, analyze, and theorize these distinctive meanings,
practices, trajectories, transformations, and consequences of modernist architec-
ture in developing countries in the mid-twentieth century. By doing so it aims to
overcome the earlier hegemonic assumption which identified the West as the
sole yardstick to measure the beginning and end, success and failure of
modernism. It shows how canonical architectural historiography has universal-
ized experiences with modernity that were actually peculiar to the Euro-American
context.
Until now, most existing volumes have been monographs on the
development of modernist architecture within a single nation or anthologies that
focus on a single region.7 Third World Modernism is the first edited volume that
addresses the development of architectural modernism in countries across the
Third World. It represents an opportunity to map multiple positions in related
debates. The book highlights sites of encounter, connection, and negotiation.
Many nation-based histories of modern architecture picture architectural histo-
ries as disconnected variations, each confined to an a priori state-defined space
and following an internal logic. To quote Eric Wolf, this is a “model of the world
as a global pool hall in which entities spin off each other like so many hard and
rounded billiard balls.”8 In contrast, by mapping the concrete routes to and
through modernity, the original scholarship of this volume points to the impor-
tance of multiple patterns of interlocking not only between non-Western and
Western locales, but also among non-Western ones. Together the essays reveal
the intrinsically paradoxical differences at the very heart of the modern, on the
one hand, and the geo-historical entanglements of modernities from a global
perspective, on the other.
In the following, I will discuss “Third World modernism” from four
interconnected perspectives, namely, modernism as globalism, modernism as
3
Duanfang Lu
Modernism as globalism
The term “modern” originated from the fifth-century Latin term modemus which
was then employed to distinguish the Christian present from the pagan past.
From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, three vital transitions – the discovery
of the Americas, the Renaissance, and the Reformation – formed “the epochal
threshold” to modern times in Europe.9 While the processes of modernization
began around the fifteenth century, the kinds of art, literature, architecture, and
music we term “modernism” did not appear until the late nineteenth century.
Marshall Berman characterizes modernity as a historical experience that seeks to
ceaselessly transform the very conditions that produce it.10 In the same vein,
modernism has been a reaction to societal modernization, which is modern in its
celebration of newness and the break from tradition, and anti-modern in its
critique of modernization’s betrayal of its own human promise.
In architectural discourse, the very idea of modernism is culturally and
historically constructed into a heroic interwar modernism and a revisionist post-
Second World War modernism, which are characterized by different manifesta-
tions of the modern in architecture. The modern movement in architecture
originated from the avant-garde spirit shared by modernist painting, music, and
literature. Compared with their literary and artistic counterparts, whose counter-
modern gestures called the authority of Western rationality into question, early
modern architects were more allied with societal and industrial modernization.
Their manifestos and practices often affirmed the very beliefs and values of
modernization being attacked by other streams of modernism: progress, tech-
nology, and rationality.11 Walter Gropius in his description of the Bauhaus program,
for example, proclaimed that “A breach has been made with the past, which
allows us to envisage a new aspect of architecture corresponding to the technical
civilization of the age we live in; the morphology of dead style has been destroyed;
and we are returning to honesty of thought and feeling.”12
Similar expressions can be found in the writings of the modern move-
ment’s other polemicists such as Le Corbusier and Sigfried Giedion, the mani-
festos of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), and
subsequent canonical architectural histories.13 In fact, most technical advance-
ments required by modernist architecture took place before the advent of the
4
Introduction
5
Duanfang Lu
6
Introduction
radical changes. The socialist ideals of its European pioneers were replaced by a
commitment to democracy, which was employed strategically to expose the
defects of the liberal West’s enemies. Under the new political aura, modernist
architecture was Americanized and exported to different parts of the world.22
Chapters 4, 7 and 8 provide fresh evidence of how modernist architecture was
promoted via vehicles such as the postwar CIAM, the Ford Foundation, and the
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Peru, Turkey and India as part of the attempts
to implement American globalism. In Latin America, Roosevelt’s administration
sponsored CIAM members to evangelize new democracies in Latin American
countries with the idea of using modernist architecture and planning as a means of
modernization during the mid-1940s. In Turkey, knowledge about the “International
Style” and American domestic design was widely publicized in the wake of a series
of mutual aid agreements between the USA and Turkey in spheres including
economy, military, technical assistance, and culture in 1945, which reached its
peak with the Marshall Plan. In India, the US policy to promote India as a demo-
cratic counterweight to China resulted in a number of influential exhibitions on
modernist design organized by MoMA, in addition to financial aid totaling US$10
billion in 1954–64.
Although largely neglected by previous observers, some newly inde-
pendent countries also exercised globalism through modernist design during the
postwar era. In Chapter 5, Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler shows that the planning and
design of the Obafemi Awolowo University Campus in Ile-Ife, Nigeria was an
organized governmental initiative of Israel. In the context of its political and
economic isolation brought about by Arab boycotts, Israel aimed to gain strength
through its relations with Third World countries. Decolonization processes in Africa,
in particular, were considered a historic opportunity for establishing diplomatic and
economic ties. To achieve this objective, Israel initiated comprehensive technical
assistance programs in various countries, of which architecture and construction
were an integral part.
My own research on the development of building projects in Third
World countries as part of China’s foreign aid programs shows China as another
important player in this.23 Since the founding of the Third World coalition at
Bandung in 1955, China has consistently identified itself with the Third World and
has considered strengthening cooperation with other Third World nations its
basic foreign policy. Extensive Chinese architectural exports began in 1956 as
part of overseas aid programs within the Cold War context. In the decades that
followed, Chinese architects built construction projects ranging from major
national buildings to factories in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Many of these
buildings adopted modernist style, among which the Bandaranaike Memorial
International Conference Hall (BMICH) in Colombo, Sri Lanka, represents one of
the most significant examples.24 Designed by Dai Nianci, a prominent figure in the
history of modern Chinese architecture, BMICH echoes both postwar tropical
architecture and the iconography of Maoist utopianism (Figure 1; see also the
7
Duanfang Lu
Figure 1
Dai Nianci, the
Bandaranaike Memorial
International
Conference Hall,
Colombo, Sri Lanka,
1973. Photograph taken
by the author, 2010.
book cover photo). Due to its striking aesthetic appeal, BMICH has become a
symbol of national identity and a premier tourist attraction in Sri Lanka.
Notably, BMICH successfully hosted the Fifth Non-aligned Summit
Conference in August 1976, which in turn helped Sri Lanka project its own global
influence among Third World nations.25 Many delegates who attended the confer-
ence were impressed with the architecture and facilities of BMICH. It was
reported, for example, that Iraq, who had been provisionally selected to host the
Seventh Non-aligned Summit Conference in 1982, wanted to construct a similar
complex. The Iraq government sought Sri Lanka’s assistance in this respect and
planned to send a team of architects and engineers to study the plans. Several
other countries such as Pakistan were also interested in constructing something
similar, which marked BMICH as an interesting case in modernism’s global
dissemination.26
A quick overview reveals the complexity and contradictions involved in
the worldwide diffusion of modernism. It suggests that the rise of modernist archi-
tecture as a global phenomenon should not be taken for granted. Instead, the
global reach of modernism in the postwar era registered the rise of a new world
order which marked new forms of control, new ways of collaboration, and new
partnerships in international affairs. Global modernist design practices were
performed by a wide range of players and tangled with multiple political purposes
in the process. On the one hand, it must be more than coincidental that modernism
achieved its worldwide hegemony when financial capitalism was on the rise.
Affirmed by the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreements, the new financial system
achieved circulation, control, and exploitation that did not require that much phys-
ical support of locales compared with that required by colonialism. Hence, the new
system was abstract and independent of the specificities of place, of which the
sterile and faceless modernist architecture served as the proper symbol.
8
Introduction
Modernism as developmentalism
Dipesh Chakrabarty considers colonial historicism to be the colonizers’ way of
saying “not yet” to non-European peoples, who were forced to wait until they
became “civilized enough to rule themselves.”27 After independence, despite the
end of direct colonial rule, the modernist vision of a rationally progressing
universal history persisted, which considered that all nations were heading for
the same destination; some arrived earlier than others. With the acute self-
awareness of the temporal lag turned into a nationalistic aspiration for develop-
ment, an all-encompassing project of modernization was at the top of the national
agenda of many Third World countries.28 New infrastructure, housing, adminis-
trative and educational buildings were constructed to accommodate new
functions, new organizations, and new citizens.
It is in this broad context that modernist architecture was intimately
tied to state patronage and assumed a vital mission in Third World nation
building.29 Despite its claims to universality in time and space, interwar modernism
was developed at a time when “ascetic objects” were necessitated by economic
depression and postwar rebuilding.30 Practically, design doctrines such as “form
follows function” and “building = function × economics” articulated by early
modernists served particularly well in the developing world where people and
institutes constantly struggled with scarce resources and insufficient funds. For
example, modernist architecture achieved a decisive victory in China as part of
9
Duanfang Lu
10
Introduction
11
Duanfang Lu
São Paulo, known for its acronym, MASP (1958–68). Sandler argues that the
usual transplanted perspective of Warchavchik and Bo Bardi was neither inau-
thentic nor inappropriate. The adjustments the designers of the two projects
made in the specific context of Brazil might at times seem to veer away from the
canon or to result in “failures.” Yet they were nonetheless quintessentially
modernist, because the adaptations they made were precisely part of the
dynamic and constantly dislocated quality of modernism itself.
In “Depoliticizing Group GAMMA,” Aziza Chaouni observes a disjunc-
ture in the existing studies of the modernist movement in Morocco between
CIAM’s ideas and practices before independence and local reinterpretations of
modernism’s precepts after independence. Her chapter concentrates instead on
the continuity in the development of modernist architecture in Morocco by
looking into the work of a group of young Moroccan and French architects from
the 1950s to the early 1970s. Group Gamma, a Moroccan CIAM branch, was
established in 1953, which promulgated a modernist architecture in line with
Corbusian precepts, yet aspiring to be more in touch with the specificities of the
local context, climate, and human habits. Group Gamma formed its architectural
ideas under French rule, and put them into practice in its numerous public
commissions for the Moroccan state after independence. Group Gamma’s
contested modernism was not merely a product of national identity assertion or
of a will to rupture with the colonial past, Chaouni argues, but rather a result of a
local legacy of contest initiated by architectural experimentations.
In “Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group,” Sharif Kahatt
investigates transfer and transformation that occurred in modernist architecture
from the European avant-garde, American modernism, to the creation of a hybrid
architectural culture in Latin America. He shows that on the one hand, there were
many European and American initiatives to spread modern design in Latin
America. On the other hand, there was great interest from local architects who
made a great effort to adopt, transform, and deploy imported forms and tech-
niques. Led by Luis Miró Quesada, the Lima-based intellectual movement
Agrupación Espacio played an important role in this. Kahatt examines the relation-
ship between Agrupación Espacio and postwar CIAM by comparing the theories
and practices the two adopted in their search for the modern city. Although
canonical Latin American architectural historiography assumes that Espacio was
CIAM’s “franchise” in Lima, Kahatt’s findings demonstrate that the relationship
between these two groups was far more complex. The Peruvian Modern Project
led by Espacio turned out to be a product of cultural hybridization rather than a
direct borrowing of Western forms.
Modernism as nationalism
The concept of nationalism is a modern invention, associated with processes of
modernization such as urbanization, the development of industrial capitalism, and
the push for popular sovereignty that came with the French Revolution and the
12
Introduction
American Revolution in the late eighteenth century. Europe was radically recon-
structed according to the concept after the First World War and the breakup of
the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. The European ideologies of self-determina-
tion anticipated the nationalist movements in Africa and Asia, where most coun-
tries gained political independence following the Second World War. As many
have observed, the nationalism that drove the independence movement was not
the same as the post-independence one.42 The national unity formed against an
alien force before independence was replaced with the need to cultivate and
consolidate national identity in face of multiple contending groups from within.
Carefully manipulated built forms played a significant role in promoting a corre-
sponding identity in terms of national culture.43
It is rather ironic that modernist architecture, disseminated in the
name of “International,” was employed in many Third World countries – Turkey,
Brazil, Morocco, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Singapore,
among others – to represent nationhood, which was generally conceptualized as
being rooted in remote antiquity and grounded in cultural uniqueness. A careful
dissection reveals that the mechanisms behind this are multi-layered. First, in the
context of Third World developmentalism, modernity became the nation’s new
identity: something that informed the nation’s new sense of self and directed a
people’s imagination.44 What follows is that modernism, the symbol of moder-
nity, became a preferred means to project national identity and bring international
recognition. Grandiose modernist buildings served as visible representations of a
developing nation’s capacity to equal the developed nation on its own terms.
Second, stylistic differentiation served as an important strategy in the art of iden-
tity making. Despite multiple intersections between modernism and colonialism,
the architectural culture of the time managed to establish sufficient distance
between modernism and the system of architectural representation under colo-
nialism. While architectural classicism was considered authoritative and culturally
specific, modernism was welcomed in young nations as a new technology free
of the ties of the past and suitable for widespread adoption. Third, it was essen-
tial for the postcolonial state to impose a national homogeneity upon a multitude
of groups with divergent interests and cultural claims. Very often, the choice of
symbols of a specific ethnic group to communicate a unifying national identity
aggravated ethnic cleavages. In contrast, the use of modernism, which appeared
neutral and universal, could help to reduce social, cultural, political, and religious
tensions.
A reading of the making of Chandigarh in India illustrates multiple
issues involved in modernism as nationalism in a specific Third World context.
The building of Chandigarh, the new capital of Punjab, took place against the
background in which the state was partitioned and lost its capital to Pakistan;
many people lost their lives during this process due to religious violence. In
Chapter 11 of this volume, Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh argues that apart from symbol-
izing both modernization and a new beginning, the adoption of modernism for
the design of Chandigarh demonstrated the determination of the Nehruvian
13
Duanfang Lu
regime to wrap the Indian constitution with an explicitly secular code. Being a
modernist rather than a “Sikh” or “Hindu” city, Chandigarh served as a visible
negation of former colonizers’ historicist reading of the colonial subjects as reli-
gious subjects who were not yet ready to be modern citizens. Here, the
constructed non-identitarian quality of modernism was strategically motivated to
create a national identity that was modern, secular, and unfettered by colonial
historicism. The rejection of New Delhi as the prerequisite of the architectural
style of Chandigarh can be understood as the newly independent nation-state’s
rejection of Eurocentrism. Chandigarh’s modern architecture, Prakash suggests,
should be viewed as the adoption of a non-Western, or non-Eurocentric,
modernism.
Despite the alleged objectives, the making of Chandigarh, however,
was not without its own problems. The grand scale of Chandigarh in many ways
echoed that of New Delhi. Despite stylistic differences, both featured large-scale
administrative buildings and oversized public spaces, which served the purposes
of a search for legitimacy and a demonstration of state power. As Mark Crison
observes, compared with the monumental symmetry of New Delhi, the plan of
Chandigarh sought to tease off the central axis, “as if the spatial symbolism of
democratic power in relation to executive power was being reconfigured
rather than reconceived.”45 Like Brasilia, no design attention was paid to the
place of unskilled manual workers in the city. As a result, squatters’ settlements
grew after the completion of the project.46 The making of Chandigarh hence
exemplified a pitfall of modernism as nationalism shared by many post-inde-
pendent cities: the construction of a national identity through the modern façade
concealed the pressing problems of underdevelopment.
There were other tensions surrounding modernism as nationalism;
the uneasy relationship between tradition and modernity remains the most
striking one. Under colonialism, tradition was mobilized by some nationalists
to form a collective denial of colonial modernity, while for others the relation
between tradition and modernity did not have to be oppositional – indeed the
non-dialogic relation between the two might well be part of colonizers’ strate-
gies of differentiation and separation.47 After independence, tradition assumed
a new role in cultivating national cultures through a process of what Eric
Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger have described as “the invention of tradition”:
modern nations generally appeared so natural as to require no justification, but in
fact they were recent constructs resting on novel practices of manipulating histor-
ical consciousness.48 As such, there were attempts to develop a national archi-
tecture based on the mixing of modernism and historic precedents even in
countries where modernism had become dominant, which were not always
successful.49 As Lawrence Vale points out, the cultural richness negated by
modernism was sometimes resurrected in cartoon form, reducing architecture to
“a three-dimensional, government sanctioned billboard advertising selected
aspects of indigenous culture.”50 Still others sought to restore tradition via a
discourse of authenticity. National museums were exemplary institutions in such
14
Introduction
exercises, whose displays meant to transcend the young nation’s divisions and its
recent colonial past so as to present a common past and incite aspirations to
nationhood.51 According to Ananya Roy, the two moments – the consolidation of
modernism through the taming of tradition, and the revival of tradition on the
ashes of the modern – are “both part of the same grand narrative of geopolitical
order and discursive legitimacy.”52 They both assume a rigidly dualistic narrative
that marks the traditional off from the modern, which was inherited from colonial
historicism and remains a primary dilemma of Third World modernism even today.
The use of modernism in designing major national buildings such as
museums and parliament buildings has been addressed by many studies. The
three chapters in Part II of this volume explore the role of modernist architecture
in search of national identity by looking at three other important building types (the
university campus, the exhibition complex, and the residential building). Educational
architecture represented a significant segment of post-independent nation
building in Africa. Gitler’s chapter investigates the design and construction of
Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) campus in Ile-Ife, one of the most important
national commissions that followed Nigeria’s independence. Designed by Israeli
architect Arieh Sharon in collaboration with his son, and often cited as a master-
piece of the Modern style in African architecture, the complex displayed an inter-
pretation of national style that contested both mandatory and colonial rule. The
strategy was to express a specific ethnic identity, the Yoruba, one of Nigeria’s
largest ethnic groups, through a formalistic approach. To be sure, the search for a
cultural language combining modernism with African visual heritage was not
unique to Sharon and Sharon during this period. Developed from the discourse of
Africanism and negritude, this approach to Modernism has been an important part
of cultural production in Africa since the 1950s. Sharon and Sharon’s architecture,
however, integrated locality in an unambiguous manner, which was rarely seen in
large-scale civic commissions at the time.
Post-independence exhibitions in Colombo can be viewed as micro-
environments for the playing out of Asia’s cold war political alliances, and reflect a
marked departure from the colonial tradition of international expositions. In her
chapter “Modernity and Revolution: The Architecture of Ceylon’s Twentieth-
Century Exhibitions,” Anoma Pieris looks at Ceylon/Sri Lanka as a significant
microcosm of the broader processes that were shaping the Third World. In the
early 1950s, adopting anti-colonial nationalism, Ceylon moved from postwar domi-
nation by a neo-colonial Commonwealth to socialist republicanism. In the years
that followed, Ceylon attempted to maintain its independence through non-align-
ment despite competing foreign interventions upon her. Using the Colombo Plan
exhibition of 1952, Ceylon 65, and the Gam Udawa (Village Re-awakening) exhibi-
tions as important registers of national culture and its revolutionary socio-political
transformation, the chapter maps the social production of twentieth-century exhi-
bitions in Ceylon. Pieris situates modernism and its humanist ideals within the
wider socio-political framework which highlighted the emergence of the Third
World as a category. The exhibitions she described span several aesthetic
15
Duanfang Lu
Modernism as postcolonialism
Independence did not mark the sudden disappearance of colonial influence.
Instead, the steady progression of decolonialization gradually turned the formerly
polarized relation between the metropolis and colonies into a more complicated
and ambiguous relationship in various arenas. Despite the residual effects of
colonialism, there were more spaces for connectivity, reciprocity, and entangle-
ment in the name of development assistance, commercial exchange, knowledge
and technology transfer, overseas aid, partnership, and collaboration. How did
modernism intersect with this new postcolonial condition?
Following James Clifford’s seminal pairing of “roots and routes,”
which conceptualizes the borders between fixity and mobility as porous and
subject to crossings from both sides,53 I suggest that we need to look at criss-
cross paths, flows, and networks that connect multiple platforms as important
arenas for the diffusion and development of modernist architecture in the post-
colonial context. Despite a flourishing vocabulary of mobility and hybridity in the
past two decades,54 global links, flows, entanglements, and networks are still
treated as marginalized categories filling in the interstices between bounded
territorial units. National or local architectural histories are presented as co-existing
16
Introduction
but disconnected variations, which has presented difficulties for studies of issues
such as the transnational development of design discourses. Much of postcolo-
nial scholarship is still preoccupied with a dichotomy that “defines the colonized
as always engaged in conscious work against the core.”55 Part III of this volume
attempts to go beyond both nation-based historiography and the clear-cut core–
periphery model to view connection, dispersion, entanglement, and mobility as
an important dimension of Third World modernism.
Certainly, the continuing presence of global unevenness means that
the positions of different parties in these transactions were not necessarily
equal.56 As a result, heterogeneous and peculiar moments and results were
generated. The development of modern tropical architecture exemplifies
some of such postcolonial moments in the history of Third World modernism.
In colonial discourse the term “Tropics” was often used to refer to “colonies,”
as if the latter could be defined as a homogenous climatic zone.57 Developed by
Otto Koenisgberger, Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew, Fello Atkinson and others in the
postwar era, modern tropical architecture is regarded as an adaptation of
modernist design principles for a distinctive (hot and humid) climatic condi-
tion by incorporating passive solar design and ventilation systems, and
vernacular building elements such as verandas, louvered windows, and perfo-
rated walls. The Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in
London initiated a diploma in tropical architecture in 1954, and the University
of Melbourne established a similar program in 1962. The institutionalization
of tropical architecture allowed former colonial powers to maintain their influ-
ence in former colonies, on the one hand, and helped train the early genera-
tion of Third World architects, on the other.58 In recent decades, with the
booming of the tourist industry, neo-tropical architecture has been devel-
oped in various parts of the developing world to create exotic and pictur-
esque resort hotels for Western tourists. This new landscape, with locals as
labour and Westerners as consumers, tends to reproduce social and class
relations under colonialism.59
Despite its rich cultural meanings, tropical architecture is still
considered a neutral and technical development in much of architectural
discourse. Chapters 9 and 10 re-examine the early evolution of tropical archi-
tecture as a social phenomenon. Jiat-Hwee Chang’s chapter investigates the
under-studied technoscientific dimensions of the circulation and transformation
of modernism. There has been little critical scholarship on modernism in relation
to the institutionalization of building science in the mid-twentieth century, and the
attendant establishment of research stations, changes in architectural education,
and the technicalization of architectural knowledge and practice. Chang’s chapter
fills the gap by examining the work of the Tropical Building Section of the Building
Research Station in Britain and a network of similar research stations working on
tropical building problems in the British Empire/Commonwealth during the mid-
twentieth century. Drawing on the interdisciplinary scholarship in postcolonial
science studies and post-development studies, he reveals the production of
17
Duanfang Lu
18
Introduction
Spaces of hope60
During a visit to the United States in 1943, Chinese anthropologist Fei Xiaotong
noted the differences between China, where contemporary life was engulfed in
the thick layers of the accumulated past, and America, where people were future-
oriented but nonetheless dominated by an alienating order.61 Ghosts, in Fei’s
vision, represented the presence of the specter of the past that continuously
haunted the present and made up the very core of being Chinese: “Life in its
creativity … melds past, present, and future into one inextinguishable, multilay-
ered scene, a three-dimensional body. This is what ghosts are.”62 In contrast,
living in brightly lit American rooms, Fei wrote, “gives you a false sense of
confidence that this is all of the world, that there is no more reality than what
appears clearly and brightly before your eyes.”63
This volume sets out to complicate a picture of Third World modernism
in the mid-twentieth century oversimplified by the smooth transfers assumed by
the official history of modern architecture. Despite the “false sense of confi-
dence” in the universality, rationality, and homogeneity of the modern given by
dominant discourses, the chapters of this volume reveal in modernism the
constant wrestling with “ghosts” of all sorts that have been there from the very
beginning and will not go away. They show that, wrestling with the differences
in historical, social, cultural, political, and economic conditions, modernism took
heterogeneous trajectories in Third World nations. They also show that these
trajectories were radically different from those of developed nations during
the same historical period.
With the rise of consumption-orientated society and the development
of the welfare state amid postwar prosperity, the field of architecture in the West
appeared to be coming apart in the mid-twentieth century. Practitioners pursued
their idiosyncratic interests in the face of uncertainty over modernity, generating
a diverse body of work which Sarah Goldhagen and Réjean Legault have aptly
described as “anxious modernisms.”64 While practitioners of interwar modernism
were obsessed with the utopian goals of transforming society through revolu-
tionary architecture, postwar architects adapted their design vocabularies to the
new social and cultural conditions of commercial society.65 In contrast, during the
same period of time, Third World architects focused on the explorations of
modernism as a means of development, nation building, and identity making. The
spread of modernist architecture in developing nations was characterized by a
global diffusion of modernist design knowledge and construction techniques,
continuing Western expansionist practices, new forms of collaboration and soli-
darity, quests for national and cultural identity, large-scale developmental projects,
and above all, spaces of hope.
19
Duanfang Lu
20
Introduction
Figure 2
Modern urban housing
in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Photograph taken by
the author, 2006.
Figure 3
Local rammed earth
buildings have been
increasingly replaced by
concrete and brick ones
in Kanshi, China.
Photograph taken by
the author, 2005.
the built environment across the world. The past five decades witnessed waves
of debates that sought to address the ubiquitous problem of placelessness, with
the idea of critical regionalism developed by Kenneth Frampton and others being
one of the most influential academic propositions since the 1980s.72 Systematic
assessments of critical regionalism have been made elsewhere.73 My polemic
21
Duanfang Lu
22
Introduction
spaces? And could different knowledges be contested and updated not just with
reference to Western thoughts and forms but with historical reference to one
another? My study on the aftermath of the people’s commune movement in
China (1958–60) points to such possibilities.76 During the commune movement,
concurrent with sweeping institutional changes, architects boldly experimented
with modernist design in rural China, but their proposals rarely progressed from
paper. The failure of the commune plan problematized the issue of modernist
architecture. As the country was short of steel and concrete, and little state
funding was available for rural construction, designers recognized the importance
of combining both modern and traditional methods. There arose a new need for
collective self-understanding and other knowledges besides those of the West.
Hence, 1963 saw a sudden expansion of knowledge of traditional built forms in
different parts of the country. Surveys of vernacular architecture were conducted
and published, and efforts were taken to integrate local building conventions with
modern design. Meanwhile, the influential Architectural Journal (Jianzhu xuebao)
started to provide extensive coverage of architecture in Third World countries.
The 1963 issues covered architecture in Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma, Cuba,
North Korea, Vietnam, and Albania, while the 1964 issues added Egypt, Mexico,
Ghana, Guinea, and Syria to the list. Unlike typical Western representations,
Chinese authors focused on modern developments in architecture rather than
the traditional forms of these nations. They paid particular attention to how
designers adapted buildings to local social, geographical, climatic, and cultural
conditions. In a 1963 report on Cuban architecture, for instance, innovative roof
systems for industrial structures and well planned residential districts in Havana
were extolled. 77
Through these discursive parameters, the architectural practices of
other developing countries were linked with those of China, creating a world of
synchronic temporality and shared spatiality. As these coeval knowledges fuelled
new imaginings of modern Chinese architecture, the early 1960s saw a flourish
of design projects with a strong local flavor. The new orientation destabilized the
previous discursive framing of “Western modernist architecture,” which became
a subject of intellectual contention. This conceptual twist was reflected by Wu
Huanjia, who commented on the “ten greatest buildings in the 1960s” selected
by the American journal The Architectural Forum.78 Wu found the work of “master
architects” (including Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, and Eero Saarinen, among
others) “chaotic,” “ugly,” and “sick.” Saarinen’s expressionist TWA Flight
Centre, for example, was denounced for the lavish abuse of technology for purely
visual concerns.
These comments were certainly made under specific historical and
political circumstances, but they help to illustrate the matter of fact that there is
an “exterior” to an allegedly “universal modernism,” where it may be challenged
or even deemed irrelevant. It is from this discursive space that we can start to
confront the regionality and finitude of modernism on the basis of other experi-
ences. From the above example, we see that the crisis of modernist architecture
23
Duanfang Lu
in China in the early 1960s differed greatly from its crisis in the West during the
same period. Chinese architects were forced to face the historically constituted
condition of scarcity after the failure of commune design; it was from this vantage
point that they posited modernism among other knowledges and developed a
new vision of Chinese architecture. The rich regional building traditions revealed
through this example are not “ghosts” of the past to be disenchanted, but knowl-
edges that continue to build upon the present.
My position here is both similar and dissimilar to that of Dipesh
Chakrabarty in his book Provincializing Europe.79 Non-European peoples were
considered not yet ready to rule themselves under colonialism.80 Chakrabarty
argues that the contemporary historicist framework commits the same error by
considering the persisting world of peasants, which involves “gods, spirits, and
supernatural agents as actors alongside humans,” an anachronism in Indian polit-
ical modernity.81 He sets out to dismantle the linear notion of time by reconcep-
tualizing the present as “constantly fragmentary” with diverse ways of
being-in-the-world. Like Chakrabarty, I stress the contemporaneity and synchro-
nicity of multiple life worlds. Yet unlike Chakrabarty, who focuses on reinstituting
a coevalness of irrationalities such as “gods, spirits, and other supernatural
beings” with political modernity in India, I seek to build on the coevalness of
different rationalities and knowledges. Chakrabarty is correct in his claim that it is
better to see reason as “one among many ways of being in the world,” but his
designation of the native life world as a phenomenological immediacy fraught
with blind faith and superstition tends to repeat the false historical dichotomy
between an inherited domain comprised of native religions and customs, and a
colonized domain comprised of Western political economy and science. Yet in
reality, even Western modernity has never been completely disenchanted – a
powerful Christian religion, for example, is always coeval with capitalist moder-
nity in countries such as the United States.
My contention is that a large part of native life worlds, like the Western
ones, are constituted by rationalities and knowledges developed and accumu-
lated over time, despite the divine or super-human presences in them. The rich
and sophisticated regional building traditions across the world are the testimony.
Yet our modern architectural discourse and educational system have effectively
delegitimized these other knowledges. With the very regionality of modern
Western forms disguised as authentic universalism, modernist design is defined
as the only “valid” knowledge taught in design studios everywhere. Other
regional building traditions are either ignored or reduced to material for stylistic
borrowings or historical research, devoid of any potential as resources for thinking
about the present. As long as Western-centric epistemological assumptions
remain dominant and other knowledges are considered residual, we are still very
much in the shadow of Sir Banister Fletcher’s “Tree of Architecture.”82
I argue that the recognition of other modernities has to be posited at
the level of epistemology in order to imagine an open globality based not on
asymmetry and dominance but on connectivity and dialogue on an equal basis. It
24
Introduction
is important to recognize not only the histories of different modernities, but also
the legitimacies of different knowledges. Unless other modernities are recog-
nized as legitimate spaces of knowledge production, the march toward social
homogeneity and environmental destruction will remain unchecked. It is time to
enfranchise other spatial rationalities and architectural knowledges to create a
more sustainable, just, and culturally and ecologically rich world. And it is time to
open our architectural education to a multi-logical program that encourages
mutual persuasions amongst different understandings of dwelling and building.
Notes
1 See, for example, James Holston, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Jon Lang, Madhavi Desai, and Miki Desai,
Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity – India 1880 to 1980 (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1997); Edward R. Burian (ed.), Modernity and the Architecture of Mexico
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997); Valerie Fraser, Building the New World: Studies in the
Modern Architecture of Latin America, 1930–1960 (New York: Verso, 2000); Sibel Bozdogan,
Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2001); Zou Denong Zhongguo xiandai jianzhu shi [Modern
Chinese Architectural History] (Tianjin: Tianjin kexue jishu chubanshe, 2001); Vikramaˉditya
Prakaˉsh, Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2002); Peter G. Rowe and Seng Kuan, Architectural Encounters
with Essence and Form in Modern China (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002); Mark
Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (London: Ashgate, 2003); Elisabetta Andreoli
and Adrian Forty (eds), Brazil’s Modern Architecture (London: Phaidon, 2004); Duanfang Lu,
Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space, 1949–2005 (London: Routledge,
2006); Sandy Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi (eds), Modern Architecture and the Middle East:
Architecture and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2008); Richard J. Williams, Brazil: Modern Architectures in History (London: Reaktion Books,
2009); Zhu Jianfei, Architecture of Modern China: A Historical Critique (London: Routledge, 2009).
2 Alfred Sauvy coined the expression (“tiers monde” in French) in 1952 by analogy with the “third
estate,” the commoners of France, as opposed to priests and nobles. The term was used at the
1955 Bandung conference of Afro-Asian countries. For a lucid analysis of the emergence of Third
Worldism, see Gerard Chaliand, Revolution in the Third World: Myths and Prospects (New York:
Viking, 1977).
3 Elbaki Hermassi, The Third World Reassessed (Berkeley, California: University of California Press,
1980).
4 Allen H. Merriam, “What Does ‘Third World’ Mean?” in Jim Norwine and Alfonso Gonzalez, The
Third World: States of Mind and Being (Winchester, Massachusetts: Unwin Hyman, Inc., 1988),
pp. 15–22.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 One of the significant exceptions has been Mark Crinson’s Modern Architecture and the End of
Empire (London: Ashgate, 2003), which covers several geographical areas to present a broad
picture of architecture’s relation to the end of imperialism.
8 Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People without History, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, California: University of
California Press, 1997 [1982]).
9 Jurgen Habermas, “Modernity versus Postmodernity,” New German Critique 22 (1981), pp.
3–14.
25
Duanfang Lu
10 Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1982).
11 Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity: A Critique (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,
1999); Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, tr. Michael
Bullock (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1970).
12 Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,
1965), p. 19.
13 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, tr. Frederick Etchells (London: John Rodker, 1927);
Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style (New York: Norton, 1932);
Siegfried Gidion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1941); Nikolaus Pevsner, The Sources of Modern
Architecture and Design (New York: Praeger, 1968); Leonardo Benevolo, History of Modern
Architecture (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971).
14 Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style.
15 Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture.
16 Karin Kirsch, The Weissenhofsiedlung: Experimental Housing Built for the Deutscher Werkbund,
Stuttgart, 1927 (New York: Rizzoli, 1989).
17 Paul Overy, “White Walls, White Skins: Cosmopolitanism and Colonialism in Inter-war Modernist
Architecture,” in Kobena Mercer (ed.), Cosmopolitan Modernisms (London: Institute of
International Visual Arts, 2005), pp. 50–67.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., p. 56.
20 Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire.
21 Anthony D. King, Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World-Economy: Cultural and Spatial Foundations
of the World Urban System (London: Routledge, 1990); Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design
in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Nezar AlSayyad (ed.),
Forms of Dominance: On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise (Aldershot:
Avebury, 1992); Zeynep Çelik, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century
World’s Fairs (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1992); Zeynep Çelik, Urban
Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule, Berkeley, California: University of
California Press, 1997); Swati Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism,
and the Colonial Uncanny (London: Routledge, 2005); Mia Fuller, Moderns Abroad: Architecture,
Cities and Italian Imperialism (New York: Routledge, 2007); Peter Scriver and Vikramaˉditya
Prakaˉsh, Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon
(London: Routledge, 2007).
22 Jeffery W. Cody, Exporting American Architecture, 1870–2000 (London: Routledge, 2003).
23 Duanfang Lu, “Exporting Chinese Modernism: Reading the Bandaranaike Memorial International
Conference Hall, Colombo, Sri Lanka,” paper presented at the Chinese Studies of Australian
Association Biennial Conference at the University of Sydney, 7–9 July 2009 (Sydney, Australia);
Duanfang Lu, Unsettled Modernism [Weiding de xiandaizhuyi] (published in both English and
Chinese) (Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press, forthcoming).
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 8.
28 Duanfang Lu, “Third World Modernism: Modernity, Utopia and the People’s Commune in China,”
Journal of Architectural Education, 60, 3 (2007), pp. 40–8.
29 Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation Building.
30 Paul Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial
Design (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2004).
31 Lu, Remaking Chinese Urban Form, Chapter 1.
26
Introduction
32 Belinda Yuen, “Romancing the high rise,” Cities 22, 1 (2005), pp. 3-13.
33 Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation Building.
34 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition
Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
35 Lu, “Third World Modernism.”
36 R. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (London: Philip Allan, 1990), p. 8.
37 Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation Building.
38 E. P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (Merlin Press: London, 1977), p. 791.
39 Cody, Exporting American Architecture; Annabel Jane Wharton, Building the Cold War: Hilton
International Hotels and Modern Architecture (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001); Jane C.
Loeffler, The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1998).
40 Wharton, Building the Cold War.
41 Arturo Escobar, “Imagining a Post-Development Era? Critical Thought, Development and Social
Movements,” Social Text, 31–2 (1992), p. 25.
42 Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1992).
43 Ibid.
44 Lu, Remaking Chinese Urban Form, pp. 6–7.
45 Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire, p. 13.
46 Ibid., p. 14.
47 AlSayyad, Forms of Dominance; Nezar AlSayyad (ed.), End of Tradition? (New York: Routledge,
2004).
48 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).
49 Duanfang Lu, “Architecture and Global Imaginations in China’, Journal of Architecture 12, 2
(2007), pp. 123-45. Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire, Chapter 7.
50 Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity, p. 54.
51 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,
revised edition (London: Verso, 2006), Chapter 10.
52 Ananya Roy, “Nostalgias of the Modern,” in AlSayyad, End of Tradition?, pp. 63–86.
53 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997).
54 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Duanfang Lu, “The Changing
Landscape of Hybridity: A Reading of Ethnic Identity and Urban Form in Late-Twentieth-Century
Vancouver,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 11, 2 (2000), pp. 19–28; Nezar
AlSayyad, Hybrid Urbanism: On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment (Westport, CO:
Praeger, 2001); Stephen Cairns (ed.) Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy (London: Routledge,
2004).
55 Jane M. Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 15.
56 Arif Dirlik, Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder: Paradigm
Publishers, 2007).
57 Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire, Chapter 6.
58 Lai Chee Kien, “Tropical Tropes: The Architectural Politics of Building in Hot and Humid Climates,”
unpublished paper presented at the 8th IASTE International Conference, Hong Kong, 12-15
December 2002; cited in Anoma Pieris, “Is Sustainability Sustainable? Interrogating the Tropical
Paradigm in Asian Architecture,” in Joo-Hwa Bay and Boon Lay Ong (eds.) Tropical Sustainable
Architecture: Social and Environmental Dimensions (Oxford: Architectural Press, 2006), pp.
267-86.
59 Anoma Pieris, “Is Sustainability Sustainable? Interrogating the Tropical Paradigm in Asian
Architecture,” p. 279.
27
Duanfang Lu
28
Part I
29
30
Chapter 2
31
Daniela Sandler
... historical processes that can roughly be dated to the late eighteenth
century and located in (parts of) Europe, namely capital formation and
the emergence of capitalist relations of production; industrialization
and urbanization; the privileging of empirical science … state
bureaucratization ... and the advent of mass politics.8
32
The Other Way Around
The Latin American project for modernity is less encumbered by binary oppositions
between past and present, and it tempers technocracy and rationalism with
“spiritual quest, solidarity, hospitality.”11 Brazilian modernism can be seen as
uniquely connected to its context, since architects did not break with the past but
looked to it as a source – for Richard Williams, Brazilian modernists even prefigure
Kenneth Frampton’s critical regionalism, “a modern architecture sensitive to
place and context, tough, pragmatic and local.”12
These distinctions help recast the conflicts that pervade Brazilian
modernist architecture in different terms. Modernization was and has been
incomplete, uneven, and in many ways deficient in Brazil when compared to
Europe or North America. But this incipient modernization did not preclude the
development of a modern consciousness, of modernity as a project and as a
mindset. The role of modernism is magnified in this understanding of modernity,
as artistic and architectural concepts and designs provide a path of their own to
socio-cultural and material transformations. Brazilian modernism – despite being
heavily and often directly influenced by European and later North American
sources – can be understood as a proactive set of initiatives that were often
aware of the gaps between material realities and social goals, and which sought
to magnify the role of art, design, and intellectual life in the construction of a
modern (if not always fully modernized) society.
33
Daniela Sandler
34
The Other Way Around
35
Daniela Sandler
potentially boundless. Warchavchik did not develop his modernist theory and
practice in a vacuum, “without modernity,” but in dialogue with a nascent
modernization, which his work could help carry out.
But in the promisingly modern city of São Paulo, as Warchavchik found
out when he started to build his house on Rua Santa Cruz (Figure 1), it was much
cheaper and easier to procure traditional materials and techniques.32 He put it
simply: “In São Paulo … concrete is expensive and bricks are cheap.”33 The local
labor force was familiar with masonry, wood, and ceramic tiles, and most
elements were custom-made on site. Warchavchik could not build a reinforced-
concrete structure, but had to use load-bearing masonry walls. He could not find
a wide range of industrial products such as handles, frames, mullions, and other
fixtures; the few products he found featured traditional designs. Although in his
writing he called for an architecture of the industrial age, for his modernist house
he had to commission custom-built components. Far from the clean assembly
process promised by standardization, Warchavchik had to perform the role of
master builder, supervising the local workers and teaching them how to build
more efficiently.34
Warchavchik’s adaptations were not immediately perceived as
shortcomings. The house made the news in São Paulo, and stood out for its
strikingly unadorned, abstract composition as an example of forward-thinking
architecture that would pave the way for the future city.35 Soon, however, reinforced
concrete became more easily available – Warchavchik himself used it in subsequent
buildings. In the 1930s and 1940s, the material was employed with increasing
exuberance by Brazilian architects, from the massive pilotis of the Ministry of
Health and Education to the sinuous shells and canopies of the Pampulha complex.
Figure 1
Gregori Warchavchik,
House on Rua Santa
Cruz, 1927. Courtesy of
Warchavchik Family
Archive.
36
The Other Way Around
Compared with these later developments, it was easy for critics such as Carlos
Lemos to read Warchavchik’s technical adaptations as fatal flaws: “Warchavchik’s
first house is not quite a specimen of Modern architecture. The house on Rua
Santa Cruz was made of traditional brick masonry, its extremely ordinary wooden
floors nailed to wood beams, its roofing made of vulgar ceramic tiles ...”.36
Lemos’s verdict is symptomatic of Warchavchik’s contested space in
narratives of Brazilian Modernism. Warchavchik was not modern enough because
of the “incongruity between aesthetics and constructive technique.”37 Lemos
was invested in creating a structurally sound narrative for Brazilian modernism,
which meant, among other things, asserting parity with Europe. In this light,
Warchavchik’s effort seemed at best a proto-modernism that simply prefigured,
but did not quite prepare the ground for, the supposedly true modernism of the
Ministry of Health and Education, the Pampulha complex, and Brasília.38 For
Lemos, the use of traditional materials irrevocably compromised the building’s
modernist aspirations.
Warchavchik was aware of the discrepancy between his modernist
principles and their built results. He explained this by pointing out that concrete
in Europe and the United States became popular in part for economic reasons:
“In France, Germany and the United States, bricks and ceramic tiles are
expensive, while concrete is attractively priced. Thus the aesthetic-economic
theories of Le Corbusier and Gropius are justified.”39 If modernist principles called
for logic, economy, rationalism, and pragmatism, it seemed only logical to
“employ materials that abound in the region where one builds.”40 As I mentioned
earlier, Warchavchik had first defined concrete as the quintessential modern
substance. Now, however, he questioned its necessity and inevitability. What
made concrete, already used by the Romans, essentially modern? Why could not
other materials, such as wood and ceramic bricks, undergo radical developments
and be seen as modern too? With his disclaimer, Warchavchik laid bare the
arbitrariness of concrete as a sign of modernism.
Critics were also bothered because Warchavchik’s architecture
seemed uncomfortably, although not obviously, formalist. His spare, straight
lines were not blatantly personal. But Warchavchik’s refusal to express
conventional materials through conventional forms drew attention to the clean,
minimalist lines of modernism as a formal choice. Warchavchik defended his
design because simple cubic forms “produce work that, in its lines at least, in its
conception, corresponds to the present time.”41 We can understand “lines” and
“conception” here largely as “form.” This preoccupation with aesthetics struck
critics such as Lemos as a departure from supposedly true ideals of modernism
such as technique, economy, or social causes. But modernist architecture never
did away with formal concerns, even if it often attempted to legitimize them with
reference to function, technique, or volume.
The emphasis on form is related to the programmatic character of
Warchavchik’s architecture. His designs had a didactic, demonstrative intent –
each building a speech act in his larger architectural discourse. Warchavchik took
37
Daniela Sandler
38
The Other Way Around
Figure 2
Gregori Warchavchik,
House on Rua Santa
Cruz, 1927. Courtesy of
Warchavchik Family
Archive.
Figure 3
Gregori Warchavchik,
House on Rua Santa
Cruz, 1927, ground
floor. Courtesy of
Warchavchik Family
Archive.
St = Studio
En = Entrance
J = Dining room
L = Living room
T = Terrace
De = Storage
C = Kitchen
Cp = Pantry
39
Daniela Sandler
Figure 4
Gregori Warchavchik,
House on Rua Santa
Cruz, 1927, upper floor.
Courtesy of
Warchavchik Family
Archive.
D = Bedroom
B = Bathroom
T = Terrace
was the separation and hierarchy between public and private uses (living and
sleeping), with service areas (kitchen, pantry) set apart and pushed to the back.
Lemos characterized the plan, pejoratively, as “absolutely normal and
traditional.”47 If the blueprints appear so, the experiential effect of Warchavchik’s
clear, simple arrangement is visually and spatially integrated, thanks to the diffuse
light filtered by the windows and porch, the wide circulation spaces, and the
generous openings and doorways between rooms, in addition to clean-lined
furnishings and details (Figure 5). The overall character is airier and sparser than
traditional houses. Inside and out, the house combines modernist and traditional
elements, Brazilian and international influences.
The evocation of Brazilian spaces did not go unnoticed by visitors,
including Le Corbusier – who noted the adaptation of modern principles to Brazil’s
tropical landscape – and Brazilian educator Anísio Teixeira, who remarked:
“Warchavchik is Russian [sic], yet never have I had a stronger impression of the
Brazilian house ... than when I visited his home.”48
Soon, however, the house did not look Brazilian enough. The 1930s
saw the development of the so-called Escola Carioca (Rio School), a prolific group
of young architects led by Lucio Costa, and including Oscar Niemeyer, Affonso
40
The Other Way Around
Figure 5
Gregori Warchavchik,
House on Rua Santa
Cruz, 1927, view from
main hall, ground floor.
Courtesy of
Warchavchik Family
Archive.
Eduardo Reidy, and the Roberto brothers. Their production was blatantly modern:
they made ample use of reinforced concrete in large, daring structures, from
high-rises to airport buildings; they used the free plan, pilotis, glazing, free
façades, and blended inside and outside in flowing and integrated spaces. But
they were also overtly Brazilian. They used local stones for cladding; adapted
colonial elements such as the muxarabi (brought by the Portuguese, in turn
influenced by Moorish architecture) into pre-cast concrete grilles, pergolas, and
brise-soleil; and incorporated Brazilian imagery in colorful murals and mosaics by
modernist artists. Buildings such as the Ministry of Health and Education, the
Pampulha Complex, and the Brazilian Pavilion in the 1939 New York World’s Fair
displayed a curvilinear, gestural aesthetics of sweeping curves, imaginative
structural supports, and organic compositions.
These buildings drew attention to what appeared as a uniquely
Brazilian language, and were privileged as the country’s prime expression of
modernism in contemporary publications and subsequent histories of architecture.
Warchavchik’s subtle mix of modernist and traditional elements paled in
comparison. As Carlos Martins puts it, the critical reception of Warchavchik’s
work was “marked by the difficulty of placing him within the narrative thread that
prioritizes the Brazilian character of modern architecture developed in the key
instances of the Ministry [of Health and Education] and of Pampulha.”49
The successive and often contradictory perceptions of the house on
Rua Santa Cruz outlined above suggest not only a change in context and
perspective on the part of critics – how the house appeared in the late 1920s,
when it was first built, as opposed to the late 1940s and 1950s, when the first
surveys on Brazilian architecture were published – but also a kind of conceptual
41
Daniela Sandler
lability that resides in the house itself. Such a slippery object does not lend itself
well to clear-cut pronouncements about what is Brazilian and what is modernist.
But the house is not an odd building out. Its contradictions were present in
Brazilian society in general, and in the modernist endeavor that attempted to
develop and overhaul the country. The heroic period of Brazilian modernism –
from the late 1930s to the inauguration of Brasília in 1960 – merely kept these
contradictions latent, repressed under the smoothed-out surfaces of concrete
shells and high-rises.
Developmentalism
Warchavchik’s house on Rua Santa Cruz is in many ways a limited example – an
architect’s house, a bourgeois residence. But the challenges faced by the
architect and the ambiguities of the house raise questions relevant to larger
socio-economic realities: the country’s incipient modernization, the search for
appropriate solutions to the Brazilian context, and the definition of what a Brazilian
modernity should look like (and how it could be achieved). In the 1920s and early
1930s Brazil was under the rule of an oligarchy of landowners. The country
grappled with severe social, cultural, and material disparities stemming from
colonialism and slavery, and its development was hampered by dependency on
foreign capital and industries. Growing discontent with the old, corrupt Republic
culminated in a political revolution and the creation of the Estado Novo (New
State), a centralized, authoritarian regime that promoted state-led industrialization
and a modern bureaucracy.50
The top-down modernization of the country encompassed the creation
of new social, cultural, and political programs, and the investment in physical
infrastructure. One of the first and most visible architectural commissions of the
new government was the Ministry of Health and Education. This reinforced-
concrete Cartesian slab demonstrated the potential and power of Brazil through its
monumental scale, construction materials, and innovative spaces. There were no
glaring contradictions, just a slick fusion of Corbusian Modernism and local
adaptations such as murals and gardens. The Ministry is often brandished as proof
of the originality and inventiveness of Brazilian modernism, with its mix of local and
universal, ornament and structure, organic curves and rational lines.51 This building
was a proud affirmation not only of modernist ideals, but also of their success.
For the next two decades the same mindset persisted despite political
changes, upheaval, and the reverberations of World War II. The politics of
developmentalism – intensive industrialization promoted by the government with
the goal of developing social and economic structures in a short time – reached
its peak with the presidency of Juscelino Kubitschek, whose motto was “Fifty
years in five.”52 Kubitschek continued to use modernist architecture to build the
modern country, not only by creating infrastructure and an industrial base, but
also by projecting a confident national image through the buildings and urban
spaces of the new capital, Brasília. Government policies promoted modernization
42
The Other Way Around
43
Daniela Sandler
she had also worked as a designer and draughtsman in the Fascist era, when she
was close to the Rationalists. Unlike Warchavchik, she spent the war in Italy. Her
arrival in Brazil was thus mediated by two factors: one, the different stage of
modernization in the country (nascent and promising in the 1920s, established
and increasingly problematic in the mid-century); two, the first-hand experience
of war and its aftermath. While Warchavchik’s adaptations to local reality created
ambiguities that inadvertently function as points of criticism, Bo Bardi’s
architecture became explicitly and intentionally critical, revealing the contradictions
of modernization and modernism.
Bo Bardi’s work has garnered plenty of attention in Brazil and abroad,
but almost as a parallel and unique development, a cult following of sorts, leading
Esther da Costa Meyer to lament that “Despite the extraordinary oeuvre she has
left behind, Bo Bardi has not gained the recognition she deserves in surveys on
Brazilian architecture, with their perennial focus on Oscar Niemeyer, Lúcio Costa,
and Affonso Eduardo Reidy.”57
Bo Bardi’s work is too quirky and whimsical to fit into the canon of
Brazilian modernism; although her influence and prominence in the country are
quite strong, her trajectory remains singular. If Warchavchik is an uneasy starting
point for an account of Brazilian modernism, Bo Bardi is a suitably uneasy ending.
As a woman and an immigrant, Bo Bardi did not enjoy immediate professional
integration, even if she and her husband, curator Pietro Maria Bardi, were soon
socially integrated into the country’s economic and cultural élites. In her first
years in Brazil Bo Bardi designed jewelry, clothes, and furniture; her first building
was her own house, known as the Casa de Vidro (Glass House), built in 1951.
The new MASP building was Bo Bardi’s next architectural commission
after the Glass House. Pietro Bardi was the director of the MASP, and Lina had
designed the interior of the museum’s temporary headquarters in downtown São
Paulo in 1947. In 1957 the rapidly growing institution commissioned new
headquarters on Avenida Paulista, a southward axis of urban and economic
growth. A canyon of tall modernist slabs was rising along the avenue: banks and
financial institutions, corporate headquarters and office buildings, apartments
and movie theaters.58 The site for the MASP was a prime spot at the center of
what became São Paulo’s financial hub. The Avenida Paulista was a showcase of
the modernist cityscape, and of postwar ideals of financial and corporate
modernization. The MASP could be seen as the avenue’s cultural validation.
Backed by Brazilian businessman Assis Chateaubriand, Pietro Bardi assembled a
world-class collection of works; the museum was proof of the successful and
civilizing mission of Brazil’s modernization. In many ways Bo Bardi’s architectural
design reaffirmed this through the use of modernist language, materials, and
technology (Figure 6). In other ways, though, the design challenged both its
architectural principles, and the social and cultural values behind its program.
Even before the unveiling of the building, all attention was focused on
its groundbreaking structure. The galleries were contained in a glass-and-concrete
box 26 feet above ground, hanging from two parallel beams, each supported by
44
The Other Way Around
Figure 6
Lina Bo Bardi, Museum
of Art of São Paulo,
1968, view from
Avenida 9 de Julho.
Photograph by Luis
Hossaka, 1970. Courtesy
of the Instituto Lina Bo
e P. M. Bardi.
only two pillars more than 230 feet apart. Chief engineer José Carlos de Figueiredo
Ferraz, a central figure in Brazilian modernism, defined the task of designing the
structure as no less than “utopian,” a defiance of “classical concepts of safety
and stability.”59 In a lecture in 1993, the engineer recalled how Bo Bardi herself
stood in apprehension and awe when the scaffolding was removed and the
structure was left standing by itself.60
Figueiredo Ferraz used a method for pre-stressed reinforced concrete
that he had developed a few years earlier. He showcased the new technique on
the building site, with the presence of São Paulo’s mayor, at a photo op that
celebrated the structural prowess (Figure 7). The public celebration of the
technological achievement fitted in with the narrative of a heroic Brazilian
modernism at the height of developmentalism – by that time Brasília was a
monumental construction site. In this context, it may be easier to understand
why the reception of the museum focused so starkly on its structure. It is also
helpful to consider that the generation of architects practicing in the 1940s and
1950s had been strongly oriented towards engineering (many architectural
schools in Brazil were originally created as departments in engineering or
polytechnic schools).61 Even Niemeyer’s curvy designs were as much obsessed
with the properties of poured concrete as they were with organic forms.
The MASP structure, however, was not purely or mainly an exercise in
technical daring. The structural solution had to do with site restrictions, and with
Bo Bardi’s pursuit of a free and open public space, as I explain below. The building
restrictions were related to the setting. The site is located in the middle of the
45
Daniela Sandler
Figure 7
Lina Bo Bardi, Museum
of Art of São Paulo in
construction, visit of
mayor Prestes Maia
(with glasses, center)
with engineer
Figueiredo Ferraz (left)
and Lina Bo Bardi
(right). Courtesy of the
Instituto Lina Bo e P. M.
Bardi.
Avenida Paulista, at the point where the ridge where the avenue is built is
intercepted by a valley. Since it overlooks the open valley, the site affords a vast,
spectacular view of the city towards downtown. A building law required the
preservation of this view – quite a feat considering the limited area of the site and
the program of the museum.62 Bo Bardi’s solution was to divide the program in
two massive, distinct volumes, burying the lower floors into the sloping ground
and suspending the upper galleries over the avenue, leaving a cavernous gap in
between (Figure 6). This gap is in effect a covered plaza open on all sides,
unobstructed by structural elements, fully integrating the avenue with a belvedere
overlooking the valley. The museum galleries hover over this space, supported
only by four large piers. But the museum’s architectural contributions go far
beyond the structure, and in these contributions Bo Bardi starts to break away
not only from functionalist and rationalist rigidity, but also from the social, cultural,
and labor relations implied by the museum. Bo Bardi’s critical “interventions”
include an innovative display system for two-dimensional works; the integration
of the museum’s interior with the surrounding city; the public and open character
of the covered plaza; and the use of color and texture.
The museum’s main galleries were conceived as free, open spaces
fully encased by glass. Artworks were to be arranged freely in space,
unencumbered by walls or by any sequence of smaller spatial divisions.
Two-dimensional works such as paintings and prints were sandwiched between
two panes of glass set in a block of concrete. Bo Bardi conceived the displays as
“crystal easels” that would present a painting closest to its conditions of
production, “because a painting is born in the air, on an easel.”63 She clarified her
intention as a democratizing, demystifying gesture: “my intention was to destroy
46
The Other Way Around
the aura around a museum, to present the artwork as labor, as the vision of a
labor within the reach of all.”64 Evoking the production of art as labor would bring
each artwork closer to the viewer as a historically produced object, as opposed
to a relic. It would display the creation of art as an accessible and potentially
democratic process, as the emphasis on labor could make art comparable (if not
equal) to other processes of form-making, from construction to popular crafts.65
The free-standing displays were arranged on the gallery floor so that
visitors could walk around them and move freely in all directions; there was no
prescribed path from artwork to artwork. Bo Bardi broke with hierarchical or
sequential exhibition strategies. Visitors should build their own path, and each
visit or itinerary could create new and unexpected connections. The information
on each artwork was displayed on the back of the glass encasing, so that the first
encounter with the works would be unmediated by explanations or categories.
The displays also enhanced the perception and use of the space, as the body was
“forced” to make decisions about where and how to move instead of following
a linear path. The overall effect of the display system in the galleries, the
rectangles of glass sticking out of their concrete bases, echoed the materials and
volumetric relationships of the cityscape outside. The city was indeed fully visible
through the glazed façades of the galleries – both the view over downtown and
the long perspective of the Avenida Paulista. Renato Anelli notes the
democratizing, even iconoclastic effect of joining the gallery space with the city
around it, creating a “transparent museum.” Anelli calls the integration of gallery
space and urban space a “miscegenation of images,” which “goes against all the
established rules of museum display.” He continues:
The impulse to open up the museum, to break the divisions between “high art”
and “popular culture,” was also present in the conception of the covered plaza.
In Portuguese the space is commonly referred to as vão livre do MASP – the free
span of MASP. This nomenclature is used popularly, as when people set up a
meeting point, in news stories, and official materials (in the announcement of
events, for instance).67 The name is telling, as it refers to the empty or void quality
of the space, more so than a functional or programmatic reference to a plaza or
square (the official name is Trianon Terrace). Bo Bardi devised the vão livre as a
flexible place for popular gatherings, concerts, markets, playgrounds, even a
circus – in 1972, the popular Piolin Circus set up tent at the vão livre to celebrate
the 50th anniversary of the Modern Art Week of 1922.68 The vão livre expressed
a plural view of culture, making room both for popular manifestations and
traditional works of art, for a circus to be mounted under Raphael and Renoir. Bo
Bardi was less interested in the constant praise for “the world’s largest free-span
47
Daniela Sandler
with permanent loads and a flat ceiling” than in achieving what she called an
“architecture of freedom.” In her words:
When the North American musician and poet John Cage came to São
Paulo, driving along Paulista Avenue, he told the driver to stop in front
of the MASP, got out of the car, and, walking from one side to the
other of the belvedere, with his arms up in the air, he exclaimed: “This
is the architecture of freedom!” I was used to receiving compliments
for the “largest free-span in the world ...” and I thought that this great
artist’s assessment perhaps communicated what I wanted to express
when I designed the MASP: the museum was a “nothing,” a search
for freedom, the elimination of obstacles, the capacity to be free in
face of things.69
48
The Other Way Around
(not built). The São Vicente museum would also have been a glass box suspended
by a red exoskeleton of columns and beams, built on a beach in the city of São
Vicente. It was, like the MASP, an unusual take on a museum: a transparent, free-
flowing space floating over the sand right next to the sea. The art inside would
have merged with the natural landscape outside, and the museum would have
been a seamless continuation of the beach, accessible via a long open stairway.
Most urban beaches in Brazil are quintessential public spaces, used by different
social classes for recreation and socialization; the museum would thus fulfill Bo
Bardi’s democratic goals and bring together art and leisure, high and low.72
Both in the São Vicente museum and in the MASP, the use of a primary
color to highlight the structure was a bold gesture – the color was not confined
to details, murals, or interiors, but rather was displayed prominently on the
structure, the most technical and supposedly “rational” part of the building. The
red structure signaled a move away from pure rationalism. The red was a
subjective choice, more related to artistic creativity than to functional concerns.
It was a painterly element, unabashedly vibrant, in contrast with the severe gray
or neutral white of most contemporary buildings. The color contaminated the
architectural object with non-architectural associations: painting, flatness,
ornamentation; it drew attention to surface rather than volume. The shiny layer of
paint that coated the modernist object also evoked associations with clothing and
make-up appended to the body of the building. The red pillars and beams of the
MASP broke the modernist rigidity of an otherwise severe concrete building.
Bo Bardi also went to great lengths to keep the irregular marks of the
wooden formwork, not for aesthetic effect but as the imprint of construction
labor. The building should not be a sleek product of the machine age, but rather
reveal the human effort involved in its production. This social conscience was
related not only to construction workers, but to craft in general. Bo Bardi made
the case for sourcing design theory and practice in popular crafts, folk art, and
recycled mass-produced objects – an aesthetics of roughness and improvisation,
or “rudeness,” as she put it.73 The aesthetics of roughness was informed by her
observation and experience in Brazil – in particular the years she spent in the
northeast region, which was much less urban, industrialized, and modernized
than São Paulo. There she explored popular culture, crafts, and historical
architecture, and was impressed by the resourcefulness and creativity with
which people made or recycled objects – an anonymous, popular, everyday
design. When she returned to São Paulo and designed the MASP, her architecture
was rougher and more concerned with social inclusion and democratization than
before. As Da Costa Meyer argues, this was not a full-on rejection of modernism,
but a complex interweaving of influences and impulses:
49
Daniela Sandler
Conclusion
The idea of a unique Latin American modernity should not be interpreted as a
separate or alternative path. The many iterations of modernism across time and
space are in dialogue with each other. Latin American modernism was not simply
influenced by European or North American currents, but was generated by the
tensions, exchanges, and adaptations between different geographical locations
and cultural realities. The spread of modernism in Latin America is itself a function
of the universalist and international tendencies of the movement. It must not have
escaped the reader that both Bo Bardi and Warchavchik were immigrants. In this
they were not unusual, and can be aligned with a host of notorious émigrés who
helped spread modernism from Europe to other parts of the world. Nor were they
exceptional in Brazil, where immigration from Italy and Eastern Europe was intense
in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Their status as foreigners is not circumstantial;
rather, it is connected to the development of modernism more broadly.
Raymond Williams notes in “The Metropolis and the Emergence of
Modernism” that the modern metropolis was a novel and unstable environment
marked by “strangeness and distance, indeed … alienation.” This strangeness
can be understood from the perspective of newly arrived migrants and immigrants,
and also from the perspective of local inhabitants confronted with a rapidly
changing and diverse realm. Williams connects the intrinsic foreignness of the
metropolis to the emergence of artistic and literary modernism:
50
The Other Way Around
This assertion provides the framework for Williams to explain tenets of modernism
such as the tendency towards abstraction and universalism, the connection to an
emerging visual culture, the focus on the medium, the break with the past, the
view of traditional language as “arbitrary,” and the preoccupation with novelty
and originality.76 Modernism emerged precisely because of the international
character of modern metropolises, and because of the web of foreign exchanges
that passed through these sites.
Bo Bardi and Warchavchik responded to the complexity of Brazilian
society from their viewpoint as cosmopolitan foreigners. They had experienced
not only the progressive optimism of modernity, but also its destructive
manifestations: political revolutions, World War I, anti-Semitism, Fascism, World
War II. Their immigration to Brazil, while marked by the positive outlook of starting
anew in a peaceful and welcoming country, was also prompted by necessity and
survival, by the violence (or threat thereof) of modern Europe.77 Their foreign
perspective, therefore, might have afforded them a more critical or nuanced take
on modernism and modernity than their Brazilian counterparts could have at the
time. And as foreigners, they also approached the Brazilian context from a
different standpoint, possibly less anxious about asserting parity with Europe or
demonstrating signs of “genuine” Brazilianness. They might have been more
open, for example, to recognizing where and how adaptations were necessary,
taking into account local realities such as labor, available materials, economy,
basic social needs, and cultural formation.
Questions of labor, for instance – manual labor, exploitation, social
disparities, workers’ rights, housing, and craft – appear in the work of Warchavchik
as adaptation (custom-building), and in the work of Bo Bardi as critical reflection
(the aesthetics of roughness, the tension between high and low). That these
issues are generally and continuously relevant for Brazilian and Latin American
architecture is evidenced by the practical and theoretical explorations of architects
who, in the second half of the twentieth century, searched to redefine technology
in terms of local materials and workforce (for instance, Eladio Dieste in Uruguay);
who explored self-construction to address housing demands and urban problems
(for example, Carlos Gonzalez Lobo in Mexico); or who attempted to revolutionize
the building site as a way towards more just social relations (such as Sérgio
Ferro, Rodrigo Lefèvre and Flavio Império in Brazil).78 The changing context of the
twenty-first century, with the benefit of hindsight, also transforms the meaning
of earlier contributions. Warchavchik’s house on Santa Cruz Rua, with its sourcing
of available materials adequate to local conditions, was perceived as a compromise
in the mid-twentieth century, whereas today it could be interpreted as an example
of responsible sustainability.
51
Daniela Sandler
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank architect Carlos Warchavchik and the Instituto Lina Bo and P. M.
Bardi for the reproduction rights of the images used in this chapter.
Notes
1 Renato Ortiz, A Moderna Tradição Brasileira [The modern Brazilian tradition], São Paulo:
Brasiliense, 1988, pp. 32–7.
2 Ramón Gutiérrez, “Arquitectura latinoamericana: Haciendo camino al andar” [Latin American
architecture: The road is made by walking] in R. Gutiérrez (ed.), Arquitectura latinoamericana en
el siglo XX [Latin American architecture in the twentieth century], Barcelona: Lunwerg Editores,
1998, pp. 20, 21, 24.
3 Mauro Guillén, “Modernism without Modernity: The Rise of Modernist Architecture in Mexico,
Brazil, and Argentina, 1890–1940,” 2004, Latin American Research Review, vol. 39, no. 2, p. 7.
4 See Randal Johnson’s critical analysis of these views, especially his discussion of Renato Ortiz
and Florestan Fernandes, in “Brazilian Modernism: An Idea Out of Place?” in A. L. Geist and J. B.
Monléon (eds), Modernism and Its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin
America, New York, London: Garland, 1999, pp. 188–9.
5 Gwendolyn Wright, “Building Global Modernisms,” 2002, Grey Room 7, Spring, p. 125.
6 Brian McLaren proposes the idea of “ambivalent modernism” in his study on modernism and the
Fascist Italian rule of Libya. McLaren identifies a tension between modernism and the preservation
of local culture in the Italian colonial efforts with relation to tourism. Although the implications and
meanings are very different from those in the MASP, the idea of ambivalence and opposing
impulses within modernism seems especially resonant with colonial and post-colonial contexts.
See McLaren, Architecture and Tourism in Italian Colonial Libya: An Ambivalent Modernism,
Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2006.
7 Nicola Miller, Reinventing Latin America: Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900–1930, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 3.
8 Ibid., p. 4.
9 Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1987, and The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into
a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989.
10 Miller, op. cit., p. 4.
11 Ibid., pp. 9, 18.
12 Richard Williams, Brazil, London: Reaktion, 2009, p. 40. For Frampton’s discussion of critical
regionalism see Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, London: Thames and
Hudson, 1992.
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The Other Way Around
13 Carlos Martins, “Gregori Warchavchik: Combates pelo Futuro” [Gregori Warchavchik: Struggles
for the future], in Carlos Martins (ed.), Arquitetura do século XX e outros escritos [Twentieth-
century architecture and other writings], São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006, pp. 12–21.
14 Philip Goodwin, Brazil Builds: Architecture New and Old, New York: The Museum of Modern Art,
1943.
15 Martins, op. cit., pp. 13, 19.
16 Ibid.; Geraldo Ferraz, Warchavchik e a Introdução da Nova Arquitetura no Brasil: 1925 a 1940
[Warchavchik and the introduction of the new architecture in Brazil], São Paulo: Museu de Arte de
São Paulo, 1965; José Lira, “Ruptura e Construção: Gregori Warchavchik, 1917–1927” [Rupture
and construction: Gregori Warchavchik, 1917–1927], in Novos Estudos [New studies], no. 78, July
2007, pp. 145–67; Agnaldo Farias, Arquitetura Eclipsada: Notas sobre Arquitetura e História, a
Propósito da Obra de Gregori Warchavchik, Introdutor da Arquitetura Moderna no Brasil [Eclipsed
architecture: Notes on architecture and history, with respect to Gregori Warchavchik’s work],
M.A. thesis, 1990.
17 Carlos Lemos, “Arquitetura Contemporânea” [Contemporary architecture], in Walter Zanini,
História Geral da Arte no Brasil [A history of art in Brazil], Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Walter Moreira
Salles, pp. 825–66.
18 Lúcio Costa, “Carta Depoimento” [Testimonial letter], in Lúcio Costa: Registro de uma Vivência
[Lúcio Costa: Recorded experience], São Paulo: Empresa das Artes, 1995.
19 Ibid.
20 Goodwin, Brazil Builds; Henrique Mindlin, Modern Architecture in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: Colibris,
1956.
21 Ferraz, op. cit., p. 20.
22 In the original: “o moço europeu que vinha trazer a sua contribuição ao novo mundo.” In Ferraz,
op. cit., p. 21. Ferraz uses the word “moço,” which means “lad,” perhaps connoting the energy
of a young professional confident in his mission and in the new ideas of his time.
23 On the Brazilian modernist movement in arts and literature see among others: Aracy Amaral,
Artes Plásticas na Semana de 22: Subsídios para uma História da Renovação das Artes no Brasil
[Visual arts in the Week of 22: Subsidies for a history of the renovation of Brazilian art], São Paulo:
Perspectiva, 1976; Jorge Schwartz, Vanguarda e Cosmopolitismo na Década de 20: Oliverio
Girondo e Oswald de Andrade [Avant-garde and cosmopolitanism in the 1920s: Oliverio Girondo
and Oswald de Andrade], São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1983; Jorge Schwartz, Vanguardas Latino-
Americanas: Polêmicas, Manifestos e Textos Críticos [Latin American avant-gardes: Polemics,
manifestoes, and critical texts], São Paulo: USP/Iluminuras, 1995; Maria Eugênia Boaventura, 22
por 22: a Semana de Arte Moderna vista pelos seus contemporâneos [22 by 22: The Modern Art
Week seen from its time], São Paulo: EDUSP, 2001; Mário da Silva Brito, História do modernismo
brasileiro: antecedentes da Semana de Arte Moderna [History of Brazilian modernism: precedents
for the Modern Art Week], Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1964.
24 Ferraz, op. cit., p. 21.
25 Joana Mello, Ricardo Severo: Da Arqueologia Portuguesa à Arquitetura Brasileira [Ricardo Severo:
From Portuguese archaeology to Brazilian architecture], São Paulo: Annablume, 2007.
26 This happens when he gets the chance to publish in modernist publications, such as an interview
entitled “Arquitetura Brasileira” [Brazilian architecture], in Terra Roxa e Outras Terras [Purple soil
and other lands], 17 September 1926; and also when modernist writers recognize and address
him in their texts – for example, Oswald de Andrade, “A Casa Modernista, o Pior Crítico do
Mundo e Outras Considerações” [The modernist house: The worst critic in the world and other
thoughts], originally published in Diário da Noite [Evening news] (São Paulo), July 1930; reprinted
in Arte em Revista [Art in review] no. 4, 1980, p. 10; Mario de Andrade, “Exposição duma casa
modernista” [Exhibition of a modernist house], originally published in Diário Nacional [National
news] (São Paulo), April 5 1930; reprinted in Arte em Revista [Art in review] no. 4, 1980, pp. 7–8.
Mario de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade were arguably the two main writers and spearheads
53
Daniela Sandler
of Brazilian modernism in literature, arts, and culture. For discussions of their views on modernist
architecture in general and on Warchavchik in particular, see Guilherme Wisnik, “Plástica e
Anonimato: Modernidade e Tradição em Lucio Costa e Mário de Andrade” [Plastic and anonymity:
Modernity and tradition in Lucio Costa and Mário de Andrade], in Novos Estudos [New studies],
no. 79, 2007, pp. 169–93; and José Lira, “Localismo Crítico e Cosmopolitismo Arquitetônico”
[Critical localism and architectonic cosmopolitanism], 1999, online, available: http://www.
docomomo.org.br/seminario%203%20pdfs/subtema_A1F/Jose_tavares_lira.pdf (accessed 1
February 2010).
27 Martins, op. cit., p. 13.
28 Gregori Warchavchik, “Acerca da Arquitetura Moderna” [On Modern Architecture], in Martins,
Arquitetura do século XX, pp. 34–6.
29 On São Paulo see Nicolau Sevcenko, Orfeu extático na metrópole: São Paulo, sociedade e cultura
nos frementes anos 20 [Extatic Orpheus in the metropolis: São Paulo, society and culture in the
frantic 1920s], São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992; Margareth da Silva Pereira, “Time of the
Capitals: Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo: Words, Actors, and Plans,” in Arturo Almandoz (ed.)
Planning Latin America’s Capital Cities 1850–1950, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 75–108; Charles
Perrone, “Performing São Paulo: Vanguard Representations of a Brazilian Cosmopolis,” Latin
American Music Review, vol. 23, no. 1, 2002, pp. 60–78.
30 Claude Lévi-Strauss depicts this emphasis on a rising modernization as a kind of cultural fixation
with the new. For him, cities such as São Paulo, “with a very short evolutionary cycle,” are
“perpetually young, yet never healthy.” Lévi-Strauss implies a pathological failure; he offers
another approach to the contradictions of modernization in Brazil. In Lévi-Strauss, Tristes
Tropiques, New York: Penguin, 1992, pp. 95–105. For examples of Modernist representations of
São Paulo see works by Mario de Andrade, especially Paulicea Desvairada [Insane Paulicea], São
Paulo: Casa Mayenca, 1922; Contos novos [New short stories], São Paulo: Livraria Martins
Editora, 1947; Amar, verbo intransitivo [Love, intransitive verb, published in English as Fraulein],
São Paulo: Livraria Martins Editora, 1944; and Macunaima, o herói sem nenhum caráter
[Macunaíma, the hero without character, published in English as Macunaíma], Rio de Janeiro:
Jose Olympio, 1937; and by Oswald de Andrade, such as Serafim Ponte Grande, Rio de Janeiro:
Ariel Editora, 1933; the trilogy Os condenados [The damned], Porto Alegre: Livraria do Globo,
1941–1983; and Memorias sentimentais de João Miramar [Sentimental memoirs of João
Miramar], São Paulo: Independencia, 1924.
31 Renato Fiore, “Warchavchik e o Manifesto de 1925” [Warchavchik and the 1925 Manifesto],
ArqTexto, v. 2, 2002, p. 81.
32 My comments and images refer to the earlier design of the house, which Warchavchik altered in
1934.
33 Warchavchik, “Arquitetura do século XX,” p. 67.
34 Ferraz, op. cit., p. 28.
35 See Ferraz, op. cit., p. 26, for excerpts and images from the original newspaper stories.
36 Carlos Lemos, “Os Três Pretensos Abridores de uma Porta Difícil” [The three supposed
groundbreakers of a difficult path], in Warchavchik, Pilon, Rino Levi: Três Momentos da Arquitetura
Paulista [Warchavchik, Pilon, Rino Levi: Three Moments of Architecture in São Paulo], ex. cat.,
São Paulo: Funarte, Museu Lasar Segall, 1983, p. 5.
37 Martins also notes that Lemos could not accept “the justifications offered by Warchavchik
regarding local labor and technical difficulties; [Lemos] sees a purely formalist manifestation.” In
the original, “as justificativas de Warchavchik quanto às dificuldades técnicas e de mão-de-obra
locais, vê aí uma clara manifestação formalista.” Martins, op. cit., p. 19.
38 For accounts in English of these three works, along with other examples of Brazilian modernist
architecture, see Valerie Fraser, Building the New World: Studies in the Modern Architecture of
Latin America, London: Verso, 2000; Elisabetta Andreoli and Adrian Forty (eds), Brazil’s Modern
Architecture, London, New York: Phaidon, 2004; Zilah Quezado Deckker, Brazil Built: The
54
The Other Way Around
Architecture of the Modern Movement in Brazil, London, New York: Spon, 2001; and Lauro
Cavalcanti, When Brazil was Modern: Guide to Architecture, 1928–1960, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2003. Portuguese-language surveys include Hugo Segawa, Arquiteturas no
Brasil, 1900–1990 [Architectures in Brazil, 1900–1990], São Paulo: EDUSP, 1999, and Yves
Bruand, Arquitetura contemporânea no Brasil [Contemporary architecture in Brazil], São Paulo:
Perspectiva, 1981, among others.
39 Warchavchik, “Arquitetura do século XX,” p. 67.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1994.
43 Both the house on Rua Santa Cruz and on Rua Itápolis are known as Casa Modernista. The House
on Rua Itápolis received the moniker when it was opened to the public in 1930, because of its
explicit association with the Movimento Modernista. The House on Rua Santa Cruz only began to
be called Casa Modernista later.
44 As Valerie Fraser puts it, “propagandistic subterfuge.” Fraser, Building the New World, p. 166.
45 Jacqueline Barnitz, Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America, Austin: University of Texas Press,
2001, p. 167.
46 Williams, Brazil, p. 34.
47 Lemos, op. cit., p. 5.
48 Le Corbusier’s statements were published in the paper Diário da Noite [Evening news], November
30 1929; Teixeira was interviewed by the newspaper A Tarde [Afternoon news], October 1929.
Both cited in Ferraz, op. cit., p. 27.
49 Martins, op. cit., p. 15.
50 Lucia Lippi Oliveira et al., Estado novo: ideologia e poder [Estado novo: Ideology and power], Rio
de Janeiro: Zahar, 1982; José Augusto Ribeiro, A era Vargas [The Vargas era], Rio de Janeiro:
Casa Jorge, 2001.
51 Valerie Fraser, “Cannibalizing Le Corbusier: The MES Gardens of Roberto Burle Marx,” Journal of
the Society of Architectural Historians 59, no. 2, 2000, pp. 180–193.
52 Juscelino Kubitschek, Meu caminho para Brasília: [memórias] [My road to Brasília: memoirs], Rio
de Janeiro: Bloch, 1974–1978; Ronaldo Costa Couto, Brasília Kubitschek de Oliveira [Brasília
Kubitschek de Oliveira], Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2001, p. 256; José William Vesentini, A Capital da
geopolítica [The capital of geopolitics], São Paulo: Ática, 1986, p. 101.
53 Pedro Fiori Arantes, Arquitetura nova: Sérgio Ferro, Flávio Império e Rodrigo Lefèvre, de Artigas
aos mutirões [New architecture: Sérgio Ferro, Flávio Império and Rodrigo Lefèvre, from Artigas to
self-building], São Paulo: Editora 34, 2002, p. 35.
54 Pedro Fiori Arantes, “Reinventing the Building Site,” in Andreoli and Forty (eds), Brazil’s Modern
Architecture, p. 174.
55 The Pedregulho complex was created to provide “not only housing, but also services and facilities
to contribute to reeducate the habits and customs” of low-income civil servants. Many of these
services, such as automated laundry rooms, failed for failing to recognize the cultural and
economic realities of the inhabitants. See Lauro Cavalcanti, Quando o Brasil era moderno: Guia de
arquitetura 1928–1960 [When Brazil was modern: architecture guide, 1928–1960], Rio de Janeiro:
Aeroplano, 2001, pp. 32, 35–6.
56 Arantes, Arquitetura nova, p. 36.
57 Esther da Costa Meyer, “After the Flood: Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House,” in Harvard Design
Magazine, no. 16, Winter/Spring 2002, online, available: http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/
publications/hdm/back/16decosta_meyer.html (accessed 1 February 2010).
58 Marta Bogéa, Two-Way Street: The Paulista Avenue, Flux and Counter-Flux of Modernity, San
Diego: San Diego State University Press, 1995.
55
Daniela Sandler
59 Lecture, 1991, Museum of Art of São Paulo, promoted as part of the exhibition “50 years of the
History of Brazilian Engineering.” Cited in “José Carlos de Figueiredo Ferraz, 1971–1973,” online,
available: http://www.figueiredoferraz.com.br/empresa/midia/prefeitojosecarlosfigueiredoferraz.
pdf (accessed 1 February 2010).
60 Round-table on the work of Lina Bo Bardi, 1993, Museum of Art of São Paulo, author’s own notes.
61 Guillén, “Modernism without Modernity,” 25.
62 Zeuler Lima and Vera Maria Pallamin, “Reinventing the Void: São Paulo’s Museum of Art and
Public Life along Avenida Paulista,” in Clara Irazábal (ed.), Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events:
Citizenship, Democracy and Public Space in Latin America, New York: Routledge, 2008, p. 59.
63 Lina Bo Bardi, “Explicações sobre o Museu de Arte” [Explanations about the Museum of Art], in
O Estado de São Paulo, April 5 1970, quoted in Renato Anelli, “O Museu de Arte de São Paulo, o
Museu Transparente e a Dessacralização da Arte” [The Museum of Art of São Paulo, the
transparent museum, and the desacralization of art], in Arquitextos 112, September 2009, online,
available: http://www.vitruvius.com.br/arquitextos/arq112/arq112_01.asp (accessed 1 February
2010).
64 Ibid.
65 The original layout was changed in 1998 by architect Julio Neves, who presided over the
institution from 1994 to 2008. Neves removed the crystal easels, blocked the glazed façade, and
divided the galleries into a sequence of smaller, boxy rooms with walls on which to hang artworks.
While discussing this case is outside the scope of this essay, it is worth noting that the changes
to the MASP provide a further example of ongoing conflicts over visions of modernity and
modernization. For instance, Neves invoked “world-class” museum standards when planning the
changes. For a more detailed discussion, see Olivia de Oliveira, Lina Bo Bardi: Obra construída
[Lina Bo Bardi: Built work], Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2002, pp. 11–19.
66 Anelli, “O Museu de Arte de São Paulo.”
67 The space is also known as “vão do Masp.” See Lima and Pallamin, op. cit., p. 60.
68 Lima and Pallamin, op. cit., p. 75.
69 MASP: A cor da paixão pela arte [MASP: The color of the passion for art], pamphlet, Suvinil/
Glasurit/BASF, 1990.
70 Lima and Pallamin, op. cit., p. 60.
71 Personal email interview with architect Marcelo Ferraz, February 2005.
72 Lina Bo Bardi, São Paulo: Instituto Lina Bo e P. M. Bardi, 1996, pp. 90–3.
73 Lina Bo Bardi, Tempos de grossura: o design no impasse, São Paulo: Instituto Lina Bo e P. M.
Bardi, 1994. The title can be translated as “Times of Rudeness: Design at an Impasse,” or also
“Times of Roughness.”
74 Da Costa Meyer, op. cit.
75 Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism, London: Verso, 1989, p. 45.
76 Williams, op. cit., pp. 45–6.
77 According to José Lira, Warchavchik’s position in Italy was increasingly complicated by his status
as a Ukrainian Jew – a double liability under the Fascist government. See Lira, “Ruptura e
Construção,” pp. 152–3. Some scholars speculate that Lina Bo and Pietro Maria Bardi left war-torn
Italy at least partly because of Pietro’s former ties to the Fascist government. See Da Costa
Meyer, op. cit.
78 Stanford Anderson, Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art, New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 2004; Eladio Dieste, Eladio Dieste: La estructura cerámica [Eladio Dieste: The ceramic
structure], Bogotá: Escala, 1987; Arantes, Arquitetura nova; Sérgio Ferro, Arquitetura e trabalho
livre [Architecture and free labor], São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006; Carlos González Lobo, Vivienda
y ciudad posibles [Possible dwelling, possible city], Santa Fé de Bogotá, Colombia: Escala; México
City: UNAM, 1999.
56
Chapter 3
Depoliticizing Group
GAMMA: contesting
modernism in Morocco
Aziza Chaouni
57
Aziza Chaouni
Figure 1
TOP – Jean Hentsch and
Andre Studer in Sidi
Othman, 1955. Courtesy
of Archive ETH Zurich.
BOTTOM – Jean-
François Zevaco,
Housing for teachers in
Quartzazate, 1963.
Courtesy of Fonds
Zevaco, FRAC Orléans.
58
Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
Figure 2
Agadir in the aftermath
of the earthquake, 1959.
Courtesy of Yannnick
Beunard.
59
Aziza Chaouni
groups that emerged under the influence and encouragement of the old guard
wishing to rejuvenate CIAM. This transition, which is often wrongly depicted as an
abrupt generational breach,6 was explicitly planned by Siegfried Gideon and Walter
Gropius, and its roots can be retraced to the 8th congress in Hoddesdon in July
1951, where two new council members were elected from the young generation
(Candilis and Howell) and the delegate of the Junior groups was named (Norber
Schultz).7 At that meeting, Ecochard, representing CIAM Morocco, which was not
yet called GAMMA, presented to the panel “core of a new town,” the project for
the transformation of a squatter settlement into a satellite city of 40,000 inhabitants
located near the twin cities of Rabat-Salé (Figure 3).8 This project was characterized
Figure 3
Youssoufia quarter
masterplan project.
Courtesy of the
architecture archive at
l’Archive ENA, Rabat.
60
Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
by the provision of a new gridded infrastructure of streets and utility lines, the
building of one-story courtyard houses placed on an 8 × 8 matrix, and a heavy
reliance on analysis of traditional Moroccan types of dwelling.9
Ecochard, who was the director of the Town Planning Department of
the French Protectorate in Morocco from 1946 to 1952, has been instrumental in
initiating and shaping an organized CIAM group in Morocco. First contacted by
Gideon in December 1947, two years after their meeting in New York, Ecochard
accepted his invitation to make a contribution to the next CIAM 7 in Bergamo.10
He then a simple member and took part in the plenary session chaired by Le
Corbusier on the “Application of the Athens Charter” along with George Candilis,
who was then was the project architect for the Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles.11
The Moroccan group was considered to be in a “formative stage,” a category
that was created at the Bridgewater Congress to encompass the Algerian and
Tunisian groups. Several letters sent by Ecochard from 1947 to 1951, urging
Moroccan architects to form a CIAM Maroc group, demonstrate his dedication
and reiterate the support of CIAM members for such an enterprise.12 He failed at
first to get the attention of the scattered Moroccan architectural scene, whose
different allegiances mirrored the split in Metropolitan France: between the
followers of Lods, Le Corbusier’s and the group “La Cité.”13
However, the lectures of the prominent CIAM members Lods and
Bodiansky in 1949 in Casablanca, coupled with the visit of Lods in 1951, and the
arrival of George Candilis that same year, precipitated the formation of a ten
person group.14 Candilis was then a young member of the CIAM council, who
came to direct the ATBAT Afrique15 office in Morocco. And finally, it is only at the
end of the CIAM 8 congress in Hoddesdon, after Ecochard’s rite of passage
presentation, that GAMMA was officially accepted as a legitimate sub-group of
CIAM.16 During the congress, GAMMA was asked to be part of Commission II of
the Sitguna preparatory meeting. Commission II’s goal was to determine the
method of presentation to be used for the CIAM 9 congress which would focus
on “habitat,”17 since the grid developed by Corbusier had been criticized for being
too rigid and not suited to twentieth century city problematics.
Thus, starting from September 1951, GAMMA, presided over by
Ecochard, started to meet once a month, alternatively in Rabat and Casablanca,
in its members’ houses or offices.18 As a result, a group of GAMMA members
composed of Ecochard, Candilis, Azagury, Mas, and Tastemain shared a car and
made a memorable trip through Europe to the CIAM 9 preparatory meeting in
Sigtuna, Sweden in 1952. GAMMA member Elie Azagury stresses that the
discussions at Sitguna were instrumental in crystallizing new systems of values
for GAMMA, such as favoring environment over autonomy, change through time
over static conditions, place over placelessness, and a wholesome approach to
the city over the Athens Charter’s four function of living zoning.19 The theoretical
changes that emerged at Sigtuna would materialize in projects presented by
GAMMA and other younger groups a year later at the CIAM 9 meeting in
Aix-en-Provence.
61
Aziza Chaouni
62
Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
63
Aziza Chaouni
Moroccan member Elie Azagury, Candilis started to plead for dense vertical
housing for the Muslims, who simply wanted, according to him, “low rent public
housing like everyone else,”31 rather than the one-story courtyard unit proposed
by Ecochard. After numerous heated discussions, Ecochard conceded the
adaptation of the CIAM presentation grid to best address the specific context of
Morocco’s shantytowns and his Department’s “in situ” research methods. In
fact, the final grid presented by GAMMA at Aix-en-Provence broke from the
traditional CIAM grid organization by displaying images of shantytowns, vernacular
Moroccan dwellings, and analytical data resulting from fieldwork as well as
housing projects that embraced their local contexts (Figure 3). These negotiations
demonstrate that GAMMA was neither unilaterally influenced by a singular voice
nor the direct transliteration of CIAM’s debates, which themselves were the
outlet for groups with multifarious agendas. Instead, GAMMA was a vibrant
platform where contextual realities, internally developed ideas, and debates
emerging from CIAM’s meetings brought about an original approach.
One cannot deny the impact of Ecochard’s housing projects, which are
celebrated by both past and present scholars coining them as socially inclined. In
fact, Ecochard defied the power in place in Morocco as he ran against the general
political consensus that ignored providing accommodation for the indigenous
population, leaving that provision to the private sector, which could by no means
face the demand. However, such a focus can easily obscure Ecochard’s use of
urbanism: architecture remained subservient to the colonial rule, which was
actually flexible enough to allow for certain adjustments. More precisely,
Ecochard’s housing for the greatest number can be viewed as control and
segregationist mechanisms, an argument which was expressed by Layla Dawson
and Marion Von Osten, and regarding the French rule at large in Morocco by
Wright, Abu Lughod and Rabinow.
Ecochard’s housing for Moroccans was located on the city’s outskirts,
separated by a “sanitary zone” free of construction, a configuration that facilitated
surveillance and riot management. Moreover, specific housing typologies were
designed for each ethnic group: the Muslims, the Jews, and the Europeans,
along an evolving spectrum of civilization. The delineation of these ethnic groups’
characteristics and needs, despite being backed by rigorous field research, was
strongly tinted by a colonial agenda and fell into generalizing racial clichés and
over simplifications. For instance, Europeans were assigned the most modern
facilities in the form of mid and high rise buildings similar to those produced at
that time in Europe; for Jews there was mid-rise housing comprising an average
amount of openness; and finally Muslims were confined to introverted units with
an enclosed courtyard, a multipurpose room, a faucet and a Turkish toilet. The
archaic form of the dwellings assigned to Moroccans, even though upgraded
through the addition of proper sanitization and a rational grid layout, was still the
paradigm in most of Echochard’s low cost housing. Using a constraining budget
as justification, it was totally insensitive to the large size of Moroccan families,
condemning them to live in crowded conditions.
64
Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
65
Aziza Chaouni
precepts regarding habitat for the largest number, which were in line with his
own interest in linking architecture to a social, human project.37 This interest was
long-lasting, as he relentlessly revisited it in his practice (Candilis-Josic-Woods)
after he left Morocco in 1955.38 Within GAMMA, Candilis represented one of the
critical voices, advocating new architectural and urban models that answered
specific postwar contexts. In a way, he found in Ecochard’s Morocco, which
launched several social housing projects, a propitious terrain and pre-established
tools to investigate those models, inventing in the process a formal vocabulary
that amalgamated cultural and geographic conditions with the Athens Charter’s
hygiene concerns. The commissions his office received in the Carrières Centrales
from Ecochard resulted in much photographed and published housing buildings
and can be perceived, along with Ecochard’s 8 × 8 grid, as the earliest embodiment
of GAMMA’s dogma.
In the same vein as Ecochard, Candilis wished to produce a
“progressive and humanist architecture,” fully adapted to local conditions and
constraints.39
Candilis followed Ecochard’s methodology that started with an
in-depth site analysis. In the Semiramis and Nid d’Abeilles, he turned towards
previously unconsidered local architectural typologies. This choice emerged from
the attention he paid to the origin of shantytown dwellers at the Carrières
Centrales: the Atlas Mountains and the south, where villages are composed of
high, earth built dwellings, the Kasbahs. For the first time in Moroccan colonial
architectural production, the medina was superseded by another referent, and
the rural earth vernacular became the departing point for the understanding of
the Moroccans’ living patterns and the generation of a formal vocabulary. The
cover of Architecture d’Aujourd’hui’s issue dedicated to Morocco in 1951 displays
a Kasbah juxtaposed to the tallest high rise building in Casablanca.
After Candilis, other GAMMA members took the Kasbahs as a formal
and programmatic inspiration. For instance Studer, in his pyramidal housing
scheme for Sidi Othman (1954, unbuilt) and after independence, Faraoui and
Demazière in three hotels located in the south of Morocco (1971, 1972 and
1974), also derived their volumetric distribution and geometry from the Kasbah
(Figure 4).
In order to justify the transfer of Moroccan housing from horizontal to
vertical schemes, Candilis seems to have overextended the Kasbah as a referent,
projecting a biased reading onto this building type. In fact, he called the Kasbah a
cité verticale, whereas this vernacular building usually houses one extended
family rather than neighbors, and in many cases it is not assembled in clusters.
Also, Candilis ignores the fact that 70% of the inhabitants came from the Atlas
Mountains, whereas the rammed-earth Kasbas are specific to sub-Saharan
Moroccan regions. This underlies the fact that Candilis emphasised aesthetics
over his actual analysis of the building type. Thus, as in Ecochard’s case, Candilis
displays a clear orientalist tone in his re-appropriations, which remained
unquestioned at the time, veiled by the beautiful formal outcome.40
66
Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
Figure 4
Hotel by Faraoui and
Demazière, in
Boumalne, Morocco.
Courtesy of personal
archive of the
architects, Rabat.
67
Aziza Chaouni
Figure 6
Affordable housing,
Jean-François Zevaco.
Marrakech, Morocco.
Courtesy of Fonds
Zevaco, FRAC, Orléans.
68
Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
69
70
Aziza Chaouni
Figure 7
“The Moroccan Habitat, or Habitat for the Greatest Number,” grid panel from CIAM 9 by GAMMA group, 1953. Courtesy of gta/ETH, Zurich.
Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
71
Aziza Chaouni
Figure 8
Cover of the fifth issue
of the magazine A+U.
72
Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
the commission for the reconstruction, and progressive and young leaders –
Faraoui (head of the Service of Urbanism from 1959 to 1961) and then Mourad
Ben Embarek (head of the Service of Urbanism after 1961) – the reconstruction
gave birth to a very specific aesthetic that resulted as much from the experimental
vein inherited from pre-independence GAMMA, as from the technical requirement
of earthquake regulations. Ben Embarek started publishing the first post-
independence architecture magazine in 1964, A+U, which is today the main
source of information regarding the late discourses and projects of GAMMA
(Figure 8).56 From analysis of its themes and articles, one of A+U’s main concerns
appears to intersect with pre-independence GAMMA’s theme of habitat for the
greatest number. Each issue tackles one of the following issues dear to Ecochard:
demographic growth, the study of vernacular architecture and dwelling habits, as
well as urban, geographical and sociological emerging patterns. Issue 7 of A+U
was entirely dedicated to housing for the largest number and stemmed from a
conference organized by the Union Internationale des Architectes.57
Another crucial reason for the continuity of approaches in GAMMA
and by extension in Morocco’s architectural discourse and production is that,
unlike in other newly independent countries, many French professionals including
architects, planners, landscape architects, and engineers remained in Morocco.
In a letter renouncing the French license he acquired in Marseilles during the
pre-independence turmoil, Jean-François Zevaco explained his change of mind
due to his deep attachment to Morocco, the country where he was born and that
still held many of his ongoing projects.58
Beyond the enduring presence of key architects, continuity in
Moroccan modernism was the result of the persistence of administrative bodies
such as the Service of Urbanism (now called CHU),59 which was part of the Public
Works Ministry, and of professional organizations such as the Order of Architects,
the Union Internationale des Architectes, and the Association des Architects. An
example of this continuity is best seen in the Service of Urbanism, until the late
1970s, developed strategies initiated under Ecochard, including an extensive land
bank, and masterplans for both urban and rural centers, as well as some housing
projects following the 8 × 8 grid.
73
Aziza Chaouni
74
Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
by Azagury (1958) and another one in Marrakech by Zevaco (1959). Then, in 1962,
the plans were compiled in a book, made available to solvable shantytown
dwellers and private developers (Figure 9).61 Using these plans, the CHU
developed 9000 social housing units throughout seven Moroccan cities. With the
hope of alleviating its deficiencies in housing stock, the Moroccan state further
promoted self-construction by creating CERF in 1959, a research center focusing
on low cost auto-construction techniques.62 However, the application of
innovations introduced by the center’s director engineer Alain Masson and
Figure 9
Unit Basil for the Derb
Jdid project, Elie
Azagury. Courtesy of
personal archive of Elie
Azagury, now
transferred to IFA, Paris.
75
Aziza Chaouni
collaborator Jean Hensens, an architect who took part in the discussions of post
independence GAMMA and wrote articles for the magazine A+U, remained
unfortunately limited to one experimental project in Ouarzazate (1969).
Another post-independence innovative social housing approach that
addressed the actual condition of shantytown dwellers, that is, their rapidly
increasing family members, is Evolving Housing (Habitat évolutif); a concept
which Candilis advocated in the Carrières Centrales project without fully resolving
it. Evolving Housing proposed single or double family units that could be enlarged
by the owner when his budget allowed him to do so. In contrast, for Ecochard the
concept of Evolving Housing meant housing that evolves according the user’s
civilization level.
The best example of such “evolving housing,” also labeled by GAMMA
as “active urbanism”,63 are the units developed by Elie Azagury in his Derb Jdid
project (Figure 10) in 1958, the first large scale shantytown urbanization scheme
to be launched after Morocco’s independence. Set on a masterplan designed
initially by Ecochard, Azagury’s project proposed different housing typologies:
single and two family dwellings conceived as two-storied structures as well as
more conventional three-story collective housing blocks. On the level of the
clustering, these units employed carefully placed setbacks that could allow for
potential expansion, mainly in the form of the covering of the outdoor areas,
without endangering the sanitization requirements of the cluster. Accordingly,
Azagury’s two-story units were organized in Swastikas (Basil Type), in an
undulating figure (Arsene Type) or in shifted U-figures (Maxime Type). Thus
Azagury, alongside other GAMMA architects who developed other double
dwelling variations in Derb Jdid, integrated for the first time into the low budget,
Figure 10
Derb Jdid project, Elie
Azagury. Courtesy of
personal archive of Elie
Azagury, now
transferred to IFA, Paris.
76
Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
domestic unit the notions of evolution and growth, beating Candilis to the punch.
In fact, even though Candilis claimed that his Nid d’Abeille building was designed
to allow for modes of appropriations, he was never explicit about how. The
unforeseen covering of the building’s hanging patios resulted in the units becoming
dark and unventilated (Figure 11). Interestingly, in Azagury’s project all units have
today expanded as was predicted, but their growth through self construction had
mitigating results, as neither heights nor additions were strictly controlled.
At last, this bottom-up approach reached its paroxysm in one of the
social housing projects developed in Agadir in the New Talborjd district by Armand
Amzallag and completed in 1965 (Figure 12).64 The project grew from intensive
community meetings and interviews seeking to define the needs of future users.
The final design resulted in double family dwellings, organized in a 10 m × 10 m
Figure 11
Nid d’Abeille building
by ATBAT Afrique
today. Photograph by
the author.
Figure 12
Housing project by
Armand Amzallag,
Agadir, Morocco.
Courtesy of personal
archive of Elie Azagury,
now transferred to IFA,
Paris.
77
Aziza Chaouni
grid, each with two-story units grouped in clusters of eight. The involvement of
the users from the early stages of design spurred a strong feeling of ownership,
resulting in little transformation of the architecture.
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Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
79
Aziza Chaouni
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Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
Conclusion
Group GAMMA’s analysis from its inception in 1951 to the two decades following
Morocco’s independence, while focusing on their favoured theme of housing for
the largest number, have shown us that Modernism as a systemic language and
theoretical platform had been used for different political agendas: ordering and
controlling during the colonial era, and advancing progress in independent
Morocco. Its flexibility to accommodate conflicting political contexts allowed for
a continuity of work methodologies and ideas. This legacy was not accepted
passively, but developed in different directions, was circulated and was
renegotiated, shaped as much by the new Moroccan social context as by the
concepts developed in the West by both postwar and prewar CIAM groups,
exhibitions, and publications. This synthesis of seemingly contradictory ideas
underscores the mythical character of the schism between old and young CIAM
groups, postwar and prewar modernism; a simplification which scholars such as
Jean Lucien Bonillo, Claude Massu and Daniel Pinseau believe veils legacies,
transformative processes, and voices like Alvar Aalto, José Luis Sert, and Ernesto
Rogers who forecast Team 10’s criticisms.70
The refinements and changes that post-independence GAMMA
proposed in social housing projects were highly innovative and brought Ecochard’s
and Candilis’s ideas to a new level of resolution, a fact that has rarely been
acknowledged. For instance, GAMMA’s evolving housing schemes, responses
to climate and cultural habits, and anthropological design approach, which were
theorized by early GAMMA members but whose materialization remained
problematic on many levels, were given imaginative solutions in the post-
independence period. Their pioneering edge lay in their actual integration of
Moroccan voices within the design process as well as social, environmental,
urban and architectural specificities, themes that were taken beyond the social
housing typology. Thus, post independence GAMMA generated a new facet of
Modernism that we conceptualize along the lines of Sarah Goldhagen as a
multifarious and plural discourse, rather than a mainstream western core with
“other” or ”situated” offspring.
The singularity and cohesiveness of the architectural discourse and
production generated by GAMMA after independence begs for the reconsideration
of the primacy given to 1950s Morocco as a “laboratory” for European
modernism.71 Instead, the period should be as much acknowledged as the
catalyst for the development of Moroccan post-colonial modernism. However,
the peculiarity of the modernism developed in the aftermath of independence
quickly gave way at the end of the 1960s to a brutalist aesthetic, leaving many
investigations incomplete and burgeoning themes unexplored.
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Aziza Chaouni
Acknowledgements
Research for this chapter was supported by a Graham Foundation Grant. I would
like to thank GAMMA members who generously answered all my questions, in
particular the late Elie Azagury. I am also indebted to DuanFang Lu, Director
Marie-Ange Brayer of the FRAC Center, the School of Architecture of Rabat,
Daniel Weiss and Professor Laurent Stalder from ETH Zurich.
Notes
1 The civilizing mission, or “mission civilisatrice,” was raised as an official doctrine of the French
Third Republic to justify and legitimize the conquest of indigenous populations. It mainly rested
on the fundamentals of French cultural superiority and the perfectibility of human beings. For a
critical reading of the term please refer to: Alice Conkin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea
of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.
2 Monique Eleb, “An alternative to Functionalist Universalism, Ecochard, Candilis, and ATBAT-
Afrique,” in Anxious Modernism. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000, p. 69.
3 GAMMA stands for Groupe d’Architectes Modernes Marocains (Moroccan Modern Architects
Group). Gamma was founded on July 1951 at the 8th Congrès International des Architectes
Modernes (CIAM) in Hoddesdon. GAMMA members, whose number fluctuated throughout the
years due to returns to France and departures due to political conflicts, attended all congress
meetings until the last one in Otterlo in 1959. CIAM congresses and meetings attended by at
least one GAMMA member: CIAM 8 (1951), CIAM Meeting Sigtuna (1952), CIAM 9 (1953), Paris
CIAM council meeting (1954), CIAM 10 (1956), La Sarraz reorganization committee meeting
(1957) and CIAM 59 (1959). Eric Mumford The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928–1960.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.
4 I am indebted to Jean-Louis Cohen’s article “The Moroccan Group and the Theme of Habitat”
which traces GAMMA’s early developments. My article brings new additions thanks to the
review of archives of architects and GAMMA members Jean-François Zevaco, Henri Tastemain
and Elie Azagury as well as files from the Ministère de l’Habitat in Rabat and personal interviews
of surviving GAMMA members, who are all in their late 80s today. This research was enabled by
a Graham Foundation grant received in 2007.
5 For a detailed history of CIAM’s groups, please refer to Mumford. op. cit.
6 Regarding the generational changes in CIAM see Annie Pedret, CIAM and the emergence of
Team 10 thinking: 1949–1953. Unpublished dissertation. Cambridge: MIT, 2009.
7 Schultz’s Team magazine – ”a magazine for young architects and artists“ – was the first
manifestation of involvement of the young generation in CIAM. Team magazine stirred a lot of
debates about the future direction of CIAM as it would plan a controversial Junior CIAM congress
alongside the Aix-en- Provence one. At the end, their contention was peacefully absorbed into the
9th Congress. See Joe Bosman, “Team Ten out of CIAM,” in Team Ten: 1953–1981 in Search of
a Utopia of the Present. Rotterdam: NAi, 2005.
8 This project for a city of 40,000 presented in Hoddesdon has been identified by Jean Louis Cohen
as the District Yacoub Al Mansour located in Rabat. However, from the drawings of this district
shown in Ecochard’s article in Architecture d’Aujourd’hui no. 60 the district is described as being
one for 25,000 inhabitants and its aerial photo does not match the plan presented at CIAM 9, and
which is published in Ciam 9: The Heart of the City.
9 Mumford, op. cit., p. 211.
10 Jean-Louis Cohen, “The Moroccan Group and the Theme of Habitat”, in Rassegna, 1992, no. 52,
December, pp. 58–67.
11 Mumford, op. cit., p.192.
12 Cohen, op. cit., pp. 58–67.
13 Personal interview with Elie Azagury, October 2007.
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Depoliticizing Group GAMMA
83
Aziza Chaouni
40 Alison and Peter Smithson, “Collective housing in Morocco,” Architectural Design, January 1955,
p. 2.
41 André Adam notes that the transformation of this housing was almost immediate. Op. cit., p. 111.
42 G. Candilis et al., op. cit., p. 9.
43 “Maroc,” Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, no. 35, Mai 1951. “Maroc (II),” L’Architecture française, no.
131–132, April 1953.
44 Alison and Peter Smithson, op. cit.
45 Present in Aix-en-Provence: Tastemain and his wife E. Castelnau plus Azagury, Bodiansky,
Kennedy, Piot, Woods, Godefroy, Ecochard, Beraud.
46 Summary of March 1954 GAMMA meeting, Zevaco’s archive in the Ecole Nationale d’Architecture,
Rabat.
47 As noted from the minutes of various meetings among GAMMA peers found in Zevaco’s archives
in ENA, Rabat, and also from personal interviews with Mourad Ben Embarek and Elie Azagury in
2006–2007.
48 GAMMA Minutes, 1953–1958, Fonds Jean-François Zevaco. Centre FRAC, Orléans, France (the
archive has not been fully sorted, so documents do not have numbers yet.)
49 Layla Dawson, “Colonizing zeal,” Architectural Review, February 2009.
50 Mohammed V. speech of December 7th 1955 in Sa Majesté V, Ministère de l’information et du
tourisme, Rabat, Tome 1:1955–1957..
51 Pedret, op. cit., p. 353.
52 Cohen, pp. 62.
53 This department never materialized, even though members of GAMMA such as Zevaco taught a
few general design courses there. The first architecture school in Morocco would only open in
1981 in Rabat. Regarding the relationship between French rule and the Ecole des Beaux Arts of
Casablanca, please refer to Irbouh, Hamid, Art in the service of colonialism: French art education
in Morocco, 1912–1956. NY: Tauris Academic Studies, 2005.
54 Zevaco archives, ENA, Rabat.
55 From a personal interview with Elie Azagury in 2007.
56 Thierry Nadau, “La Réconstruction d’Agadir” in Architectures Françaises d’Outre Mer. Liège:
Margada, 1992, pp. 146–175.
57 The conference took place from April 28th to May 5th 1968 in Agadir.
58 Zevaco archive at ARCHILAB, Orléans.
59 The Service of Urbanism was renamed CHU (Circumscription of Urbanism and Habitat) but kept
the administrative structure established by Ecochard.
60 Mont Marin M, “Urbanisation du bidonville de Borj Al Omar,” Bulletin Economique et Social.
61 Claude Vignaud, Nouvelles cités d’habitat économique au Maroc: 1960–1962. Rabat: Ministère
des Travaux Publics, Circumscription de l’Urbanisme et de l’Habitat, 1962.
62 Nadau, Thierry, op. cit., p. 152.
63 Pierre Mas, “Architecture, urbanisme et développement” in A+U no. 1, 1964, p. 6.
64 Nadau, op. cit., p. 158.
65 Pedret, op. cit., p. 140.
66 A+U Editorial board, “L’Architecture populaire régionale en péril,” A+U no. 5, 1967, p. 17.
67 Pedret, op. cit., p. 144.
68 Irbouh, op. cit., pp. 238–239.
69 Fonds Jean-François Zevaco. Centre FRAC, Orléans, France.
70 Jean-Lucien Bonillo, Claude Massu, Daniel Pinson (eds), La Modernité critique. Autour du CIAM
9 d’Aix-en-Provence, Imbernon, 2006.
71 The definition of “laboratory” was first developed by Monique Eleb and Jean-Louis Cohen, and
was further investigated in the exhibition “The Desert of Modernity” organized in 2008 in Berlin.
The exhibition traveled in 2009 to Casablanca. Both the exhibition and Eleb and Cohen mainly
focused on the relationship between pre-colonial GAMMA production and their post-colonial
European impact.
84
Chapter 4
There is an assumption that Latin American architecture lives within the paradox
of modernism without modernity. This assumption is based on the fact that this
geo-cultural region has not achieved “modernity” in standard terms of
industrialization and capitalism. Nevertheless, modernization has penetrated the
cultural landscape and produced a particular state of development. This could be
understood as a mixture of pre-Columbian and Spanish-colonial cultural patterns
with the clash of the American Anglo-Saxon modernization of the twentieth
century. In this particular secular hybridization, in which modernism coexists with
cultural traditions and rooted customs, Latin American modernity can be defined
essentially as a “multiplied outcome of overlapping cultures.” As identified by
Garcia Canclini, “modernity in this region is a hybrid culture based on the
negotiation of modern and traditional practices and unique to each country.”1
It is within this context of cultural overlap and transformation at the
mid-twentieth century that the Peruvian “Modern Project” emerged and
consolidated as a national project in the country and endured for several decades.
It should be understood as a national political and cultural project, in which the
government, nation, and state worked together on new strategies for the
progress of the country. The buildings and urban spaces produced in the Peruvian
Modern Project reflect its essence, the hybridization of contemporary culture
charged with the richness and complexity of dealing with different cultural
patterns. Hybridization is a never-ending process of cultural negotiation, and
therefore it should not be assumed as a problem of syncretism. As Felipe
85
Sharif S. Kahatt
86
Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
87
Sharif S. Kahatt
Figure 1
José Luis Sert and Paul
Lester Wiener (Town
Planning Associates),
Chimbote Plan,
downtown area,
1946–1948 for
Corporación Peruana
del Santa, Peru.
Courtesy of Josep Lluis
Sert Collection, Loeb
Library, Harvard
University Graduate
School of Design.
88
Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
Urbano (ONPU) was dedicated to planning the expansion and renewal of cities;
the law for the founding of Corporación Nacional de la Vivienda (CNV) covered the
design, construction, and management of workforce housing nationwide; and
the law for the “Popular Recreational Program” addressed the need for providing
recreation facilities for the working class. Centro Vacacional Huampaní near Lima
(Figure 2) was the most notable project developed under this law and considered
Figure 2
by Belaúnde as “testimony to the renewed and progressive spirit and an essential
Santiago Agurto
part of Lima’s social architecture movement.”13
(Corporación Nacional
de la Vivienda), Centro In this fashion, CIAM’s four functions of “living, working, recreation,
Vacacional de and circulation” were covered and helped transform Belaúnde’s plans and ideas
Huampaní, Lima into buildings and works of infrastructure that would radically transform Peruvian
1949–1955 (as published urban landscapes. Hence, under the direction and incentive of the government
in El Arquitecto Peruano
and with the engagement of the private sector, Belaúnde and soon after
N210–11, January–
February, 1955).
Agrupación Espacio were expecting “to grasp the mirage of the functional city”,
Courtesy of El so to speak, in the midst of the consolidation of the Peruvian Modern Project.
Arquitecto Peruano.
89
Sharif S. Kahatt
90
Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
acquaintance with these topics allowed him to offer his professional services as
a “town planner” to the Peruvian government. As expected by Belaúnde, right
after his visit Corporación Peruana del Santa offered the Chimbote Project (1946–
48) to Wiener and Sert, partners at Town Planning Associates (TPA), to redesign
this northern port city and transform it into a development magnet.23
Following CIAM’s plan of influence, Richard Neutra, President of the
temporary CIAM, was the next to travel to Latin America to lecture on modern
architecture as well as urban planning in August of 1945.24 As Eric Mumford has
explained, during the war years the “transplanted CIAM” adopted the name of
CIAM Chapter for Relief and Postwar Planning, aiming to be treated like any other
American professional association, but they could not get that official support.
Ultimately, the group was only a temporary CIAM, formed mainly by European
émigrés who did not want to lose contact with CIAM while residing in the USA.25
However; the trip was also sponsored by the US State Department which had
local officials waiting for Neutra in all countries of destination, including Peru.
In his conference in Lima, Metropolitan Future of a City with a Great
Historical Heritage, Neutra lectured on modern architecture and infrastructure
projects as products of democracy and also emphasized the potential of this
capital city to develop modern buildings in a meaningful city center.26 Shortly
after, in his “travel report from Latin America”, Neutra informed the CIAM
secretary Sigfried Giedion that:
91
Sharif S. Kahatt
construction industry (costly and slow) and the great housing deficit (increased by
the lack of mass housing plans). Indeed, Neutra’s and Wiener’s advocacy for
neighborhood unit plans and prefab housing was evident since it was the core of
the prewar CIAM discourse within its functional city model. Thus, Wiener and
Neutra lectures caught the attention of Peruvian architects and city officials just
as Belaúnde and the European architects had expected.
The year of 1945 was crucial for the process of introducing and
consolidating modern architecture in Lima, and the EAP journal gave good
indications of this transformation. Although it continued publishing some
neo-colonial-style houses and eclectic buildings, the journal increasingly displayed
the work of modern architects from Brazil and the United States, as did the
American magazines that arrived regularly at the library of the recently created
Department of Architecture (1943) at the Escuela Nacional de Ingeniería (ENI).30
By then, EAP had also published, in November of 1943, the “principles of modern
planning” as shown by José Luis Sert in Can Our Cities Survive? (1942), 31 but
without reference to the book. Hence, young architects and students of
architecture were getting acquainted with the “new architecture” which
encouraged them to explore new trends and to go beyond their technical and
beaux-arts education. Also in 1945, Luis Miró Quesada published Espacio en el
Tiempo. La arquitectura moderna como fenómeno cultural. It was the first book
about modern architecture in Lima, and the first articulate claim for modern
culture as well as an attack on revivals and historicist styles in the culture of
Peruvian architecture.32
Miró Quesada’s Espacio en el Tiempo is the founding text of modern
architecture, urban planning, and arts in Peru, and it constitutes a plea for the
“true expression of the new times.” Miró Quesada’s text lays claim to a new
architecture in the modern world as a part of human evolution. Interested in all
the “modern masters”, Miró Quesada merged all avant-garde architectural
ideologies into one broad feeling of the “modern times”, which should have
produced an architecture that “is the materialization of the most sublime of all
arts by the demonstration of space in time.”33 According to Miró Quesada, in
close connection with Le Corbusier’s ideas, the times of man’s new spirit should
also be represented by “our architecture and today’s arts, which capture and
symbolize the new feeling of humanity in the cosmos.”34 In order to be able to
perceive the new art of architecture, one should be aware of the new unity of
“space-time” as well as the new era, based on a new sensibility and a new spirit,
an obvious reference to Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture.35
The need for light, clean air, and minimum living space and social
responsibility, and the rejection of all kinds of historicist styles in modern buildings
were also part of his interpretive discourse. Taking images and ideas presented
by pioneering books that advocated modern principles, Miró Quesada’s
syncretism towards the so-called modern movement hybridized with Peruvian
traditions allowed him to build a theory that exposed the values of modern
architecture’s faith in building techniques, along with local building patterns, as
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Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
well as new forms and spaces interpreted with the geometric abstraction of
pre-Columbian cultures. Shortly after, in 1947–48, several premises would be
materialized in the projection and construction of Casa Huiracocha, his own
house in Lima (Figure 3); and later on in the 1950s Unidad Vecinal de Matute
would consolidate this hybridized architectural language in the modern project.
Therefore, not only was the book a turning point in students’ beaux-
arts education, but it also provided access to a Peruvian view of early European
avant-garde and American modernism. It emphasized the spatial and formal
quality of European architecture as much as its social role, along with the bold
and simple structures of modern construction. The text also highlights technical
advancements in building techniques in the USA along with the organic approach
of Wright’s oeuvre. As a result, within the context of a Spanish-colonial city with
heavy pre-Columbian imagery and Espacio en el Tiempo’s mixture of it with
European poetics and social values and American pragmatism, young Peruvian
architects started to visualize new building forms to manifest the national Modern
Project. As A. Ballent has pointed out, “the key issues of Latin American
architecture in the post-war period for the international critic seem to combine
formal synthesis of modern languages and a nuance of primitive sensibility.”36
Indeed, this hybridization reveals the appropriation and transformation of western
modern cultures with Peruvian cultural traditions, emphasizing the vitality of a
modern cultural project in the process of becoming.
Espacio en el Tiempo was received with little enthusiasm by the old
generation of architects, but with great excitement by the architecture students
at ENI. Furthermore, in short time, Espacio en el Tiempo became in the student’s
hands a modern primer that in many ways triggered the emergence of Agrupación
Espacio.37
Figure 3
Luis Miró Quesada,
Casa Huiracocha, Lima
1947–1948. Courtesy of
Miró Quesada family.
93
Sharif S. Kahatt
94
Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
95
Sharif S. Kahatt
with inner parking lots and plazas. In the sector central, they proposed many
sketches and drawings of new building typologies of “contrasting heights”,
looking for the integration of modern building into the colonial grid while creating
public civic spaces (Figures 4a and 4b).49 Lima’s new civic center presented in
ONPU’s Plan Piloto deployed the “towers and podium” idea (contrasting heights),
but the sector central area disregarded that typology and was primarily composed
of towers and inner courtyards within the colonial grid (Figure 5).
Besides the well-published ONPU’s civic center and business area,
unidades vecinales were probably the most distinctive component of Plan Piloto
de Lima, and certainly the most important product of the Peruvian encounter with
modern architecture and urbanism. The unidades vecinales – as defined in the
Lima Housing Plan – are autonomous neighborhoods that generate their own
urbanity, since they allocate nearly 1000 families (more than 5000 people) with a
civic center that included all city services such as schools, churches, shopping
centers, clubs, parks, and plazas, other collective spaces within a pedestrian- Figure 4a and b
scale precinct which is never crossed by vehicular traffic.50 They had the aim to José Luis Sert and Paul
provide not only housing facilities, but the sense of community in the modern Lester Wiener (Town
Planning Associates),
city.
Civic Center studies,
Unidades vecinales were proposed in Lima as a solution for the 1947–1949, Plan Piloto
housing crisis that affected thousands of people living in slums and blighted de Lima, in
areas. Combining new models of urbanization such as Garden City, Siedlung, collaboration with
neighborhood units and existenz-minimum for mass housing, the ideas were Oficina Nacional de
Planeamiento Urbano.
adopted, adapted, and transformed from their original context in the American
Courtesy of Josep Luis
and European cities into Peruvian conditions. Unidades vecinales were the core
Sert Collection, Loeb
of Lima’s 1945 Housing Plan which planned to rebuild ruined city blocks after Library, Harvard
relocating the population into these new neighborhood units. This scheme, University Graduate
largely influenced by Gropius’s ideas,51 aimed to build seven neighborhoods for School of Design.
96
Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
Figure 5
“El Sector Central,”
Plan Piloto de Lima
(1947–1949), Luis Dorich
(Director). Source:
Oficina Nacional de
Planeamiento Urbano
(ONPU) Plan Piloto de
Lima, Lima: Empresa
Gráfica T. Scheuch,
1949, p. 28.
more than 35,000 people, and hence expand the city within a planned organization,
assuring sound conditions for all these citizens. Unidad Vecinal Nº 3 was the first
to be built, and therefore has become a landmark in the architectural and urban
landscape of Lima and Latin American cities (Figure 6). This collective housing
project also contributes to our understanding of a vast phenomenon that has had
several incarnations in Lima and other important cities of America, Europe, Africa
and Asia mainly during the postwar period.
For Dorich and Belaúnde, neighborhood units, civic centers and the
four functions were the basis for Lima’s plan – based on postwar-CIAM ideas –
and were therefore easily celebrated by Sert and Wiener and Rogers (Figure 7).
Espacio members, TPA partners and Belaúnde saw Lima’s Plan Piloto as the
remedy for improving the chaotic city center and as a tool for regulating the
expanding boundaries of the capital city, whereas the Chimbote Plan was seen
as the model for urban renewal of emerging Peruvian industrial cities. After about
two years of work between Lima and New York, Wiener and Sert’s Peruvian
projects were almost ready in 1949, and CIAM VII Bergamo was therefore the
first congress where they were presented.52
Nevertheless, TPA Peruvian projects – as with many other Latin
American plans – were not successfully implemented. On the one hand, the
Chimbote Plan was put on hold in 1949 by the new military regime of General
Manuel Odría (1948–50 and 1950–56) and eventually canceled.53 On the other
hand, after extended negotiations with the congress, Lima’s plan was approved
in 1949 but never successfully implemented. According to W. Ludeña, it was
greatly restricted by the political lobbies and evidently not useful as an urban
development guideline.54 Due to these developments, by the end of 1950 both
the Lima and Chimbote efforts were beyond recovery. Conflicts between
institutional plans and private interests did not allow the implementation of any of
97
Sharif S. Kahatt
Figure 6
“Una gran realización
Peruana, la Unidad
Vecinal No 3,” Unidad
Vecinal Nº 3, Lima
1945–1949, Fernando
Belaúnde (consultant);
Luis Dorich, Carlos
Morales Macchiavelo,
Alfredo Dammert,
Eugenio Montagne,
Juan Benítez, Manuel
Valega, as published in
El Arquitecto Peruano,
N146, Septiembre 1949.
Courtesy of El
Arquitecto Peruano.
Figure 7
“Dinámica propuesta,”
Plan Piloto de Lima
(1947–1949), Luis Dorich
(Director). Source:
Oficina Nacional de
Planeamiento Urbano
(ONPU) Plan Piloto de
Lima, Lima: Empresa
Gráfica T. Scheuch,
1949, p. 30.
these plans. Suddenly, the two most interesting plans for the growth and
redevelopment of Peruvian cities lay stagnant.
Nevertheless, and in spite of all these problems, CIAM ideas generated
positive responses in Peru and Latin America, mainly due to prewar congressional
efforts and the projects of its leading figures, such as Le Corbusier and Walter
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Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
I am leaving the day after tomorrow for Lima. […] From Lima I hope to
be able to work for CIAM by organizing a local group there and
establishing closer contact with all Latin American delegates. I also
believe it would be possible for us to do some work for the next
congress with a young group in Lima. We have facilities because we
will work with the government offices down there.57
99
Sharif S. Kahatt
the congress yet; therefore, Sert invited Dorich, Belaúnde, and even Hector
Velarde to attend the meetings several times, always acting as individuals.58
Espacio members Mario Bianco and Eduardo Neira wrote Giedion on April 11
1949, explaining the circumstances and confirming their wish to join the CIAM
congress by creating the CIAM-Peru group.59 But the bureaucratization of CIAM
caused problems for the Peruvian group’s incorporation.
In the summer of 1949, CIAM VII was held in Bergamo to discuss new
topics such as the “Charter of Athens in Practice” and the “Synthesis of the
Arts”, among others. The Italian congress was organized by E. Rogers and
included only two Latin American representatives, with no Peruvian participation.
Shortly before the meeting, noting the imminent absence of Latin Americans in
the next Bergamo congress and still working in Lima, Sert wrote to Gropius to
insist on the idea of holding a congress in Latin America. With master plans in
Colombia and Peru and aiming to get work in Venezuela and Chile, Sert considered
holding CIAM VIII in Lima, among other Latin American cities:
Certainly, it would have been an important step to reinforce CIAM ideas with
local architects and government officials, and indeed, it would have allowed him
to establish solid relations with country officials and achieve his ultimate goal: to
get built work. But again the European groups pushed to get CIAM back to
Europe and the congress was finally held in Hoddesdon, England. At the CIAM
VIII congress, the Colombian group was the only participant from Latin America,
and the Peruvian group only figured in a later publication as a “group in formation,”
for which Luis Dorich was referenced as the contact person.61 That was Espacio’s
last attempt to create an official CIAM-Peru group, and its first and last appearance
in a CIAM publication.
There is no clear evidence yet of an official answer from CIAM to
Agrupación Espacio’s request, but while there were many problems in preparing
the VII and VIII congresses, it seems likely that Giedion never wrote back with a
formal refusal. In a letter from Giedion to Sert, Espacio’s intention was mentioned,
but it can be inferred that no one wanted to deal with more issues regarding
American or Latin American groups.62 Giedion could not stand the South American
way of not being punctual and clear with their commitments, while Sert detested
the fact that the “poor European countries” were paying their fees and the
Americans were not.63 Without question, there was a clear lack of interest by
100
Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
101
Sharif S. Kahatt
In 1955, when MoMA exhibited Unidad Vecinal Matute by Santiago Santiago Agurto,
Architect (Corporación
Agurto at CNV as Peruvian modern architecture within the Modern Latin American
Nacional de la
Architecture since 1945 show,66 Agrupación Espacio had left behind the “modern Vivienda), Unidad
standard” approach (unidades vecinales). They were already exploring new urban Vecinal de Matute, Lima
architectural processes in the informal city. Espacio members such as Adolfo 1950–1953. Source:
Córdova, Eduardo Neira, and Santiago Agurto, together with other Peruvian Modern Architecture in
Latin America since
architects, were experimenting with new strategies to overcome lack of housing
1945, Museum of
and adequate urbanization conditions for the great numbers of people living on
Modern Art Exhibition
Lima’s outskirts. Their work was focused on the improvement of Lima’s emerging Catalogue, New York,
barriadas, which were becoming the newest and largest neighborhoods in the 1955, pp. 132–133.
102
Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
city. They not only transformed the conception of barriadas (shanty towns) from
an “urban cancer” – described by the EAP journal in the 1940s – to an “urbanization
model”. Researching vernacular methods of auto-construction (self-help) and
community structuring (clusters of lots), Peruvian architects since the mid-1950s
were trying to integrate the emerging shanty towns into the city to meet people’s
basic needs. In this way – some years before the arrival of John Turner in Peru
and the internationalization of squatting theories in the 1960s – “site and
services” and “self-help” strategies emerged within the work of Espacio, CNV,
and the recommendations of Comisión de la Reforma Agraria y de la Vivienda
(CRAV, 1956–58).67 It is in this way that Peruvian architects since the mid-1950s
started to work on shanty towns as a new approach to improve Lima’s popular
living standards.68
Coincidentally, that same year of the MoMA show, some Espacio
members organized a trip to Huarochiri, a small town near Lima. Led by sociologist
José Matos Mar, the expedition brought together architects, engineers,
sociologists, and other professionals, working as a group to explore how
architecture could help to improve people’s living standards. Still encouraged by
some of their modern principles and the group’s early philosophy, Espacio
members from different fields worked intensively to improve the living conditions
of this poor town. By addressing the problems of Lima’s outskirts in this way,
they thought they could propose new solutions to the housing shortage on a
larger scale. As H. Heynen has pointed out in the impasse of modern architects
that sought to solve the workers’ housing in the 1930s, it can be said that
Agrupación Espacio understood that “architecture inevitably has to deal with the
tension that exists between modernity and dwelling” and therefore, reached the
limits of the architectural discipline.69
Espacio realized not only that architecture could not change society –
nor solve poor living conditions by design – but also that the group had divided
ideologies regarding the role of architecture and the architect in society. In the
broadest discussions, Espacio was calling for an unconditional commitment
towards correcting social imbalances while confronting the limits of the discipline.
While some of the members had already decided not to participate in the
Haurochiri project and continued to work within the discipline’s traditional limits,
the bulk of the group joined a political project attempting to achieve deep social
changes. The Movimiento Social Progresista political group was a response to
Espacio’s impasse, and in many ways it triggered the dissolution of the group.70
As distressing as it should have been for the CIAM core group to
recognize the end of the congress, it was disappointing for Espacio to realize that
modern architecture, the functional city and the interrelationship of the arts could
not be accomplished most of the time and that when it was possible, architecture
would not be enough to solve the urban problems of modern life.71 Nevertheless,
it did not stop the architects from continuing to produce architectural projects of
great quality nor from exploring the formal, spatial, structural, and cultural limits
of Peruvian hybridization in modern architectural culture, as in the work of
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Sharif S. Kahatt
Figure 9
Adolfo Córdova, Carlos
Williams (Córdova-
Williams Arquitectos),
Air Force Housing
Complex, Chiclayo,
1955. Courtesy of
Adolfo Córdova.
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Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
105
Sharif S. Kahatt
to improve the quality of life in the metropolis for many years. Therefore, the
recognition of the unending housing crisis provoked in Espacio members the
re-examination of Lima’s barriadas, recognizing their potential as a mass housing
urbanization model. Cordova, Neira, and other members were instrumental in the
reversal of shanty-town assessment, from a problem to a solution. Later on, the
new project of the “military and revolutionary government” installed new
paradigms that led to the demise of the Peruvian Modern Project and distrust of
architecture and urbanism as tools for social transformation.
Nowadays, Espacio remains in the history of Peru as the seminal
group that embraced modern architecture as a principle and worked towards its
introduction, transformation and development within the local culture of Peru.
Furthermore, the group’s role in modern Peruvian culture is immeasurable, as
remarkable as its buildings. Its thinking changed the urban development of the
country and went beyond Peruvian borders through their work as educators of
outstanding architects in Lima and many other world cities. For now, the projects,
works, and actions of Agrupación Espacio occupy a central place in Peruvian
architecture, but they are still waiting for the recognition they deserve in the
historiography of modern architecture.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Mary Daniels and Ines Zalduendo, JLS SC & CIAM SC; Bruce
Tabb, PLWC; Simon Elliott, RNA-UCLA; Isabelle Godineau, FLC; Daniel Weiss,
ETHZ-CIAM; Miguel Cruchaga, EAP; Miró Quesada family; Santiago Agurto;
Adolfo Córdova.
JLS SC: Josep Luis Sert Collection, Special Collections, Loeb Library, Harvard
University Graduate School of Design; CIAM SC: CIAM Collection, Special
Collections, Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Design; ETHZ-
CIAM: CIAM Archive, Institute of History and Theory, Department of Architecture,
ETH Zurich; PLWC: Paul Lester Wiener Collection, University of Oregon Library;
WGAHL: Walter Gropius Archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University;
RNA-UCLA, Richard Neutra Archive, Department of Special Collections, University
Research Library, University of California Los Angeles; FLC, Fondation Le
Corbusier.
Notes
1 Néstor García Canclini, Culturas híbridas. Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad, Buenos
Aires: Paidós, 2001.
2 See Felipe Hernandez, “On the notion of architectural hybridization in Latin America,” in The
Journal of Architecture, vol. 7, no. 1, London: New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 77–86.
106
Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
3 “Expresión de Principios de Agrupación Espacio” was first published on May 15 1947 in Diario El
Comercio in Lima. In June of the same year the same document was published in the journal El
Arquitecto Peruano. After this public announcement, the group organized several conferences
over the space of a month where they explained the modern expression of architecture and arts
to the general public. Agrupación Espacio members were mainly architects. Under the leadership
of Luis Miró Quesada, the group was made up of architects and planners, such as Paul Linder,
Mario Bianco, Adolfo Córdoba, Luis Dorich, Carlos Williams, Eduardo Neira Alva, Javier Cayo,
Santiago Agurto, Carlos Cueto F., Luis Vera, and Samuel Pérez Barreto, among others. The
manifesto had a group of “adherents” consisting of poets, painters and musicians. Later, the
group included sociologists and engineers.
4 Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne – CIAM is used in this chapter as the name of the
group of leaders as well as that of the official congress.
5 There are few publications on the subject. Wiley Ludena, “Urbanismo moderno en el Perú: El
aporte de la Agrupación Espacio. Aproximaciones’, Urbes1, 2003 is one of the most relevant
publications on this subject, but it hardly addresses Espacio and CIAM relationship.
6 Bryce Wood, The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy, New York: Columbia University Press,
1961, p. 7.
7 Irwin F. Gellman, Good Neighbor Diplomacy. United States Policies in Latin America, 1933–1945,
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, p. 2.
8 See Thorp and Bertram, Peru, 1890–1977: Growth and Policy in an Open Economy, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1978, p. 186.
9 “Mensaje del presidente del Perú, Doctor Manuel Prado y Ugarteche, ante el congreso nacional,
el 28 de julio de 1943’; Museo del Congreso de la Republica del Perú, Mensajes Presidenciales.
10 See Tennessee Valley Authority, TVA as a Symbol of Resource Development in Many Countries,
Knoxville Tennessee: TVA Technical Library, January 1952.
11 See Alberto Adrianzén, “Continuidades y rupturas en el pensamiento político,” in Alberto
Adrianzén (ed.), Pensamiento Político Peruano 1930–1968, Lima: DESCO, 1990.
12 “El plan de vivienda del Gobierno Peruano,” in El Arquitecto Peruano, September 1945. Within
the intellectual framework of Instituto de Urbanismo (1944), Belaúnde, Luis Ortíz de Zevallos,
Carlos Morales M., and Luis Dorich planned Lima’s Housing Plan as well as the Urbanistic
Legislation.
13 See “La Corporación Nacional de la Vivienda cumple un honroso encargo social,’ El Arquitecto
Peruano, January–February, 1955, N210–11.
14 Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) exhibitions during the 1940s included Twenty
Centuries of Mexican Art (1940), Organic Design, an exhibition of the results of a competition of
industrial design only for American countries (1942), and Brazil Builds (1943), among other
initiatives.
15 See Jorge F. Liernur, “The South American Way. El ‘milagro Brasileño,’ los Estados Unidos, y la
segunda Guerra mundial (1939–1945),” in BLOCK N4 Brazil, Buenos Aires: UTDT, 1999, and
“Vanguardistas vs. Expertos,” in BLOCK N6 Tercer Mundo, UTDT, 2004.
16 In a letter from the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to Paul L. Wiener in 1945: “This will
confirm our understanding that you will make a lecture tour of approximately three months’
duration of certain other American Republics including Peru, Brazil…,” PLWC, Correspondence,
Box 14.
17 The Wiener tour included Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil. Letter from Wiener to the Coordinator
of Inter-American Affairs, PLWC, Box 12.
18 Paul Wiener, CIAM Memo, June 2, 1944, CIAM SC C4; and letter from Wiener to Gropius, July
25, 1944, PLWC, Box 12.
19 El Arquitecto Peruano was founded in 1937 by Fernando Belaúnde and directed by him until 1963,
when elected President of Peru. The last issue of the journal was published in 1977. See Eduardo
Zapata, El Joven Belaúnde, Lima: Editorial Minerva, 1995.
107
Sharif S. Kahatt
20 Wiener had previously established contact with Manuel B. Llosa (Paris Exhibition 1937), a figure
in the political and academic circles of Peruvian society. Llosa referred Wiener to Belaúnde and
also recommended that the Minister invite Wiener officially. PLWC, Incoming Correspondence,
Box 7.
21 See “El pensamiento creador en la arquitectura y el urbanismo. Extractos de las conferencias de
Paul Lester Wiener,” El Arquitecto Peruano, April 1945, N93.
22 Correspondence between Belaúnde and Wiener started in December of 1944 and continued over
years. Arrangement of details for the conferences in Peru was done at the beginning of 1945 in
several letters. PLWC, Box 12.
23 The correspondence between the client’s representative David Dasso (President, CPS), Belaúnde
(Deputy of Lima), Luis Dorich (Director, ONPU), and Sert and Wiener (TPA partners) had started
back in September of 1945 when Peruvian officials wrote to confirm their interest and express
great expectations for the project.
24 “I shall have conferences in Lima, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Sao Paolo and Rio and shall report
to you later…,” Letter from Neutra to Giedion, September 29 1945, CIAM SC C4; see also Richard
Neutra, “Observations on Latin America,, Pencil Points, May 1946, N5, pp. 67–72.
25 The CIAM Chapter was the core of CIAM architects that were exiled in the USA due to the war.
Included were Gropius, Mies, Neutra, Breuer, Sert, Weisman, and a few Americans who soon
after withdrew from the groups such as Wallace Harrison and Lonberg Holm. See “Transplanting
CIAM 1,2” and “CIAM Chapter for Relief and Postwar Planning,” in Eric Mumford, The CIAM
Discourses on Urban Planning 1928–1960, Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2000.
26 “Declaración de Ingenieros, Lima, 3 de Octubre 1945,” RNA-UCLA, Box 178, File 4.
27 CIAM Chapter for Relief and Postwar Planning, c.1946. ETHZ-CIAM Archive, 42-JLS-6-96/97.
28 “Your visit had quite a stimulating effect in the architectural field as well as among city planners.
On June 1, I had a meeting together with Morales Machivaello and five other young architects.
We have formed a society called Frente de Arquitectura Moderna (F.A.M.)...,” Dorich letter to
Wiener, June 6 1945, PLWC, Box 14.
29 See “La Visita de Richard L. Neutra,” El Arquitecto Peruano, September 1945, N98.
30 See AA.VV, Historia de la Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería 1876–1955, Tomo I, II, III, Lima:
Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, 1999.
31 See “Algunos Principios de Urbanismo,” El Arquitecto Peruano, November 1943, N76.
32 Luis Miró Quesada, Espacio en el Tiempo. La Arquitectura como fenómeno cultural, Lima:
Impresiones Gráficas, 1945.
33 Ibid., p. 12.
34 Ibid.
35 Besides these canonical books, it is also easy to recognize the influence of two others that are no
less important: Le Corbusier’s La Charte d’Athens and Hitchcock-Johnson’s The International
Style.
36 Anahí Ballent, El Diálogo de los Antípodas: El CIAM y América Latina, Buenos Aires: FADU, UBA,
1995, p. 34.
37 Interview with Adolfo Córdova, February 2004.
38 Ibid.
39 After Gropius’s visit to Lima in 1953, Miró Quesada wrote to him expressing appreciation for his
work, particularly Bauhaus ideas. Letter from Luis Miró Quesada to Walter Gropius, 16 April 1954.
HLWGA.
40 The origins of the group Espacio can be found in a public letter by Córdova and Williams sent to a
newspaper claiming “for an original architecture product of the times, with a logical expression of
the materials and the feeling of the people themselves.” Diario el Sol, Cuzco, December 23 1946.
41 Interview with Adolfo Córdova, February 2004.
42 “Expresión de Principios de la Agrupación Espacio,’ El Arquitecto Peruano, June 1947, N119.
43 Ibid.
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Agrupación Espacio and the CIAM Peru Group
44 “Maestro: […] Nuestra intención es informarlo del estado actual de la arquitectura en el Perú y del
establecimiento en Lima de la ‘Agrupación Espacio’ destinada a luchar contra el academismo
entronizado en nuestro medio y dispuesta a forjar un sendero de contemporaneidad entre
nosotros.” Carta a Le Corbusier de la Agrupación Espacio (Córdova, Williams y Pérez-Barreto),
Lima 3 de Julio 1947, addressed to the French Embassy in Colombia. FLC,
FDL-D1-19-361-B-LC.
45 “50 Aniversario, Agrupación Espacio,” in Revista 1/2 de Construcción, 1997.
46 The section in the newspaper was called Colabora la Agrupación Espacio (1947–1949). The first
number of Espacio – the official voice of the group – was released in May of 1949. The last issue
appeared in December 1951 as a double edition of N9–10.
47 After many communications between Belaúnde, Dorich, and Wiener which began in 1945, Sert
and Wiener finally received and signed the contract for the Chimbote project in August of 1947.
Working in Lima for Chimbote, Wiener and Sert, with an occasional visit of Ernesto N. Rogers,
participated in the development of the master plan for Lima; PLWC, Peru Box.
48 Lima’s Plan Piloto had been promoted by EAP since the 1940s. As part of the government party,
Belaúnde coordinated the efforts toward developing the master plan for Lima at ONPU directed
by Dorich.
49 “In working out the tridimensional plan, two contrasted heights have been considered…’ See
Wiener and Sert with the ONPU, A Pilot Plan for the City of Lima, Peru, Revised Copy, June 24
1950, p. 14; PLWC, Box 12, Outgoing Correspondence.
50 See Oficina Nacional de Planeamiento y Urbanismo, Plan Piloto de Lima, Lima: Empresa Gráfica
T. Scheuch, 1949, p. 30.
51 Belaúnde’s definition of “unidad vecinal” started in EAP in 1944 under the “Barrio-Unidad”
concept, in a direct translation of the English term “neighborhood unit” using Gropius’s work at
Harvard Unversity studios published as “A Program for City Reconstruction” in Architectural
Forum, July 1943, N79. In 1945 Belaúnde’s appropriation and transformation of Clarence Perry’s
and Walter Gropius’s ideas was introduced in Peru as “unidad vecinal” in the Housing Plan of
1945. Gropius’s influence is acknowledged by Belaúnde, and the way the implementation of their
ideas was planned in Lima is notorious.
52 The Lima and Chimbote Plans were well presented and documented in the exhibition and soon
became prominent examples of culturally rooted modern architecture. See J. Tyrwhitt, E. N.
Rogers, J. L. Sert (eds), The Heart of the City. Towards the Humanization of Urban Life, London:
Lund Humphries, 1952.
53 After replacing the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporación Peruana del Santa, the new “client”
denied part of the payment established by the contract, arguing that he had not hired TPA and did
not want to hear more about the project. Furthermore, the new military regime resolved to
legalize the squatter settlements in the area and cancel the project in its entirety.
54 See Wiley Ludena, “Urbanismo moderno en el Peru: El aporte de la Agrupación Espacio.
Aproximaciones,” in Urbes1, 2003.
55 Espacio member Roberto Wakeham worked in Le Corbusier’s office in 1948–49, at Unité
d’Habitation, which motivated Carlos Williams, Adolfo Córdova, and Samuel Perez Barreto to
invite Le Corbusier while he was working with Sert and Wiener in Colombia; FLC,
D1-19/356-378.
56 Dorich letter to Sert and Wiener, Lima, 29 Enero 1949; PLWC, Incoming Correspondence, Peru
Folder. Later on, the final letter to the official members of the CIAM-Peru group was sent by Luis
Dorich to Sigfried Giedion on January 3 1950, and includes many more architects than the
“official” Espacio group. The prospective members were: Santiago Agurto Calvo, Augusto
Álvarez Calderón, Mario Bianco, Juan F. Benítez, Enrique Biber P., Adolfo Córdova, Javier Cayo,
Luis Dorich, Mario Gilardi, Ernesto Gatelumendi, Jorge Garrido Lecca, Paul Linder, Gerardo Lecca,
Luis Miró Quesada G., Oscar Vargas Méndez, Ricardo Malachowski B., Louis Maurer, Raul
Morey, Eduardo Neira Alva, Jorge de los Rios, Teodoro Scheuch, Hilde Scheuch, Alberto
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Sharif S. Kahatt
Seminario T., José Sakr, Renato Suito, Fernando Sánchez-Griñan, Gabriel Tizón F., Luis Vásquez,
Ramón Venegas, Luis Vera, and Carlos Williams.
57 Sert letter to Giedion, December 16 1947; SC CIAM C004.
58 Velarde was invited to the Artes Plástiques and Belaúnde to the Urbanisme commission; PLWC,
Outgoing Correspondence, Box 12.
59 Due to the lack of US currency under the military regime, Espacio could not disburse funds, the
very first requirement of membership. Finding themselves in the midst of these odd
circumstances, some Espacio members talked to Sert and Rogers in Lima, but they recommended
that the young Peruvians write to CIAM secretary Giedion. ETHZ-CIAM, 42-SG-33-241.
60 Sert letter to Gropius, June 21 1949; SC CIAM C006.
61 In the CIAM 8 Conference Report at the ETHZ-CIAM, Dorich figures as contact person with his
personal address. In The Heart of the City (1952), Dorich appears as contact person at the Oficina
Nacional de Planeamiento Urbano (ONPU).
62 Giedion letter to Sert, May 6 1949; SC CIAM C006.
63 Sert letter to Giedion, May 4 1949, SC CIAM C006.
64 See Sigfried Giedion, “Introduction,” in Henrique E. Mindlin, Modern Architecture in Brazil, New
York: Reinhold Pub., 1956.
65 See Eric Mumford, The Emergence of Urban Design in the Breakup of CIAM, Harvard Design
Magazine. Spring–Summer 2006; Dirk van Huevel and Max Risselada (eds.), TEAM 10 1953–
1981, Rotterdam: NAi, 2005.
66 Henry R. Hitchcock, Latin American Architecture since 1945, New York: MoMA, 1955.
67 According to the CRAV housing report, directed by Cordova, the government should provide
support for barriadas improvement, since it is a solution to the Peruvian housing crisis. See
Comisión de Reforma Agraria y de Vivienda (CRAV), Informe sobre la vivienda en el Perú. Lima:
CRAV, 1958. This study was also supported by the work of another Espacio member, sociologist
Jose Matos Mar, Las barriadas de Lima 1957.
68 The early approach and seminal work of “site and services” strategy in the shanty towns of Lima
would be the basis for the PREVI Experimental Housing Project (1968–1975) in Lima. PREVI
Housing was the last attempt to adapt and transform the neighborhood units concept along with
new ideas of standardization, mass production, and self-help to local conditions in Lima.
69 See Hilde Heyen, Architecture and Modernity. A critique, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1999.
70 Soon after the trip, Espacio ceased to exist without a date or a clear event. One faction decided
to enter into politics, founding Movimiento Social Progresista to accomplish “real social change.”
The other felt that the role of architects was to stay within traditional boundaries and keep
working for a better society from within the architectural discipline. See Luis Miró Quesada,
“Entrevista, El grupo Espacio y la Arquitectura Nacional,” Cuadernos Urbanos (CENCA), Marzo
1987, N19, p. 25.
71 In 1940, Lima registered approximately 645,000 citizens. In 1957 Lima had nearly 1,500,000
inhabitants and 56 barriadas with approximately 120,000 inhabitants; by 1972, Lima had almost
3,303,000 inhabitants, of which 805,000 people lived in barriadas.
72 Santiago Agurto Calvo, Fernando Belaúnde, Luis Miró Quesada Garland, Carlos Morales
Machiavello (Peru); Bruno Zevi (Italy); et al. Adherentes, José Luis Sert, Charles Eames,
Buckminster Fuller, Gordon Bunshaft, Jerzy Zoltan, Paul Roudolph, Bruce Graham (USA); Kenzo
Tange, Kunio Mayekawa (Japan); Oscar Niemeyer (Brazil); among others.
73 See La Carta de Machu-Picchu, Lima. Cuzco: Congreso de la UIA, December 1977.
110
Part II
111
112
Figure 1
Arieh Sharon and Eldar Sharon, Obafemi Awolowo University campus: view of the main piazza, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, 1962–1976. Arieh Sharon archive,
courtesy of Ms Yael Aloni.
Chapter 5
Campus Architecture as
Nation Building: Israeli
architect Arieh Sharon’s
Obafemi Awolowo
University Campus,
Ile-Ife, Nigeria
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
Introduction
The campus of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Nigeria, the first
phase of which was built in the years 1962–76, presents one of the most
interesting examples of modernist architecture in Africa (Figure 1). As a case
study of a large-scale national commission that acquired specific regional
significance as well, the OAU campus provides important perspectives when
discussing the assimilation of the modernist style in post-colonial Africa. Its
design is intriguing also due to the fact that it was built by Israeli architect Arieh
Sharon (1900–84), aided by his son, Eldar Sharon (1933–94). Arieh Sharon, one of
the most important figures in the history of Israeli architecture, was a graduate of
the Bauhaus school in Dessau, and became a leading exponent of the International
Style in Israel/Palestine from the mid-1930s onwards.
While the OAU campus has been frequently cited as a masterpiece of
the Modern style in African architecture in both popular and scholarly accounts,
113
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
114
Campus Architecture as Nation Building
nation building, for which Modernist architecture was the idiom of choice,
defining progress, and symbolizing Nigeria’s entrance into the modern world.10
In accordance with regional aspirations, the founding of OAU was a
product of Yoruba cultural self-definition. It was Sanya Onabamiro who, prior to
formal reception of independence, promoted the consecration of a university for
the Western Region. This was viewed as extremely important, since an increasing
number of applicants from Yorubaland were being denied education at the now
two available institutions – Ibadan and Nsukka – due to student overflow.11
Onabamiro chaired a planning committee that proposed an institution that would
include faculties of African Studies and fine arts, which would foster cultural
heritage with a Yoruba focus.12 As Awokoya had earlier hoped, Yoruba art, music
and drama were now to be integrated with “coming into the world heritage of
knowledge.”13
The establishment of Obafemi Awolowo University, then called “Ife
University,” was approved by government on March 23 1961, and Chief Jeramiah
Obafemi Awolowo, one of Nigeria’s most prestigious politicians and an education
activist, was nominated chair of the future institution’s Planning Committee. That
the committee upheld the concept that the future university needed to be
established upon the experiences and examples of leading institutions from
around the world, was clearly evident in the formation of a delegation, dispatched
to tour Brazil, Mexico, the USA, and Israel. Krieger dates this trip to mid-1961, and
this is apparently the delegation of which the campus architect, Arieh Sharon,
was also a member, as his account of the trip’s objectives, route and timeframe
is similar.14 It is significant that the trip included Third World universities in South
America, which would have supplied the Ife University Committee with possible
solutions to the challenges of establishing universities in developing countries.15
No less important is the fact that Sharon joined them at this preliminary stage,
indicating the importance attributed by the committee to the architectural and
physical aspect of the new university. Ife University began operations in 1962 and
moved to its permanent campus, which is the focus of this discussion, in 1967.
115
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
116
Campus Architecture as Nation Building
117
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
cooperation with Israel this criticism was dismissed in the interest of strengthening
diplomatic ties. The partnerships were thus perceived as abiding by the highest
moral standards, as the nature of cooperation expressed complete trust in the
developing countries’ abilities to meet the goals of running their own companies
in a relatively short time. It was non-exploitative, and promised relatively little
profit to the expatriate companies involved, a fact of which both the Israeli and
African governments were aware. As far as construction and planning were
concerned, the transfer of knowledge comprised the export of technical
equipment and personnel as well as the services of Israeli experts, such as
Sharon, who worked in cooperation with their Nigerian counterparts. In addition,
courses in Israel were held for African trainees: for example, Israel’s Productivity
Institute conducted a “Foreman Training Course” in building and construction.35
Arieh Sharon succinctly hailed this cooperation in his opening speech presented
at the consecration of the OAU campus’s Assembly Hall, describing architecture
and construction as presenting “nowadays a sophisticated and engineering
problem of building technology, science and organization… Such a complex
enterprise can only succeed, if everybody is ready to contribute from his
knowledge, experience, goodwill and personal devotion to the work.”36
For the project of planning the OAU campus, A.M.I. contracted Sharon
and entered into partnership with Nigerian architect A. A. Egbor, whose office
was in Lagos.37 For the purpose of this cooperation a joint company, named
EGBORAMI, was established, with the Sharon office as the head planning team.38
It would appear that the role of the Egboramy company was in engineering and
coordination of construction, but further research is needed to more accurately
establish Egbor’s part in the planning process. This cooperation lasted well into
the 1980s.39 Together with the Egborami Company, Sharon and Sharon drew up
master plans for several other major commissions in Nigeria, although these
were never completed.40 This may be due at least in part to the severing of
diplomatic ties with Israel by Nigeria in 1973 (formal relations were re-established
in 1992).41 However, as with other African countries, commercial relations were
not only maintained but continued to grow despite this, and Solel Boneh continued
its construction projects.42 The OAU campus was brought to completion, and
although the other projects were not built, an enduring cooperation was sustained,
indicating that the knowledge and technology imported certainly had long-term
significance.43
As far as the actual execution of the OAU project was concerned,
cooperation extended beyond a business relationship to a planning process that
included an ongoing discourse between architects and patrons. Sharon first met
with local Obas (Yoruba town/tribal leaders), councilors and government officials;
the preliminary tour of campuses abroad was participated in by the professors of
the future university, the ministers of Culture and Labor, and by the leaders of the
opposition, indicating the prime national importance of the project.44 Once the
project was under way, the architects consistently proceeded “in close
cooperation with the vice-chancellor, the professors, the university council and
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Campus Architecture as Nation Building
the university’s resident engineers and architect. Nothing was built before careful
research was done and the problems involved jointly analyzed.”45 Members of
the community participated in the making of the campus: Sharon emphasized the
community’s respect for the environment, and the joint effort to preserve as
much of the natural vegetation while clearing the bush for construction. Harold
Rubin, Sharon’s project supervisor, describes the construction of the university
campus as having a profound influence upon the town, and recalls how the
residents of Ife pitched in when extra manpower was needed for the project, at
times turning the building project into a celebration.46 As they are based on the
architects’ perspective of the project, these testimonies need to be critically
assessed, since they possibly reflect a romanticized view of those employed for
the project, while in reality this enlistment of the local community could have had
an exploitative nature. While the architects’ views need to be read with this in
mind, their testimonies can be seen as indicating an expression of the
community’s sense of ownership and identification with the project. Cooperation
with community, university and state leaders was certainly reflected in the
integration of local, especially Yoruba, art and architectural traditions into the
campus’s design, as I will show in the discussion that follows.
Commissioning Sharon
In selecting Arieh Sharon as the architect of the OAU project, the university’s
Planning Committee declared Modernism as the chosen architectural style for
the campus. Sharon had the opportunity of giving his Nigerian patrons an
unmediated impression of his work during their visit to Israel, and according to
his own testimony they received his built projects with enthusiasm.47
Sharon immigrated to Palestine in 1920 from Austria-Hungary and
lived on a kibbutz, working first as a beekeeper and then as a planner and
constructor of simple farm buildings and dwellings. He began his education at the
Bauhaus school in Dessau in 1926 and graduated in 1929. He then took charge
of the Berlin office of his Bauhaus mentor, Hannes Meyer, and worked there until
1931.48 With his education and experience, Sharon was among a small but
prestigious group of Jewish architects who studied in Europe and upon arriving
(or returning) to Palestine in the 1930s, championed the International Style, and
became extremely influential in consequent architectural development in
Palestine/Israel.49 Modernist architecture became synonymous with the Jewish
yeshuv, that is, settlement, in Palestine. Constantly following the latest trends in
Europe and the United States, Modernism continued to thrive with the declaration
of the State of Israel in 1948. Constituting the stylistic expression of the new
state, it was perceived as an important formal and functional tool for paving
Israel’s way into the community of modern, Western nations, and represented
rejuvenation and progress.50
After 1948, Sharon played a major role in planning grand programs for
new scientific and public health facilities in Israel, whose execution provided him
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Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
with valuable experience when planning for the Ife campus. Sharon not only
created many buildings in the framework of Israel’s paced development, but was
also in charge of the National Master Plan that outlined the county’s entire
infrastructure, new towns and settlements.51 In this capacity, he also represented
the United Nations in 1954 as an expert on regional planning and housing at a
seminar in New Delhi, and in the same year served as an advisor on regional
planning in Burma.52 Soon after embarking on the Nigeria project, Sharon received
the Israel Prize in the field of architecture, for his design of the Soroka Medical
Center in the city of Beer-Sheba (1962).53 The Nigerian patrons thus chose an
architect who had previously been appointed as an expert by the United Nations
to advise on planning in Third World countries, and had received national
recognition in his own country that was endorsed by rewarding him with the
most prestigious prize in Israel. His socialist ideologies were probably appreciated
as well, complementing the general approach of the Israeli technical aid programs
discussed above.
In 1964 Sharon’s son, Eldar, joined his practice. Eldar Sharon came to
work with his father following a partnership with Zvi Hecker (1931–) and Alfred
Neumann (1900–68). The latter was the two younger architects’ mentor at the
Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, and introduced them to a
structuralist approach in architecture. As Bruno Zevi commented in his foreword
to Arieh Sharon’s book, Eldar was not “a passive follower of his father…,” and
brought with him the experience of “several years of independent and original
achievements.”54 The planning of the OAU campus was already under way when
Eldar joined the office, yet his distinct approach had a significant impact upon the
later structures built. Another important addition to the team at that time was
Harold Rubin, whom Sharon appointed as head of the OAU campus project.
Rubin was a native of South Africa who was hired by Sharon soon after
immigrating to Israel. The planning team thus brought forth Sharon’s guidance,
Eldar’s structuralist approaches as well as Rubin’s unmediated knowledge of
southern Africa.
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Campus Architecture as Nation Building
initial campus buildings were built, and accordingly deals with its development
until the mid-1970s.
The campus’s main core (Figure 2) is almost square in plan. It has a main
piazza, located slightly left of a central axis, with pedestrian walkways leading from
it to the other areas of the campus. Bordering the main piazza are the assembly
hall, the library, and the secretariat. From its northeast corner, four buildings
comprising the Humanities Faculty create an additional axis. Behind the library four
more faculty buildings are located: Education, Social Sciences, Law, and
Administration. Three of these are arranged symmetrically along the main core’s
northwest border, with the fourth located between them and the Humanities’ axis.
Intimate connecting squares are thus created between the various faculties. This
was termed by Sharon a “loose grid design,” and aptly describes the seemingly
freeform and abstract arrangement of structures. He described his approach as
“simple and organic,” and explained it as follows: “the central rectangle, located
on a slightly undulated slope against the background of the beautiful rocky hill – is
a purely pedestrian area [and]… presents a closely knit complex of faculty buildings,
gardens, patios li[n]ked by pergolas, ramps and terraces.’57
Figure 2
Arieh Sharon and Eldar
Sharon, Obafemi
Awolowo University
campus: plan of the
campus’s main core,
1974. Arieh Sharon
archive, courtesy of Ms
Yael Aloni.
Legend: 1: Assembly
Hall; 2: Secretariat; 3:
Library; 4: Humanities;
5: Institute of
Education; 6: Social
Sciences; 7: Law; 8:
Institute of
Administration.
121
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
Of Sharon’s projects, his hospitals and campuses built in Israel during Figure 3
the 1950s, planned with his associate at the time, Benjamin Idelson, deserve Arieh Sharon and
Benjamin Idelson,
particular attention as precursors of the Ife project. The Soroka Health Center in
Soroka Medical Center,
Beer-Sheva (1955) (Figure 3) was his largest and most important commission
Beer-Sheva, Israel,
during that time. It anticipated OAU in its “loose grid” layout. Long, flat-roofed begun 1955. Arieh
pergolas with slim columns, similar in style to those of the OAU campus, Sharon archive,
connected the medical center buildings, shielding pedestrians from the desert courtesy of Ms Yael
122
Campus Architecture as Nation Building
In the traditional evolution of the Yoruba town, including Ife, the àfin was located
in the center of the city and surrounded by a thick wall. The palace usually had
one huge porticoed gate, and the one in Ife was famous for its immense size.61
The palace had open-air grounds or bushland where shrines and burial grounds
were located. Its built area was made up of a series of interconnected courtyards
surrounded by verandas, with rooms opening to them.62
As discussed in the next section of this paper, Yoruba art as a source
of inspiration was clearly mentioned by Sharon. He did not, however, mention
Yoruba palaces specifically as a source for the campus’s layout, yet wrote that
“[r]eviewing trends abroad of other universities, we agreed with the professors
that, in view of the local conditions and customs [my emphasis]… the layout of
the campus… should be as compact as possible.”63 The modest scale of Sharon’s
campuses in Israel was appreciated by the Nigerian delegation, indicating that
the compact size of the main core, whose size is about 240 × 240 meters, was
inspired by both Sharon’s earlier work and the àfin.64 Adopting a variant of the
loose grid scheme was, moreover, akin to the succession of courtyards of the
traditional àfin. In addition, the imposing campus entrance gate and sculptural
secretariat gate (Figure 9) connote, in their monumentality, the importance of the
gate in both Yoruba palatial architecture and shrines.65 Thus, the choice of layout
for the campus’s main core closely followed modernist schemes, yet addressed
local traditions of planning and architecture.
123
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
Figure 4
Arieh Sharon, Obafemi
Awolowo University
campus: the Faculty of
Humanities Buildings,
1962. Arieh Sharon
archive, courtesy of Ms
Yael Aloni.
implementation of the modernist style to British West Africa in the heyday of the
colonial era, was for improvement of the “natives’” education. The British hoped
that by establishing a primary school system as well as universities, pioneered by
Ibadan, they would ward off the growth of the independence movements.69
Thus, modernist architecture was associated early on with education. However,
in building one of the first post-colonial universities, the patrons of OAU obviously
did not wish to emulate colonial modernism. The University of Ibadan, as a
British-sponsored institution, was associated with internationalism and a general
nationalist agenda rather with acknowledging internal Nigerian diversity of ethnic
identities.70 Just as the founders of OAU rejected the Ibadan model in its
academics, promoting instead programs that would aid in the development of the
region and foster Yoruba culture, so they rejected its architecture, which
visualized the character of the senior institution.
The “tropical architecture’ version of modernism implemented at
Ibadan preceded OAU in its highly environmental approach. Its design brought
climate considerations center-stage, and Fry and Drew adapted modernism to
the tropical climate by situating the buildings in a way that accounted for insulation
and wind directions. This was done, as Sharon observed, mostly by a different
treatment of walls and windows.71 Sharon’s solution for diverging from colonial
modernism lay in the pyramidal structures, which articulated the mass of the
building rather than its shell.
Sharon was no stranger to the louvers and precasts from which he
steered away in the planning of the Humanities buildings. He had made ample
use of them in the Technion Institute of Technology and the Hebrew University,
where recessed windows, deep terraces and vertical brises-soleil were used to
cope with Israel’s hot summers. While he did not abandon these completely, his
construction at OAU certainly signaled the beginning of a new style and a shift
from his earlier work in Israel. This change reflected Sharon’s reaction to
international late modernism and his adoption of new trends. The arrival of Eldar
Sharon, who belonged to the new generation of modernist architects,
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Campus Architecture as Nation Building
strengthened this stylistic shift, and abstract elements and polygonal forms
became dominant in the ensuing campus buildings.
A gradation of plains forming a less accentuated pyramid was also
structured in the OAU campus library (1966) (Figure 5). In this building, each set
of strip windows that run across the front and rear façades was shaded by a
massive cement cantilever, and there were no terraces. The library can perhaps
be seen as an intermediary stage in the campus’s architecture: its emphasis is
horizontal, and the gradated cantilevers are plastered. Its main entrance is not
centrally located but shifted towards the west, and a long wide ramp leads up to
it and accentuates it. The entrance interrupts the strong horizontality of the
cantilevers in both shape and material. A rectangle of exposed concrete seems
to fold over from the roof, contrasting with the white cantilevers. It is pierced by
a very large, expressive circle that denotes a recessed entrance. Functionally,
this abstract element shades the entryway, yet it certainly goes beyond the
rationality of early modernism into the elaborate shapes that characterized the
late phase of the style. Its sheer size and integration as a geometrical element
emphasize the entrance, indicating the different function of this part of the
building, where mobility is concentrated, as the staircase and hallways to the rest
of the building are located there.
At the OAU library, not only the entrance but also the rectangular
building’s narrow sides were left with an exposed concrete shell, indicating an
accentuated use of this material. It was used on the central part of the building,
which seems to cut through its axis, an effect achieved by making it slightly
longer and higher. The higher roof has rounded corners and its adjacent walls
have concave crowns, so that an undulating, sculptural effect is achieved. The
concrete was not simply poured into wooden molds, but into corrugated tin,
creating a wavy texture for the finished building. This technique was implemented
in the Assembly Hall (the Odúduwà Hall) as well. The corrugated texture of the
Figure 5
Arieh Sharon and Eldar
Sharon, Obafemi
Awolowo University
campus: the Library
Building, 1966. Arieh
Sharon archive,
courtesy of Ms Yael
Aloni.
125
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
concrete imitated that of the famous bronze figures excavated in Ife and displayed
in its museum, whose bodies were incised, creating a similar wavy effect. In the
autobiographical survey of his work, Sharon mentioned the “special architectural
interest [of] the Ife Museum, exhibiting world-famous bronze heads.”72 A photo
of one such figure was presented opposite a close-up of the assembly hall’s
concrete texture, referencing this source of inspiration.73
Sharon used the corrugated texture for exposed concrete in Israel as
well during this period, for example in the Agricultural Cooperatives Headquarters
in Tel Aviv (1966), where an almost identical pattern was implemented.74 Thus, an
effect used in Israel as an expression of contemporary modernism, was supplied
with an interpretation relating it to local art when applied in Nigeria. Locating
modernism in the context of a Third World nation implied situating it within a local
cultural referent. Such a connection between the texture of the concrete and the
Ife bronzes is extremely abstract, and raises a question of agency: while the
architect testified to the role of the sculptures in choosing this exterior treatment,
it is far from certain that this connotation was made by the campus’s population.
Sharon obviously did not intend to reiterate a clear and legible cultural icon; rather,
it guided him when making choices pertaining to which elements of modernism
would be most appropriate for the Ife buildings. The implementation of the
modernist style was, in this specific aspect, more a process of choice and
reduction than one of appropriation.
The building for the Institute of Education (Figure 6), completed in
1970, has a clear reverse-triangle form. While Sharon called it, too, an “inverted
pyramid,”75 this is actually a sequence of double triangle structures with inverted
vertices. This building is made principally of exposed concrete. The structure’s
diagonal trusses create two covered passages along the length of the building.
The widening of the triangles’ sides towards the top endows the passage with an
airy, open feeling. As with the terraces of the Humanities buildings, these open
Figure 6
Arieh Sharon and Eldar
Sharon, Obafemi
Awolowo University
campus: the Institute of
Education, 1970. Arieh
Sharon archive,
courtesy of Ms Yael
Aloni.
126
Campus Architecture as Nation Building
corridors are protected from rain yet remained open and ventilated, an approach
that also differed greatly from colonial modernism.
Representing the earlier phase of the campus construction, the
Humanities, Library and Education buildings retained a horizontality that was
perhaps a legacy of the international style of the 1930s and 1940s, yet introduced
the pyramidal gradation combined with vertical elements that contrasted with it,
emphasized by exposed concrete. The type of gradation used in these buildings
was later implemented by Sharon and Sharon in the building for the Bank of
Israel, Jerusalem (1978), and is reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s La Tourette
Convent near Lyon, France (1957–60).
The Library and Humanities buildings were visually connected not only
by the similarity of these characteristics and their proportions, but also by a long
pergola constructed as a single-sided arcade of semi-circles (Figure 5, to the right
of the Library building). This stark geometry of arched openings in a deep wall
was very different from the slender pergolas that connected the Humanities
buildings to each other. Similarities to the Agricultural Cooperatives Headquarters
in Tel Aviv can again be perceived, in the horizontal strips countered by vertical
emphasis, and in the use of the semi-circular arch, which in the Tel Aviv building
separated its pedestrian access from the street. Sharon and Sharon thus exported
to the Ife campus structural and stylistic elements used by them in Israel, yet
adapted them to both climate and culture.
I would now like to turn to the assembly hall, named the Odúduwà
Hall, after the mythic ancestor of the crowned Yoruba kings (Figure 7). The
building was intended for theater and dance performances, as well as graduation
ceremonies.76 Begun in 1970 and completed in 1976, the assembly hall differed
from the earlier buildings. It is located on the southwestern corner of the main
Figure 7
Arieh Sharon and Eldar
Sharon, Obafemi
Awolowo University
campus: the Odúduwà
Hall (the Assembly
Hall), completed 1976.
Arieh Sharon archive,
courtesy of Ms Yael
Aloni.
127
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
campus core. The wide stairs leading to it from the main piazza create an
enclosing boundary for the latter. The building is a hexagonal mass echoed by a
trapezoid, which connects an auditorium, planned to seat 1400, with an open-air
amphitheater planned for 3500 spectators (Figure 8). A tall, impressive stage
tower, whose exterior provides a vertical focal point for the campus core,
connects the two performance areas. A concrete “tent”77 surmounts the interior
auditorium, forming a series of triangles in the taller part of the roof. The seating
of both theaters is curvilinear, and the stages of both the interior and exterior
performance spaces continue their shape and are semi-circular thrust stages,
planned as such specifically to accommodate Nigerian theater, which traditionally
comprises mostly thrust-stage performances.78 The interconnected stages allow
for flexibility and can be used simultaneously, and are an exception to the notion
of fixed theater spaces.79 This flexibility is particularly appropriate for Yoruba
performance, which is rich and versatile.80
The foyer is located under the auditorium, and its staircases are aligned
with the building’s trapezoid geometry. It was left completely open to the outside.
Harold Rubin explained that the tropical climate allowed this, and giving up what
would have been a massive amount of fenestration enabled the architects to
Figure 8
Arieh Sharon and Eldar
Sharon, Obafemi
Awolowo University
campus: the Odúduwà
Hall (the Assembly
Hall), plan of upper
ground floor. Arieh
Sharon archive,
courtesy of Ms Yael
Aloni.
128
Campus Architecture as Nation Building
remain within budget.81 Tall walls frame the foyer’s concrete stairs and galleries,
each pierced by huge circles and semi-circles. These echo the Library’s entrance
and adjacent pergola, while giving lightness to the assembly hall’s concrete mass.
The stage tower’s corners are shaped as semi-trapezoids, reflecting the shape of
the building and culminating in beveled angles and accentuated eaves troughs.
The concrete façades of Odúduwà Hall were painted with white
abstract and geometric forms, transforming the gray, windowless exteriors into
striking monumental murals. Similar to the library building, the assembly hall’s
exterior walls are corrugated, so that the painted areas are endowed with a wavy
effect. The eastern side of the building, which is the one that faces the piazza, is
adorned with wing-like shapes and S-shaped strips which seem to frame a central
motif of an abstract circle intersected by a strip reminiscent of a spear (Figure 7).
The opposite side of the building has similar sinuous decorations. The exterior
wall of the amphitheater stage is painted with a symmetrical shape where the
contrast between gray and white creates two triangles intersected by arches that
frame a thinner, white circle, located in the center of the wall. The spectator’s
eye completes the forms so that a larger double-circle is set at the center, again
echoing the building’s circular openings.
These abstract murals recall Yoruba wall paintings. The incredibly rich
abstract vocabulary of Yoruba art includes dense geometric patterns, manifested
not only in sculpture and wall painting, but also in textiles, festival costumes and
ritual objects, forming a fundamental aspect of local visual culture.82 In his library,
Arieh Sharon had a small 1969 booklet by Chief M. A. Fabunmi called Ife Shrines.83
Among the many images published in this book is one of the Oluorogbo Shrine,
which has dark walls painted in light shades, featuring patterns of circles, triangles
and sinuous lines. Wall paintings of this kind were, in all likelihood, a source of
inspiration for the murals. Arieh Sharon’s collection of Nigerian art is also
testimony to his deep appreciation of it, and could have been a source of
inspiration. He collected Yoruba and other African sculptures during his trips, as
well as contemporary Nigerian art, notably paintings on wood and paper by Twins
Seven Seven (1941–).84 The works by Twins Seven Seven owned by Sharon
integrated indigenous motifs, and those on paper were executed in black and
white. Although the works are not dated, making it difficult to establish their
direct influence on the planning of the assembly hall, they indicate Sharon’s
awareness of modern Nigerian art. Thus, the circle-and-triangles pattern applied
to the stage façade, as well as the abstract shapes of the piazza-facing one,
translate Yoruba abstract forms and repetitive pattern into a modern idiom. Here,
again, the architects implemented a thoroughly modernist device of integrating
immense geometric or abstract forms as an artistic element that underscored
various aspects of the architecture. This device may be compared, for example,
to Louis Kahn’s use of large triangular and circular openings that create an
abstract pattern on the massive walls of the National Assembly in Dacca,
Bangladesh, built between 1962 and 1974. Another comparison may be
suggested to the murals and mosaics decorating the exterior walls of the UNAM
129
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
130
Campus Architecture as Nation Building
[sculptures] rely on the human form but they abstract it. I made the
gate with a turned-up head, and it’s almost figurative. The head and
legs create the gate.91
Perhaps the most telling example of defining the cultural space of the Yoruba
within the campus, is the concrete replica of Ife’s famous Opa Oranmiyan (staff
of Oranmiyan, also called the Ife Staff), an ancient 18-foot (5.18 meter) tall granite
monolith which commemorates Odúduwà’s son (Figure 5, to the right of the
Library entrance ramp).92 Facing the campus’s main piazza, the replica was
Figure 9
Harold Rubin, sculpture
for the entrance gate
leading to the
Secretariat (from the
direction of the Faculty
of the Humanities
buildings), c. 1968.
Arieh Sharon archive,
courtesy of Ms Yael
Aloni.
131
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
132
Campus Architecture as Nation Building
Thus it would seem that in the discourse of nationalism and ethnicity, historically
crucial to Nigeria’s political evolvement, the architecture of the OAU campus
tended towards expressing a specific ethnic identity. Although built by foreign
architects, when seen in relation to contemporary Nigerian art, the architecture of
the campus reveals a similar trend of a commitment to indigenous art through a
formalistic approach. The context was no longer traditional, and the search for a
Nigerian modernism endowed it with new meaning. However, as the
establishment of OAU was a national project, the reification of Yoruba art should
also be seen in the wider framework of ethnic identity as constructing Nigerian
nationalism, which is inherently characterized by cultural diversity.100 The
abstraction of Yoruba art, which detached it from its original cultural domain,
facilitated this interpretation, as it interfered with direct, specific association.
This comparison of art and architecture becomes even more relevant
when considering Nwoko’s architecture which was contemporary with the OAU
campus, such as the Dominican Monastery (1966–70) and the New Culture
Design Centre, both in Ibadan.101 Nwoko appropriated traditional indigenous
elements in his buildings as well, a tendency also shared by, for example, Allan
Vaughan-Richards (1925–89)102 and Design Group Nigeria.103 Thus, the search for
a cultural language that would combine modern architecture with Nigerian visual
heritage was not unique to Sharon and Sharon during this period. As discussed by
Le Roux, this approach to Modernism developed from the discourse of Africanism
and negritude, which were an important part of cultural production in Africa from
the 1950s onwards. Coupled with a renewed emphasis upon place and materiality
in Western and non-Western postwar modernisms, these frameworks encouraged
a new search for syntheses between modernist and local traditions.104 However,
Sharon and Sharon’s architecture defined a heightened discourse between
modernism and its assimilation of a culture, especially when compared to the
work of other expatriate architects. It integrated and displayed locality in a
clear-cut and unambiguous manner, in an engagement previously rarely seen in
such large-scale civic commissions. It challenged contemporary references to
local African traditions within imported, modernist idioms which, despite claims
of their integration by architects and their critics/historians, were comparatively
subtle or resided largely in the realm of declared intentions.105
Conclusion
In his imperfect English, Sharon concluded his speech for the celebration of the
opening of the Odúduwà Hall with the following paragraph:
The great builder and bric[k]layer Wi[n]ston Churchill said once: Man is
building his house, but later on, his house is building the man. And I
believe that our architectural work is only a modest basis, and the
teachers, students and university’s people may develop this
architectural basis into a human, social and cultural university entity.106
133
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
The slight irony of quoting Churchill aside, Sharon’s words reiterate the importance
attached to developing higher education in post-independence Nigeria. His
perception of architecture as capable of molding society reverberates through
Churchill’s quote. His emphasis on the “modest” role of architecture, upon
which the essence of the university is built, establishes it as a crucial aspect
capable of giving a physical expression to the character of OAU. This physical
expression was achieved through importation of modern architecture to post-
colonial Nigeria which entailed an assimilation process that localized, yet sought
to differentiate this architecture from earlier, colonial “tropical” modernism. In
the planning of the OAU campus, Sharon and Sharon devised this by exploiting
volume for environmental sustainability, and by expressively employing the
plasticity of exposed concrete. In addition, modernist aesthetics were hybridized
so as to express Yoruba art and culture through materiality and form. Abstraction
of Yoruba art enabled a multiple reading of the campus architecture, simultaneously
endowing it with both local and national significance.
The campus’s architecture was also an embodiment of the emerging
nation’s progress: the implementation of modernist planning principles, materials,
and stylistic vocabulary when establishing an institution for the advancement of
knowledge, was perceived as a tool for achieving both technical and visual
modernity. Through close and institutionalized cooperation between the Nigerian
planning and construction team and the Israeli architects and Solel Boneh, the
making of the OAU campus was projected to have a lasting technological impact,
introducing new construction methods to the country.
The architecture of the OAU campus presents spatial and visual
formulations that challenge current post-colonial issues of power, knowledge and
alterity. Israel was not an ex-colonizer of Nigeria – on the contrary, it was an
ex-mandate territory and itself a new nation, and its historical situation within First
or Third world countries is complex.107 The construction of modernist architecture
in Nigeria through an Israeli conduit underscored its relevance, while American and
European models, more closely or immediately associated with foreign power and
colonialism, were mediated through it and thus made acceptable. However,
Israel’s exportation of architecture and building technologies can be seen as
embodying knowledge as a commodity, and Israel’s economic and, in this case,
diplomatic profit were an important incentive for this cooperation. While this
carries characteristics of post-colonial Western intervention, introduced to Africa
under the more attractive concepts of “aid” and “assistance,” it certainly does not
fit into formulae of the persistence of European power, or American predominance.108
The cultural production of modern architecture in independent Nigeria
entailed the translation of Yoruba alterity to a modern idiom, and its treatment as
a cultural Other subjugated to Western architecture. This presumably suggests
the usual framings of Self and Other in post-colonial discourse.109 However, in
constructing the campus, the architects fully collaborated with their Yoruba
patrons. Thus, this was an architecture chosen and affected by its clients and
users, and was by no means imposed upon them.
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Campus Architecture as Nation Building
Acknowledgements
This research was first presented at the 61st Annual Meeting of the Society of
Architectural Historians, Cincinnati, OH, 2008. I wish to thank Yael Aloni for
generously opening her father’s invaluable archive to me, and Edina Meyer-Maril,
Ayala Levin, David Rifkind, Adedoyin Teriba, Hilde Heinen, Lily Kassner and
Duanfang Lu for their help and insightful comments.
Notes
1 Chinua Achebe, ”The African Writer and the English language,” in Patrick Williams and Laura
Chrisman, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A reader, New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994, p. 433.
2 Each of these ethnic groups had, and still has, a dominant religion: The Hausa-Fulani are
predominantly Moslem, while the Igbo and Yoruba are Christian and pagan. It should be noted
that this division into three ethnic groups or tribes is not wholly adequate, and is a relatively recent
historical compartmentalization. The Yoruba themselves, while possessing the same language,
are culturally and socially diverse. See: David D. Laitin, Hegemony and Culture: Politics and
Religious Change among the Yoruba, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986;
Margaret Thompson Drewal, Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency, Bloomington and
Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1992, p. 12.
3 For Nigeria’s decolonization process see Ali A. Mazrui and Michael Tidy, Nationalism and New
States in Africa from about 1935 to the present, Nairobi, Ibadan, London and Portsmouth NH:
Heinemann, 1984, pp. 92–5.
4 Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike, University Development in Africa, Ibadan: Oxford University Press,
1976, p. 12.
5 Milton Krieger, “Education and development in Western Nigeria: the legacy of S. O. Awokoya,
1952–1985,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 20, no. 4, 1987, pp.
652–3.
6 Ibid., p. 654.
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Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
7 Ibid., p. 653.
8 Nnamdi Aziwike, “Essentials for Nigerian survival,” Foreign Affairs (pre-1986), no. 43, p. 458.
9 J. F. Ade Ajayi, “Higher education in Nigeria,” African Affairs, vol. 74, no. 297, 1975, p. 421. Much
has been written about the complexity of nationalism vs. ethnic diversity in Nigeria. See for
example Ibeanu and Okechukwu, “Ethnicity and transition to democracy in Nigeria: explaining the
passing of authoritarian rule in a multi-ethnic society’, African Journal of Political Science, vol. 5,
no. 2, 2000, pp. 45–65.
10 Hannah Le Roux, “Modern architecture in post-colonial Ghana and Nigeria,” Architectural History,
vol. 47, 2004, pp. 369, 381. For a discussion of architecture and nation building as a cultural act
see Daniel A. Abramson, “History: the long eighteenth century,” Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians, vol. 64, no. 4, p. 420.
11 Krieger, “Education and development in western Nigeria,” pp. 644–8, 653–4.
12 Ibid., pp. 659–60; Arieh Sharon, Kibbutz+Bauhaus: an architect’s way in a new land, Stuttgart:
Kark Krämer, and Israel: Massada, 1976, p. 126.
13 Quoted in Krieger, op. cit., p. 652.
14 Ibid., pp. 658–9; Sharon, op. cit., pp. 126–7.
15 From the two South American locales chosen, Brazil was probably selected due to the long
tradition of strong ties between the Yoruba and their kin who were deported as slaves to Brazil,
and whose descendants gradually returned to Nigeria in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
It is interesting to note that in Brazil, many Yoruba worked in the building and architectural trades,
and thus influenced Nigerian architecture with the styles and technique they brought back with
them from Brazil. See John Michael Vlach, “The Brazilian house in Nigeria: the emergence of a
twentieth-century vernacular house type,” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 97, no. 383,
1984, pp. 3–23.
16 Zvi Efrat, Haproyekt Hayisraelee: Bniya ve Adrichalut 1948–1973 [The Israeli Project: Building and
Architecture, 1948–1973], Exh. Cat., Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2004, vol. 2, pp. 608–12;
Leopold Laufer, “Israel and the Third World,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 87, no. 4, 1972, pp.
615–19. Strategically, in the aftermath of the 1956 war between Israel and Egypt, the former
maintained new passage through the gulf of Aqaba, which created an important commercial route
to Africa (see Ibid., p. 618).
17 Olusola Ojo, Africa and Israel: Relations in Perspective, Boulder and London: Westview Press,
1988, p. 8.
18 For detailed accounts of this program see: Mordechai E. Kreinin, Israel and Africa: A Study in
Technical Cooperation, New York and London: Praeger, 1964; Moshe Decter, “‘To Serve, To
Teach, To Leave’: The Story of Israel’s Development Assistance Program in Black Africa, New
York: American Jewish Congress, 1977; Ojo, op. cit., pp. 18–20; Samuel Decalo, Israel and Africa:
1956–1996, Gainesville and London: Florida Academic Press, 1998, pp. 67–94.
19 Kreinin, op. cit., p. 176.
20 Nathan E. Nadelman, “Israel and Black Africa: A Rapprochement?,” The Journal of Modern
African Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, 1981, p. 188.
21 Quoted in Laufer, op. cit., p.619. For a more detailed account of the development of Israeli-
Nigerian relations see Nadelman, op. cit., pp. 192–3.
22 Ojo, op. cit., p. 10.
23 Ibid., p. 13; Kreinin, op. cit., pp. 13–14, 120–32.
24 Ojo, op. cit., p. 139. See also Eliyahu Bilzky, Solel Boneh: 1924–1974, Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1974,
p. 411.
25 Kreinin, op. cit., pp. 126–8; Ojo, op. cit., pp. 18–21.
26 Kreinin, op. cit., pp. 175–6; Ojo, op. cit., pp. 24–5.
27 Several reasons accounted for this: a less altruistic and more business-like approach adopted by
Israel, the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict that affected multilateral relations, and Israel’s growing
ties with South Africa. In addition, foreign aid on a much larger scale became available from Arab
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Campus Architecture as Nation Building
countries and the Soviet bloc, sources who were interested in discouraging cooperation with
Israel. See Ojo, op. cit., pp. 33–54.
28 Ibid.
29 Efrat, op. cit., p. 609; Kreinin, op. cit., pp. 136–7.
30 Interviews with Arieh Sharon’s daughter, Ms Yael Aloni, who was employed in her father’s office,
and Ms Ziva Parnas, who was employed there as well, February 2008, March 2009.
31 Kreinin, op. cit., p. 135; Interviews with Sharon’s daughter, Ms. Yael Aloni, who was employed in
her father’s office, and Ms. Ziva Parnas, who was employed there as well, February 2008, March
2009.
32 Efrat, op. cit., p. 610. It is important to note that with Nigeria’s Western Region, two such
partnerships were consolidated in 1959, before Nigeria received its independence (in accordance
with British provisions made in the 1954 Nigerian Federal Constitution). The two companies were
the NigerSol construction company, together with Solel Boneh, and the Nigerian Water Resources
Development Company. Similar partnerships were established with the Eastern Region shortly
afterwards. See Ojo, op. cit., pp. 139, 141–2.
33 For Solel Boneh’s cooperation with other African countries see Kreinin, op. cit., pp. 134–5; Bilzky,
op. cit., pp. 403–35. The Afro-Asian Institute worked to instill these socialist ideas as a part of its
curriculum. Examples of the various courses are included in Ibid., pp. 126–30, 200–5. For
education pertaining to women, as well as a detailed listing of institutions providing education in
addition to the Afro-Asian Institute, see: Decter, op. cit., pp. 12–30.
34 Bilzky, op. cit., pp. 410–15.
35 Kreinin, op. cit., p. 198.
36 Arieh Sharon, “Opening speech at the opening ceremony of the Assembly Hall,” December 17
1976, p. 1, Arieh Sharon archive.
37 Interviews with Sharon’s daughter, Ms Yael Aloni, who was employed in her father’s office, and
Ms Ziva Parnas, who was employed there as well, February 2008, March 2009. Only scant
information regarding Egbor is presently available. He was at a certain point president of the
Nigerian Institute of Architects. Le Roux mentions that he received his architectural education
abroad. See Le Roux, op. cit., pp. 370, 391, n. 28–9.
38 Interview with Ms Yael Aloni, February 2008.
39 Additional buildings by other architects were also constructed on campus during the 1960s and
1970s, such as Design Group Nigeria, John Harrison, and the firm of James Cubitt, Fello Atkinson
and Partners. See Noel Moffett, “Nigeria today,” RIBA Journal, vol. 48, no. 6, June 1977, pp.
244–55.
40 These included master plans for the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Benin, Bendel
State University in Ekpoma, the Rivers State College of Education at Port Harcourt (1983), Apical
Hospital and College of Health Sciences in Ife (1978), and the Isaka Resort Hotel in Rivers State
(1978). See Curriculum Vitae: Eldar Sharon, Architect and Town Planner, N.D., Sharon Archive. All
university projects were commissioned by the respective institutions, and the plans and details
carried out in accordance with their specifications and in cooperation with university authorities
(correspondence with Ms Yael Aloni, April 9 2009).
41 Nadelman, op. cit., p. 200.
42 Ibid., pp. 214–16.
43 Another important project by Israeli architects in Nigeria was the University of Nsukka, begun
1963 and planned by Alfred Mansfeld (1912–2004) and Daniel Havkin.
44 Sharon, op. cit., p. 126.
45 Ibid., p. 127. The first vice-chancellor, Oladele Ajose, was a doctor. He was a Yoruba, and was the
first Black African Professor to be appointed to a full chair in Preventive and Social Medicine at the
University College, Ibadan, before taking the position at AOU. See http://news.biafranigeriaworld.
com/archive/2003/jul/17/0074.html, retrieved 16 April, 2009. Prof. Ajose and Sharon are
photographed in Sharon’s book, Kibbutz+Bauhaus, p. 128. The second vice-chancellor, with
137
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
whom the architectural team also worked closely, was Professor H. A. Oluwasanmi. See
interview with Harold Rubin, January 6 2008. Oluwasanmi, a professor of agriculture, also joined
Ife University from the University of Ibadan. See http://www.ui.edu.ng/agrichistory, retrieved
June 25 2010.
46 Sharon, op. cit., p. 128; interview with Harold Rubin, January 6 2008.
47 Sharon, op. cit., p. 127.
48 Ibid., pp. 26–43.
49 For the development of international-style architecture in Israel see Alona Nitzan-Shiftan,
“Contested Zionism – alternative Modernism: Erich Mendelsohn and the Tel Aviv Chug in
mandate Palestine,” Architectural History, vol. 39, 1996, pp. 147–80; Tel Aviv Modern
Architecture, 1930–1939, Tubingen: Wasmuth, 1994; Efrat, op. cit., pp. 53–80.
50 Michael Levin, “The Second Generation of Israeli Architects,” Journal of Jewish Art, vol. 7, 1980,
pp. 70–8; Efrat, op. cit., pp. 81–5.
51 Arieh Sharon, Tichnun Physi be Yisrael [Physical Planning in Israel], Government Printing Press
and Survey of Israel Press, 1951.
52 Sharon, Kibbutz+Bauhaus, p. 266.
53 Interview with Ms Yael Aloni; list of recipients of the Israel Prize (http://www.education.gov.il/
pras-israel/, retrieved June 23 2010. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israel_Prize_
recipients, retrieved June 24 2010).
54 These included the Bat Yam Town Hall (1963–69), distinct for its reverse pyramid structure and
diamond-shaped precasts, the Israel Defense Forces Military Academy (1963–67) and several
beach resorts along Israel’s coasts. See Sharon, Kibbutz+Bauhaus, p. 6.
55 Ibid., p. 138.
56 According to Yoruba tradition, Odúduwà, a mythical demiurge believed to have come down from
heaven, forged worldly and universal order. See Eva Krapf-Askari, Yoruba Towns and Cities: An
Enquiry into the Nature of Urban Social Phenomena, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969, pp. 1–3.
Agricultural circumstances may have also promoted the founding of the university at Ife, as it is
located in an area that in the colonial era became very wealthy from the revenues of cocoa crops.
See ibid. For a discussion of historical sources and Ife’s political status see David D. Laitin,
Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba, Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1986, pp. 110–14; Andrew Apter, Black Critics and Kings: The
Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
1992, pp. 13–34.
57 Sharon, ‘Opening speech at the opening ceremony of the Assembly Hall’, p. 1.
58 Sharon, Kibbutz+Bauhaus, p. 126.
59 Completed with the Architects’ Collaborative in 1950.
60 Nnamdi Elleh, African Architecture: Evolution and Transformation, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997,
p. 309; S. Z. Mohammad and S. IK. Umenne, “Socio-cultural and economic aspects of university
campus landscape development in sub-saharan Africa,” African Journal of Science and
Technology, vol. 7, no. 2, 2006, p. 32.
61 Krapf-Askari, op. cit., p. 42.
62 Ibid.; Elleh, op. cit., p. 307; Babatunde Lawal, “Some aspects of Yoruba aesthetics,” British
Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 14, no. 3, 1974, p. 246.
63 Sharon, Kibbutz+Bauhaus, p. 127.
64 Ibid.
65 Apter, op. cit., p. 100.
66 Sharon, Kibbutz+Bauhaus, p. 142.
67 Ibid., p. 128.
68 Ola Uduku, “Modernist architecture and ‘the tropical’ in West Africa: the tropical architecture
movement in West Africa, 1948–1970,” Habitat International, vol. 30, 2006, pp. 397–98. See also
Le Roux, op. cit., p. 366.
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Campus Architecture as Nation Building
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Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
140
Chapter 6
Modernity and
Revolution: the
architecture of Ceylon’s
twentieth-century
exhibitions
Anoma Pieris
Perry Anderson, in his 1984 critique of Marshall Berman’s book, All That is Solid
Melts into Air, a book that would hitherto shape interpretations of modernity,
highlighted the two weaknesses of Berman’s thesis as its representation of
revolution as a permanent state, a process rather than an episode, and the
narcissistic goal of self-development as precluding the formation of community.1
Anderson was writing on “aesthetics” in 1984, before the fall of the Berlin Wall
and under the neo-liberal reforms of Margaret Thatcher. Nationalist sentiment
was high following the Falklands conflict and Britain was nostalgically revisiting
her past imperial glory. Anderson was one of its most vocal critiques as a
representative of Britain’s New Left and sensitive to Berman’s implicit critique of
socialism. But what was Anderson’s understanding of the Third World? This
essay takes its sur-title from the above mentioned critique focusing on Ceylon
where “Modernity and Revolution” was influenced more by the social ideals
favored by Anderson, than by the emergence of an individuated and self-
conscious modern subject. In fact, we might argue that although the dialectic of
a culture radically separated from its past and propelled into a revolutionary future
underlay the processes of Ceylonese modernity, it did not necessarily reproduce
the cultural visions attributed to Europe or America. In the post-independence
decades of the twentieth century, political ideologies, industrialization, and
identity politics took a very different turn.
Berman’s book made a significant distinction between modernity as a
historical experience, mediating between the socio-economic processes of
141
Anoma Pieris
modernization and the originary cultural vision that responded to these processes
of change – the modernism of the nineteenth century. His reversion to the
classical spirit of modernism, in Anderson’s view, was a response to the
bourgeois decadence that would follow and become exacerbated by the two
world wars. But, argues Anderson, this vision of modernity extended to the early
twentieth century and “flowered in the space between a still usable classical
past, a still indeterminate technical present, and a still unpredictable political
future … it arose at the intersection between a semi-aristocratic ruling order, a
semi-industrialized capitalist economy, and a semi-emergent, or -insurgent,
labour movement.”2 The human origins of products, the trace of labor and the
libidinal investment in such objects had not yet been fully concealed.3 Following
the Second World War, Western Europe would conform to an American economic
model of production and consumption resulting in “an oppressively stable,
monolithically industrial, capitalist civilization.”4
Anderson argued that by the postwar period the locus of creativity had
shifted to very different sites: environments of extreme instability, pre-capitalist
oligarchies, developmental economies, and societies haunted by socialist
revolution.5 They, in turn, were stimulated by visions of utopia. These countries
– he mentions Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola and Vietnam – did not produce an
autonomous interpretation of modernity fraught by the anxieties of modern self-
development, but displayed their ambiguity toward and insecurity with received
histories from the West. They offered us art forms that remain inseparable from
their subjectivity, some of which, by Latin American authors, are mentioned by
Berman. These examples do display the contradictions, self-ironies and inner
tensions attributed by Marshall Berman to the modernist avant garde, but are
firmly imbricated in the political revolutions of the moment. They were closely
linked, moreover, to the politics of postcolonial nationalism.
Modernity was manifested very differently from their European
counterparts in the twentieth century Asian nation-states that were undergoing
decolonization, revealing the asymmetrical politics of postcolonial state-formation
and the extraordinary significance of a rural democratic polity. Although steered
by an aristocratic bourgeoisie who were schooled equally in feudal relationships
and colonial manners, the violent removal of an inherently racist colonial regime
had rekindled an old faith in indigenous culture. Its advocacy would ensure
political longevity and rural voters. Ethno-nationalist ideologies based on
indigenous histories were written into the language of the nation-state, preventing
the forms of social alienation symptomatic of modernity. In fact they strengthened
communalism. The cultural forces of kinship, race and religion were exacerbated
through citizenship alliances with divisive socio-political outcomes. Virulent anti-
colonial sentiments also gave rise to alternative political and economic affiliations
in the form of cold war alliances and non-alignment – during the 1960s and 1970s
– forging a culture inimical to the West and suspicious of its dialectic. Tense
relations between China and India dominated regional politics, and small nations
like Ceylon were forced to take sides.
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Modernity and Revolution
Colonial modernity
Colonial exhibitions fall within a larger discourse on colonial and indigenous forms
of modernity that have been the preoccupation of scholars of South Asian
architecture during the past decade. Scriver and Prakash, William Glover, Gyan
Prakash and Swati Chattopadhyay are among those who have explored these
issues more generally whereas Jyoti Hosagrahar, Partricia Morton, Mark Crinson
and Arindam Dutta have established links between commercial interests and
cultural display in the bazaar, the durbar, the colonial exhibitions and the arts and
crafts movement in France and in Britain.6 This discourse and its relevance for a
later discussion of nationalism rely heavily on Edward Said’s brilliant exposition of
the politics of orientalist scholarship.7 Tim Mitchell’s Colonizing Egypt, which
draws on Said’s ideas, is a valuable starting point for any of these investigations
of modernism and the divisive colonial culture that resulted.8 As argued by Tony
Bennett, the social display of native bodies, a specular dominance over the whole
city, and the world represented as an assemblage of commodities, articulated
particular imperial technologies of knowledge and power.9 Exhibitions crossed
the line between scientific inquiry and popular culture, delivering specific forms
of nationalist knowledge and prejudice to metropolitan audiences. As observed
by Swati Chattopadhyay:
143
Anoma Pieris
144
Modernity and Revolution
40, the colonies were fixed in the architecture of the past.15 Moreover, exhibitions
increasingly became avant-garde arenas for design experimentation and projections
into a futuristic utopia, underwritten by an American brand of capitalism.16
145
Anoma Pieris
146
Modernity and Revolution
Such overtly political agendas were not confined to the former dominions. Each
country would use the exhibition as a stage for competing nationalist lobbies
shaped by independence. Ceylon would use it primarily for consolidating its
domestic politics and constructing its international profile, and accordingly made
various demands on the Commonwealth Relations Office. Ceylon aimed to make
the exhibition the largest event ever held in South Asia. A request from Colombo
for an Australian circus generated a spate of indignant correspondence between
London and its former colonies, where it was observed that the organizing
committee in Colombo expected over 10,000 overseas visitors to attend,
although the city had no hotel accommodation for them.27 They wanted a big
show in every way or they would drop the idea altogether.28 Faced with demands
and ultimatums of this kind the Commonwealth Relations Office suspected that
“the primary intention of the exhibition was to boost Ceylon and provide a
jamboree for their own people mainly at other people’s expense.”29 They also
raised the point that “a spectacular event of this kind would no doubt be of
advantage to the UNP (United National Party) during the election year.”
The Colombo Plan exhibition gave Ceylon and its ruling United National
Party the opportunity to formulate its various national agendas towards defense,
agriculture, and development. Unlike in India, independence in Ceylon had been
acquired by peaceful means with muted anti-colonial sentiments, and the new
government appeared willing to cooperate with its former colonial administration.
The Ceylon national pavilion, an E-shaped building with three courtyards and a
reception hall at its center, embodied the neo-classical plan and Buddhist-style
envelope invented for the colony by the Colonial Public Works Department (Figure
2). The pavilion even repeated a formula of past colonial exhibitions – in London
(1920), St Louis (1904) – it was a miniature of the Kandyan King’s palace. Yet a
section of the pavilion devoted to “Achievements and New Horizons” contrasted
sharply with this traditional appearance and featured models of reservoirs, hydro-
electric schemes, the university, the harbor and a five-story block proposed for
147
Anoma Pieris
Figure 2
Ceylon National
Pavilion. Courtesy of
Associated Newspapers
Ceylon Ltd.
the General Hospital.30 Irrigation, education, trade, and healthcare took precedence.
The Ceylonese harbored specific modern aspirations underneath the illusion of a
colonial order peacefully married to an indigenous past.
The Ceylon pavilion in 1952 offers us a version of the political dialectic
forged across numerous colonial exhibitions. While the pavilion resembles the
Indo-Chinese pavilion described by Morton, with its modern interior and archaic
envelope, the interpretation is different. The replication of the palace, while
conceding to past colonial templates, was also nationalistic, a reclaiming of a
pre-colonial past for an indigenous polity. Its dialectic was between exterior and
interior, between a new-found political self-identity and nascent ambitions for
Western-style progress. The importance of irrigation over urban infrastructure
signaled the focus on rural agriculture.
The pavilions of other Asian countries were likewise replete with
nationalist sentiments filtered through religious and symbolic motifs from the
pre-colonial past. Outwardly, they too conformed to the colonial tradition of
confining the colonies to their vernacular. But the meaning underlying their
148
Modernity and Revolution
Colombo 1965
The rejection of the colonial past and all its associations by Asian countries
coincided with two decades of uninterrupted modernization. The Indianized
architecture of the colonial Public Works Departments would be replaced by the
new institutions of the independent state, which were cast in a modernist mold.
However, the architecture of the period was linked to the former colonizer in two
ways. The modernism that was filtering through Indian experiments to Ceylon
was being introduced and executed in nationalist architecture by foreign experts.
Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Maxwell Fry, and Jane Drew were involved in the
design of Punjab’s new capital, Chandigarh, on the invitation of Jawaharlal Nehru,
while Otto Koenigsberger (late 1940s) was planning Bhubaneswar, the capital of
Orissa. Louis Kahn designed the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad
(1963), a precursor to his capitol in Dhaka (1962–74). A host of architects provided
designs for Islamabad’s new capital planned by Doxiadis, with the Presidential
Palace by Edward Durell Stone. Fry and Drew would later visit Colombo where
they designed the Lionel Wendt Theatre and Gallery (1953 and 1959).
The proliferation of Western architects in South Asia during this period
was coupled with a new interest in Tropical Modernism, an adaptation of
modernism for a tropical climate. Under Fry, Drew, and later Koenigsberger, a
Tropical Programme (1954) was inaugurated at the Architectural Association
School in London and educated many of Asia’s first generation of local architects.
The AA School was the nurturing ground for many Ceylonese architects including
Minette de Silva and Geoffrey Bawa and the modernist Valentine Gunasekara,
who studied there in the Tropical Programme in his final year. Meanwhile in
149
Anoma Pieris
150
Modernity and Revolution
Figure 3
The Colombo Industrial
Exhibition site under
construction. Courtesy
of Associated
Newspapers Ceylon Ltd.
151
Anoma Pieris
of various support facilities during the Vietnam War. The pavilion had steel
columns and a geodetic roof structure, and the canvas roof was designed as
suspended catenaries with an inverted catenary fabric ceiling. The structure
comprised self-supporting right-angled exhibition panels of pre-cast material that
folded together concertina-fashion.37 It was a dismantle-able travelling exhibition
module that the Americans would later exhibit in India.38 In short, labor-saving
systems were beginning to enter an industry that was dominated by labor-
intensive colonial processes. They brought with it ideas of self-reliance that sat
well within socialist ideology. However, private sector firms were few and far
between, smaller in size and cast at the periphery, in keeping with the
government’s economic policies.
The social modernity of the Ceylonese was undoubtedly aided by an
inward political orientation and hostility toward western capitalism that limited
their exposure to the Western world. This modernity manifested itself in the
denial of the orientalized self-image inherited from both the feudal and colonial
pasts, and provided new avenues for technological experimentation. As evident
in the interior of the Samuel and Sons pavilion, designed by architect Valentine
Gunasekara and engineer Jayathi Weerakoon, the subjects of this experiment
were Ceylonese men and women dressed in the local fashions of the 1960s:
high-heeled shoes, sleeveless sari blouses and bouffant hairstyles (Figure 4).
They embodied the spirit of the age and demonstrated an Asian middle-class
modernity that had been ignored three decades earlier. This homegrown
interpretation of modernity was easily married to a functionalist aesthetic of
concrete architectural forms. For the Ceylonese it pre-empted EXPO 1970 in
Osaka as the international venue displaying Asia’s modernization.
Figure 4
Visitors at the Ceylon
Industrial Exhibition
1965. Courtesy of
Associated Newspapers
Ceylon Ltd.
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Modernity and Revolution
The shift from a colonial imaginary to a modern one was both radical
and self-conscious, an effort on the part of the government to display national
progress. Yet the politics underlying the exhibition was far more complex. At the
opening in February 1965, in coincidence with Independence Day celebrations,
the leader of the socialist coalition government, Sirimavo Bandaranaike,
pronounced Ceylon’s social and industrial revolutions as well under way.39 But
industries had not developed in a revolutionary manner. Factories were first
introduced during the Second World War for the production of essential goods,
and were reorganized into corporations during the postwar period. The concrete
technologies displayed at the Ceylon Industrial Exhibition originated in the large
hydraulic dam projects initiated during this period, which brought large quantities
of imported cement for concrete construction. During the late 1950s
industrialization became imperative, with a growing population needing both
employment and essential goods, but socialist controls on foreign exchange
expenditure choked industrial growth. By 1964, there was a shortage of foreign
exchange, imports were severely curtailed, and industries were unable to buy
either machinery or raw materials.
In fact, Ceylon 65 disguised the achievements of almost two decades
of pro-capitalist economic progress in the language of a newly emerging socialist
modernism. There is some irony in this sleight of hand at this particular historical
moment. The exhibition, which had emerged as a symbol of free market interests
and colonial enterprise, was being co-opted in the service of a socialist national
agenda proclaiming the centralization of political and industrial development. The
country’s two domestic political parties, the pro-capitalist United National Party
and the pro-socialist Sri Lanka Freedom party, had aligned themselves across
cold war political divisions feeding on global insecurities and exploiting the
constant see-saw of democratic elections. C. Alagaratnam, Vice Chairman of the
National Chamber of Industries, described the exhibition as a last-minute political
gambit of an inept government seeking to buttress the flailing confidence of its
voters in an election year. 40 As reported in the national press supporting the
opposition UNP party:
They chose to call it the Industrial Exhibition but the National Press and
a wide section of the public had a number of other names for it – bad
names such as “the great illusion,” “an exhibition of ill-timed
extravagance,” “an industrial tamasha,” “a vote-catching stunt
performed by the coalition circus”… But the Ceylon Daily Mirror held
the pithiest comment when it editorially slanted the triple gemmed
Churchillian quotation in order to cast a baleful gleam of editorial insight
on this vain effort of industrial exhibitionism, “Never in the field of
public hoaxing,” it said, “has so much money been squandered by so
many to deceive so few!”41
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Anoma Pieris
The 1965 industrial exhibition in Colombo was the swan song of “modernity as
technological progress,” at the close of a five-year term under a socialist
government. It was also the last of its kind. In retrospect, Ceylon 65 could be
viewed as a laboratory for modernism and an expression of its humanist ideals
through concrete technologies. Ethnicity, religion, and cultural specificity had no
place in the embrace of these concrete giants. Their secular aesthetic and
consequent insensitivity to identity-politics was unsustainable long-term. By the
1980s disenchantment with modernist utopias had set in across the region.
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Modernity and Revolution
1980s the vernacular style had traveled across economic systems and was being
commodified for tourism-led development.
Nihal Perera has argued that in its critical stance against International
Style architecture (the modernism of the 1960s) the institutional landscape of Sri
Lanka was re-familiarized using an aesthetic derived from local precedent.43
Certainly its objective was to re-establish continuity with a pre-colonial tradition
that was meaningful to the local culture. But the designed vernacular of the
1980s more often took the form of elite residences, resort hotels on the one
hand and overtly sentimental renditions of the national narrative in craft museums
and village replicas. While the aesthetic revived craftsmanship in trades such as
carpentry and plaster work, which has been central to timber and masonry
construction, these methods remained labor-intensive and predicated on cheap
rural labor. Despite its principles of sustainability and local culture, architectural
projects were largely commercially driven by the late 1980s. The scale of these
hotel buildings rivaled or exceeded that of local institutions. In fact, the revival of
indigenous cultures across Asia during this period was strangely reminiscent of
the colonial exhibition tradition reproduced in this case for postcolonial, elite and
metropolitan audiences.
According to Arindam Dutta, the successive Festivals of India (1983–
86) organized by the Indian government and held in the USA, Britain, France, and
Japan were ill-concealed economic projects framed in terms of “culture.”44 They
coincided with Britain’s new-found interest in its imperial past, an outpouring of
patriotism around the Falklands conflict, and a reaction to increasing numbers of
“Third World” migrants. A thematic approach of dioramas and a focus on artisan
cultures was deemed more appropriate than highlighting “history” or “style” in
the Western art-historical tradition. This “antidisciplinary” and “ethnofetishistic”
bent was evident in the titles of exhibitions, Dutta argues, such as “The Canvas
of Culture – Rediscovery of the Past as Adaptations for the Future”; “Vistara –
The Architecture of India”; and “From Village to City in Ancient India,” etc. The
architectural exhibition, Vistara, invoked indigenous themes, traditionally
neglected vernacular architecture and buildings from the colonial era, in an
unconventional pluralistic approach, observe Bhatt and Bafna.45 Indian architecture
was presented as a series of epiphanies where the various historic epochs,
including Vedic, Islamic, and British colonial periods, were presented as a
succession of myths or paradigm shifts; and formalized Hindu structures were
given mystical and metaphysical meanings.46 Architects Charles Correa and
Ashish Ganju were involved in its manifesto, which placed their own architectural
agendas at the centre of a discourse on Indian identity.
The focus on local cultures that followed the Festival of India was
encapsulated in craft museums, the Village India Complex, and contributed to a
reinvention of the vernacular. In Bombay, the center of postmodern Indian
culture, where the colonial urban fabric predominated, culture was reinterpreted
as heritage conservation and was articulated through periodic urban festivals.47
Similarly, indigenous traditions resurfaced as urban artefacts and were used in
155
Anoma Pieris
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Modernity and Revolution
fair, and the opening of the model village. It would attract several thousand
visitors from the adjacent towns and villages. The number of houses built in each
site would match the president’s age at the time. The landscape of the exhibition
was designed to capture the popular history of the area; for example, a king who
once ruled over the territory would be commemorated with a statue in his honor
or a scaled-down replica of an existing stupa. Buddhist pilgrimage sites from all
over Sri Lanka and even from abroad – such as Mihintale, Sanchi, and Sri Pada –
would be rebuilt in miniature, creating an easy trajectory along which exhibition-
goers could consume the religious experience. Described by one visitor as a
Senakaliya or carnival, the exhibition site typically included numerous trade stalls
and entertainment venues such as a sports ground, carousel, and mini zoo in
addition to the stalls of government organizations. 51
Although it is tempting to draw parallels between the Gam Udawa
projects and the examples in Indonesia and the Philippines cited earlier, a critical
distinction needs to be made. As observed by Kusno “Beautiful Indonesia in
Miniature” was an attempt at recreating authenticity along the lines of colonial
anthropological investigations of the past.52 The site reduced the nation to a rural
utopia and served to educate local tourists. Gam Udawa had a very different
objective of collapsing the difference between the past and the present. As
argued by Hennayake, the exhibition [disarticulated] the “urban-rural and
traditional-modern distances within a single bounded space through the use of a
wide array of significant symbols representing both categories.”53 It demonstrated
Premadasa’s goal of people-izing development, in her view.
What were the ideological underpinnings of this process? In the Arcades
Project, Walter Benjamin describes the re-enchantment of the social world and
through it a “reactivation of its mythic powers” under the conditions of capitalism.54
Figure 5
Gateway to Gam
Udawa 90 at Pallekeley.
Courtesy of Associated
Newspapers Ceylon Ltd.
157
Anoma Pieris
He writes of the threatening and alluring force of myth underlying the systemic
rationalization of social and cultural institutions. Susan Buck-Morss observes that
“according to Benjamin, fascism is an extension of the reenchantment of the
world and of man’s illusory dream state” rather than an extension of modern
rationality itself.55 The Gam Udawa exhibitions in Sri Lanka, by clothing expressions
of autocracy in populist imagery, re-affirmed old mythologies and constructed new
ones within the rubric of a provincially directed capitalism.56
For example, Gam Udawa 89 at Mahiyangana had as its major axis a
path leading from the entrance through a public square to a replica of the Sri
Lankan parliament. At one end of the axis was the gallery of heroes and at the
other was the Pattirippuwa (raised platform) from which the President would
make his opening address. A secondary axis to the right took visitors to replicas
of the President’s House and Temple Trees (the residence of the Prime Minister).
Colombo’s two major parks, the Vihara Maha Devi Park and Sathutu Uyana
(Happy Park) – which the President had built in Colombo – were also represented,
followed by a replica of the Colombo Town Hall (Figure 6). Along the periphery of
the site were miniature places of Buddhist pilgrimage, Sri Pada, a sacred mountain
in Sri Lanka, and Buddha Gaya in India. A field of ripening grain, with a Buddhist
stupa in the background, was stylized for the design of the invitation, referring to
the rich agricultural bounty for which Mahiyangana was famous. Unlike exhibitions
of the past, Premadasa’s vision embraced all of Sri Lankan history, its power
structure, and even its ethnic communities; many of the exhibition sites included
replicas of Hindu temples.
Despite their diversity the exhibitions reflected the violent political
transformations that were taking place at that time. Ethnic conflict led to civil war
and rising religious fundamentalism. In 1989 the president had brutally suppressed
a second insurrection of the resurgent JVP, eliminating its leadership. The climate
of rising Buddhist nationalism was evident in the constant reference to sites,
personages and traditions in the exhibits and attendant ceremonies, while at
Mahiyangana the armed forces occupied a prominent position on the fairground.
Although the utopian community of the re-awakened village presented
an insular social vision, Premadasa the statesman was urbane and ambitious.
Obsessed by temporality and mortality, he instituted a clock tower in every
village, believing that their combined time-keeping would augment his political
power.57 The most significant act of the President was in replicating buildings
from Colombo such as the Independence Hall, the old parliament building,
architect Geoffrey Bawa’s new parliament on the lake, and the Colombo Town
Hall, which served to assert the center at the periphery, annually reconstituting
the geography of the nation.
At first the traditional vocabulary of the reawakening program gave the
exhibition a bucolic appearance, concomitant with the issues of sustainability
foregrounded in its ideology. Unfamiliar metropolitan artifacts were surrounded
by familiar historical figures domesticating them as part of a collective story. Their
romantic building styles responded to regionalist ideals derived from vernacular
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Modernity and Revolution
Figure 6
Replica of Colombo
Independence Hall built
at Pallekeley.
Photograph taken by
the author, 2005.
architecture. However, a shift in this vocabulary occurred during the 1980s that
loosened romanticism’s ideological hold. Precipitated by the President’s visit to
an exhibition in Kyoto and facilitated by Jack Kulasinghe, with a doctorate in
Visual Communication from Sofia, Bulgaria, the Gam Udawa assumed the
populist images of international postmodernism. Jack Kulasinghe knew well the
power of kinetic sculptures and lighting effects – the industrial technologies of
the age. Under his expertise each Gam Udawa was given a theme and a color
scheme, and the pavilions were designed with detachable façades. They
delivered the kind of mass culture described by Benjamin “not merely as the
source of phantasmagoria or false consciousness, but as the source of collective
energy to overcome it.”58
The first two exhibitions discussed in this paper had projected very
different utopias: the Colombo Plan 52 had revived the specter of empire through
the Commonwealth; and Colombo 65 had proclaimed its socialist alliances across
cold war battle lines. In contrast, the Gam Udawa exhibition educated rural Sri
Lankans into citizenship and modernity. During the space of the exhibition, the
island’s pilgrimage sites and national monuments were inserted into a remote
local geography for rural consumption. Unlike the previous exhibitions, which
adhered to pre-colonial or modernist ideologies, Gam Udawa drew liberally on
colonial, vernacular, religious, and international vocabularies, without preference.
As the exhibition shifted in content and focus, opening its artifacts to global
influences, its symbolisms became far more complex and blurred. Essentialist
prejudices regarding culture and indigeneity were deconstructed with each
successive pageant. Whereas metropolitan elites saw the designed vernacular
as the proper subject of Sri Lankan identity, alternative identities were
experimented with on more equitable turf.
159
Anoma Pieris
Figure 7
Buttala Gam Udawa
entrance pavilion by
Jack Kulasinghe.
Courtesy of Jack
Kulasinghe, National
Housing Development
Authority.
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Modernity and Revolution
Conclusion
Sri Lanka’s experimentation through national exhibitions extended for only half a
century following independence. The populist cultural vernacular followed its
modernist predecessor to the graveyard of creative expression and was replaced
by more permanent urban institutions. The “authentic” past in acceptable
architectural forms, and disseminated through regionalist debates, presented an
alternative postmodernism more palatable to the urban elites and Western
consumers. The separation of these two distinct vernaculars within the same
time-frame underlined the class distinctions and social hierarchies that were
resisting social change. The Gam Udawa exhibitions were neither orientalist nor
were they sentimental in their eclectic and untroubled appropriation from both
the East and the West. Yet they encapsulated the spirit of the age, its people, and
its prejudices far more successfully than the aesthetics subscribed to in previous
exhibitions. In exposing to public view the architecture of the ordinary, they
represented the complexities of an emerging modern consciousness that was
not necessarily rooted in urbanity. Despite their careful choreography and their
ultimate dismissal as a symptom of one individual’s megalomania, the Gam
Udawa exhibitions captured elements of the unofficial folk culture, the “peculiar
second world” within the official order described by Mikhail Bakhtin.61 It was a
form of populism that had been suppressed in the desire for appropriate forms of
national representation. Haunted by bloody insurrections and nationalist gyrations
from right to left, the exhibitions of Sri Lanka fittingly captured the socio-political
sensibilities of specific moments in the twentieth century when Asia first
experimented with modernization.
The aesthetics of the Gam Udawa genre were not pleasing to the
design elite in Sri Lanka’s metropolitan circles or to the political adversaries of the
UNP. All information on these exhibitions was burnt in the bureaucratic bonfire of
a changing political regime, and Gam Udawa sites and facilities have been
neglected since. Like the exhibitions before them, they too were transient
spectacles of the country’s path to liberalization. In fact, the lesson of Gam
Udawa, argues Hennayake, was in its challenge to the modernist dialectic. A
journalist is said to have observed that at these exhibitions “people not only
literally but metaphorically walk backwards, forwards and just around in circles.”62
Whereas the architectural culture of the era carefully disguised its cosmopolitan
influences behind a veneer of vernacular authenticity, the architecture of the
people was unpretentious. Yet their emergence in the 1980s, their role in identity
construction, and their facile absorption of the capitalist dialectic offer lessons
regarding the processes of social modernity in what has been called the third
world. R. Premadasa’s incongruous matchmaking between urban carnivals and
rural polities identified modernization’s greatest challenge as not being that of
abandoning tradition for modernity, but that of prising them apart.
161
Anoma Pieris
Notes
1 Perry Anderson, Modernity and Revolution, New Left Review, 1984 March–April, 1/144, pp.
96–113. Review of Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity,
Boston: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
2 Anderson, p. 105.
3 Ibid., p. 107.
4 Ibid., p. 106.
5 Ibid., p.109.
6 See Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh and Peter Scriver, Colonial Modernities: Building Dwelling and
Architecture in British India and Ceylon, London: Routledge, 2007, for essays by Chattopadhyay,
Hosagrahar and others in this field. William J. Glover, Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and
Imagining a Colonial City, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008; Gyan Prakash,
Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1999; Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire, Aldershot: Ashgate
Publishing, 2003; Patricia Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the
1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris, Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2000; Arindam Dutta, The
Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of its Global Reproducibility, Routledge: 2006.
7 Edward Said, Orientalism, London: Pantheon, 1978.
8 Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt, New York: Cambridge UP, 1988.
9 Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, London; New York: Routledge,
1995, pp. 83–4.
10 Swati Chattopadhyay, “A Critical History of Architecture in a Post-Colonial World: A View from
Indian Architectural History,” Architronic, vol. 6, no. 1 (May 1997).
11 Eric Mattie, World’s Fairs, New York: Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 77 and 82.
12 Patricia Morton, op. cit., pp. 195–97.
13 Ibid.
14 Thomas R. Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj, Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1989.
15 Eric Mattie, op. cit., 1998.
16 Ibid., p. 199.
17 Ibid., p. 222.
18 Marilyn Kushner, “Exhibiting art at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959: domestic
politics and cultural diplomacy,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Winter 2002 Vol. 4 (1), pp. 6–26.
19 (http://aaa.si.edu; Introduction) [19 June 2010]; http://www3.sympatico.ca/robsab/debate.html
[10 December 2007].
20 Bennett, op. cit.
21 See Daniel Oakman, Facing Asia: A History of the Colombo Plan, Pandanus Books, 2003.
22 Ibid., p. 33.
23 Ibid, p. 37. Oakman describes the American view of the 1950 conference in these terms.
24 Colombo Plan Exhibition Brochure, 1952.
25 Ibid., p. 46.
26 Ibid., p. 52. The pavilion was former Minister for External Affairs Percy Spender’s brainchild.
27 CO 825-89/2, 3, May 1951, NUS Central Library archives 264–7, Outward telegram from
Commonwealth Relations Office to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Pakistan, and
inward telegram to Commonwealth Relations Office from UK High Commission in Ceylon.
28 Report made by Sir Oliver Gunatileke, mentioned in the above correspondence.
29 Ibid.
30 Brochure, 1952, p. 43.
31 Ibid., p. 3.
32 Ibid.
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Modernity and Revolution
33 See Jamie Mackie, Bandung 1955: Non-alignment and Afro-Asian Solidarity, Singapore: Select
Books, 2005.
34 Even though the United States had agreed in early 1958 to provide the country with technical
assistance (and a grant of about $780,000) for economic projects, the Soviet Union and Ceylon
had signed trade and economic agreements at about the same time. Shortly afterwards Ceylon
accepted a loan of about $10.5 million from China.
35 Pheng Cheah describes this historical process in Bruce Robbins and Pheng Cheah (eds),
Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1998, p. 29.
36 Jane Loeffler, The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies, NJ: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1998, pp. 37–8.
37 Communication from Jayathi Weerakoon, Engineer for the pavilion, August 9 2004.
38 Interview of Valentine Gunasekara by author, Bedford Massachusetts (May 28 – June 1 2003).
39 Ceylon Daily News, 2 February 1965, Tuesday, vol. 49 (28).
40 C. Alagaratnam (Vice Chairman of the National Chamber of Industries), “The exhibition: politics
not industry,” Editorial, Industrial Ceylon, December 1964, Vol. 4, no. 4.
41 Times of Ceylon Annual 1965 edited by Subbiah Muttiah, printed and published by P. Don Nichols
for the Times of Ceylon, “News pictures of the year…their stories by Winston Rodrigo (no page
numbers given). Picture by Oliver Seneviratne, “Ceylon Daily Mirror,” February 17 1965.
42 See Deborah Winslow and Michael D. Woost (eds), Economy, Culture and Civil War in Sri Lanka,
Indiana University Press, 2004.
43 Nihal Perera, Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Postcolonial Identity in Sri Lanka,
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998, p. 147.
44 Aridam Dutta, op. cit., p. 268.
45 Ritu Bhatt and Sonit Bafna, “Post-Colonial Narratives of Indian Architecture,” Architecture+Design,
Vol XII No. 6 (November–December 1995), pp. 85–89.
46 Ibid.
47 See Rahul Mehrotra, “Learning from Mumbai,” http://www.india-seminar.com/2003/530/530%20
rahul%20mehrotra.htm [21 January 2009]; Rahul J. Mehrotra (1992), “Bazaars in Victorian
arcades [transformation and conservation in historic environments]’, Places, Vol. 8, No. 1, Article.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/ced/places/vol8/iss1/RahulJMehrotra [21 January 2009].
48 Abidin Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space, and Political Cultures in
Indonesia, London: Routledge, 2000, p. 74.
49 Gerard Lico, The Edifice Complex: Power, Myth and Marcos State Architecture, Ateneo de Manila
University Press, 2003, p. 69.
50 E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, Blond and
Briggs, 1973.
51 Interview with Sumangala Jayatileke, January 2005.
52 Abidin Kusno, op. cit., pp. 83–4.
53 Nalani Hennayake, Culture, Politics and Development in Postcolonial Sri Lanka, UK: Lexington
Books, 2006, p. 147.
54 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (paperback
edition), Harvard University Press, 2000 in Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter
Benjamin and the Arcades Project, MIT Press, 1989, pp. 253–255.
55 Ibid., footnote 3, 454.
56 Ibid.
57 Based on private communication with R. Obeyesekere, 15 January 2005.
58 Susan Buck-Morss, op. cit.,, p. 253.
59 A commonly held criticism among Colombo residents.
60 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, Cambridge,
Mass., MIT Press, 1972.
163
Anoma Pieris
61 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, translated by Hélène Iswolsky, Bloomington, Ind.:
Indiana University Press, 1984, p. 154.
62 Hennayake, op. cit., p. 148. L.S. Palansuriya and Jack Kulasinghe of the NHDA provided much of
the material on Gam Udawa Programs during an interview in February 2006. Material on Ceylon
65 was previously discussed in Anoma Pieris, Modernity at the Margins: Reconsidering Valentine
Gunasekara, in Grey Room, 28 (Summer 2007), pp.56–85.
164
Chapter 7
In 1958, the architect and critic Şevki Vanlı (1926–2008) coined the term
“Hiltonculuk” to describe a fad among prominent Turkish architects who
uncritically modeled their buildings after the Istanbul Hilton Hotel (1952–5),
designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) and Sedad
Hakkı Eldem (Figure 1). Vanlı’s criticism was directed at the easy reproduction of
the “perfect mediocrity” of 1950s American architecture à la International Style
in postwar Turkey.1
In the same year, the architect Maruf Önal designed a house located
in Bayramoğlu, a small resort town 50 kilometers southeast of Istanbul (Figure 2).
Unlike other houses Önal designed for his clients in the 1950s, this vacation
house for his own family was minimal, modest, and unpretentious. Although built
at the peak of “Hiltonculuk,” the house does not fit under the categories either
of a formulaic Americanism or of a “perfect mediocrity.”
Overlooked by historians and critics for almost 50 years, Önal’s house
recently found a place in Vanlı’s last book, a critical study of twentieth-century
Turkish architecture. Though not a historian by profession, Vanlı has historicized
ordinary practices of architecture in Turkey, the historical legitimacy of which has
been downplayed by professional historians until recently. While bringing dozens
of Turkish architects to light whose works have been written out of mainstream
history because of their ordinariness, Vanlı raised his 50-year-old criticism of
“Hiltonculuk” again and questioned the extents of ordinariness in design.
Alongside a critical analysis of architectural discourse, the book displays a new
approach to historiography that is non-historicist, expandable, and open-ended.
165
Elâ Kaçel
Figure 1
“Hiltonculuk” featured
in Vanlı’s last book on a
full page. Vanlı let the
Istanbul Hilton (top left)
confront its replicas,
that is, other hotels in
Turkey built in the late
1950s. The comparison
of the typical floor plan
of the Hilton (top right)
to the plan below of the
Çınar Hotel is
noteworthy. Source:
Vanlı, Mimariden
Konuşmak, vol. 1 (2006),
p. 211. Used with
permission of the Şevki
Vanlı Architecture
Foundation.
166
This is not an American House
Figure 2
Önal House,
Bayramoğlu. Photo by
Maruf Önal. Courtesy of
the Istanbul
Metropolitan Branch of
the Union of Turkish
Chambers of Engineers
and Architects (UTCEA).
167
Elâ Kaçel
which can be called ‘good sense’ and which deserves to be made more unitary
and coherent.”6 Good sense arises from within common sense, neither in
isolation nor in opposition to it, and can generate a second thought on common
sense.
In this chapter, I analyze and critique just how vulnerable to common
sense architects became in everyday life, as well as how they created a “common
sense” within architecture. In modernizing countries like Turkey, however, the
uncritical appropriation and practice of the so-called International Style (which I
will call common sense modernism) was propagated under the postwar
sponsorship of the United States as modern culture and modernity itself.
Advocates of modernization theory also believed that the acquisition of
modernism as a “style of life” in the form of the International Style was a
legitimate sign of modernization in developing countries.7 The questioning of
common sense was all that much harder when both the political and sociological
views on what modern culture should be overlapped.
Turning to Gramsci’s distinction between common sense and good
sense, I explore how “ordinary” architects make use of the relational knowledge
networks into which they are embedded to critique their own common sense
practice of architecture and popular clichés of postwar modernism such as the
“American house,” the “Hilton-style washbasin,” and the “ready-made house,”
transforming them into good sense. Rather than claiming absolute autonomy (as
in the example of sole practitioners like Eldem), architects working in the first
multi-partner offices in 1950s Turkey based their practices on relational knowledge
as a design incentive and a group ideology.8 In this chapter, Önal’s house and
Vanlı’s history of common sense modernism will be my cases for rethinking
modernism and its historiography respectively.
168
This is not an American House
Figure 3
The American model
house displayed on the
site of the American
Pavilion at the 26th
Izmir International Fair,
1957. Source: Dostluk,
no. 19 (28 August 1957),
p. 6. Unknown
photographer.
Figure 4
The model house under
construction next to the
American Pavilion seen
on the right, 1957.
Source: Dostluk, no. 18
(14 August 1957), p. 3.
Unknown
photographer.
169
Elâ Kaçel
170
This is not an American House
of modernization theory, even argued that the Sears mail-order house would
become the ideal house for modern living in developing countries.15 Indeed, even
though the relative scales of the housing markets and building industries in
postwar America and Turkey were vastly different, the experts of modernization,
bureaucrats of both states, and administrators of mass media persistently created
a version of “Good-Life Modernism” in Turkey, albeit contrived and nonfunctional.
The media teach new desires and new satisfactions. They depict
situations in which the “good things” of life – of which most Middle
Easterners never dreamed before – are taken for granted. They portray
roles in which these richer lives are lived, and provide clues as to how
these roles can be enacted by others.16
171
Elâ Kaçel
modernism. House projects were published with great enthusiasm but little
editorial restraint. Ev İş, a home journal for women, began a series on single-
family house design, publishing one architect-designed house in each issue. The
single-family house – whether with pitched or terrace roof, traditional or modern,
modest or pretentious – was promoted as the ultimate commodity in Turkey, in
contrast to Jarzombek’s analysis of the postwar housing situation in Europe,
where “the house is rarely interpreted as an affordable consumer item.”17
The dilemma is that even though state agencies and the media
stimulated new desires and wants like the single-family house, those desires
were never completely met. Thus, the “revolution of rising expectations” of the
1950s turned into the “revolution of rising frustrations” – not in the 1960s, as
Lerner suggests, but even at the same time in the 1950s. More crucial to my
discussion, however, are the aftereffects of the stimulation of empathy in media
participation. Taking into account various experiences of “being modern,” I argue
that the stimulation of empathy ultimately generated two sensations in individuals
facing modernity: the negative frustration; and the positive sense visual
knowledge.18
Consider, for example, a bank advertisement for a home savings plan
in the popular monthly Bütün Dünya (a Turkish version of Reader’s Digest).19 The
illustration with the accompanying script “Always on my mind!” [Hep Zihnimde]
clearly demonstrates how empathy was stimulated by the media to promote
homeownership and attract customers to a new home savings plan (Figure 5).
Readers were intended to understand the dramatic face of the woman illustrated
on the ad as a self-portrait and to internalize her desire to be a homeowner. Yet
if media-stimulated needs, desires, and targets could not be met in social,
economic, and political terms, media participation would then easily turn into
“the traumatic source of individual frustration.”20 Indeed, this was an impasse of
the media and, in a wider sense, of freedom, welfare, and democracy, as well.
Considering the vast accumulation of images of common sense in
everyday life, I suggest that even though it may have ended in frustration, the
stimulation by the mass media still provided everyone with some positive sense,
namely, visual knowledge. What I would like to emphasize is this: visual exposure
to common sense is not negative by nature; it is not merely frustrating and
destructive. Even though it negates the freedom of individuals in mass culture (as
Theodor W. Adorno would argue), it provides a common basis that is shared by
visitors to fairs, magazine buyers, film and theater audiences alike. What I mean
by visual knowledge is exactly such a cultural contact with common sense and,
in particular, with common sense modernism that is shared by architects and
laymen alike.
Let me exemplify the prevalence of visual knowledge in the
architectural culture of 1950s Turkey. The interest that many young, practicing
architects of the time had in American modernism was not something that the
Fine Arts Academy nor the Istanbul Technical University formally cultivated
among students. Rather, it was the young assistants of well-established,
172
This is not an American House
Figure 5
Bank advertisement for
a home savings plan.
Illustration by Ihap
Hulusi. Source: Bütün
Dünya, no. 94
(November 1955), p.
627.
173
Elâ Kaçel
174
This is not an American House
Figure 6
Acorn House featured in
Arkitekt as a typical
American prefabricated
house. Source: Arkitekt,
vol. 19, no. 3–4 (1950),
p. 71.
house did not last long – including the most popular ones such as the Lustron
House or the Acorn House – because of the lack of a public affirmation of such a
modernist scheme.
“I am no historian”
In the absence of constructive criticism, only one architect directly engaged with
the question of how International Style modernism was appropriated in Turkey.
In 1958, just three years after the opening of the hotel, Şevki Vanlı was quick to
observe and comment on the aftereffects of the Istanbul Hilton. He coined the
term “Hiltonculuk” and mocked local architects who started to take the Hilton as
a typology and reproduce it all around the country. It was precisely this common
sense modernism and the underlying anti-intellectualism which frustrated Vanlı
at the time. “Hiltonculuk” was thus a contemporaneous criticism of common
sense modernism targeted both at the designers of the hotel and at the majority
of Turkish architects who were acritical of their own practices.
In Vanlı’s view, the ordinariness of the Hilton was directly related to
the fact that it was designed by a corporate architectural firm. The temporary
partnership between Gordon Bunshaft of SOM and Sedad Hakkı Eldem set the
standard for common sense modernism in Turkey in the same fashion as it was
set by SOM in the United States under what the historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock
called “bureaucratic architecture.”24 For Vanlı, neither Eldem’s nor Bunshaft’s
individual fame mitigated the ordinariness of the building. Indeed, he suggests
175
Elâ Kaçel
176
This is not an American House
what motivated Vanlı to pick up the pen. His purpose is a more public, democratic
discussion of subjects like tradition, vernacularism, and identity, which have
heretofore been the exclusive domain of intellectual circles. Vanlı writes a history
of common sense modernism, which he argues that professional historians have
neglected because of its ordinariness and insignificance in light of assumed,
universal standards of modernism. What sets Vanlı apart, however, is his
invitation to reflexivity, which springs from his practical involvement with
architectural discourse over the last 50 years. Vanlı’s common sense knowledge
leads to good sense historiography. Reminiscent of Gramsci’s proposition that
“all men are intellectuals,” this is clearly an attempt to redefine intellectualism,
opening it up to ordinary, practicing architects who are neither historians nor
avant-garde.
177
Elâ Kaçel
Figure 7
Plan and perspective
drawings of Izmir TARIŞ
Cooperative Houses.
Designed by Maruf
Önal, IMA, 1953.
Courtesy of the Istanbul
Metropolitan Branch of
UTCEA.
the design process of his vacation house. He gave the following explanation for
his reservations about taking his design to İMA: “I designed the house by myself
at home, not in the office; besides, if I showed it to my colleagues, they would
interfere.” The statement is a contradiction given that İMA, along with two other
partnerships, constituted a think tank that intended to be a unique, intellectual
form of practice where all the partners, associates and interns alike were involved
in a democratic, collaborative process of design punctuated by group discussion
and critique. For many interns and young graduates, İMA was as much about
education as about work. Why would Önal not want to benefit from this process
for the design of his own home, even when it was a common and familiar practice
for the projects developed in the office? Why was collaboration sometimes
deemed “interference”?
While distinguishing the house from its contemporaries and suggesting
its belated inclusion into the repertoire of postwar modernism, Vanlı overlooked
the organic link between Önal and İMA in his last book and treated them as
separate histories. Although he was concerned with the easy, uncritical
reproduction of the bureaucratic character of 1950s American architecture in
Turkey, he did not take the changing form of architectural practice into
consideration – namely the impetus for turning architecture into a multi-partnered,
business-like profession. It was not merely imitation, but economic pressures
and the need to join forces in order to meet the demands of more complex
buildings and building types, that laid the foundation for even larger partnerships
in Turkey.
178
This is not an American House
distinct from the typical houses of the time? The design may transcend common
sense, and Önal claims to have situated it on a different set of values, but how?30
These dilemmas lead me to a further analysis of the house. In my
view, the house exemplifies four issues with regard to Önal’s own exposure to
common sense: 1) Önal’s disconnection from İMA and, hence, from relational
knowledge; 2) his vulnerability to the images of common sense modernism, to
visual knowledge, and to consumerist habits which he unavoidably shares with
his clients; 3) his silent criticism of common sense modernism which, in return,
generates good sense; and 4) the critical forms of cultural contact which ordinary
people (in this case, his circle of friends and neighbors) establish to modernism
and to his house.
While defining “Good-Life Modernism” as the antithesis of avant-
garde modernism in the 1950s and 1960s, Jarzombek suggests that it is possible
to draw a line between the populist and avant-gardist buildings of an architect.
Following Jarzombek’s approach, the Izmir TARİŞ co-op house plans (1953)
cannot be compared with the Önal house (1958) or the Anka House and Studio
he designed for a sculptor (1957). This poses no problem for Jarzombek’s analysis
of postwar modernism, because only an architect’s avant-garde production is
relevant for the history of modernism, while contributions to “Good-Life
Modernism” are mere biographical footnotes.
Önal’s self-reflexive challenge to common sense modernism insists
on a subtler framework for historical analysis. Rather than manifesting individuality
as autonomy, as avant-gardes would claim to do, he participated in common
sense in a non-affirmative manner. While he sought some separation from his
typical, collaborative mode of practice, the individualism of the design is the
product of a self-consciousness of his own relation to architecture, practice,
common sense, and his collaborators.
The process of organizing the construction of the house came to play
a significant role in shaping Önal’s aesthetic and spatial concerns. To build the 36
square meter house economically, Önal had all the necessary components of its
construction prefabricated in workshops in and around Istanbul. On the morning
of the ground breaking, he rented a truck and collected the raw materials, rebar,
and wooden formwork for the house, found a couple of builders along the way,
and drove to the [then] remote site.
The house was built of concrete. The entrance level was completely
open: only the stair, four columns, and a single massive wall touched the ground
(Figure 8).31 The upper floor provided a space for minimum living; and yet the
open layout secured flexibility as much as possible for several functions in the
house such as living, eating, sleeping, studying, cooking, and bathing (Figure 9).
Construction lasted only a few days, and none of the material was wasted
(including the wooden formwork, which was applied to the ceiling). Whatever
came to the site on the truck found itself incorporated into the house.
Because Önal’s intention was to design a minimal, yet livable house
on a small budget, he invented his own scrappy form of prefabrication. Unlike the
179
Elâ Kaçel
Figure 8
Ground floor plan of the
Önal House,
Bayramoğlu. Drawings
by Maruf Önal. Courtesy
of the Istanbul
Metropolitan Branch of
UTCEA.
180
This is not an American House
Figure 9
Upper floor plan of the
Önal House,
Bayramoğlu. Drawings
by Maruf Önal. Courtesy
of the Istanbul
Metropolitan Branch of
UTCEA.
operate within common sense with regard to the mechanization of design and its
bureaucratic structure. On the other hand, he shares the same visual knowledge
with his clients and rejects reproducing any clichés that exemplify American
architecture in the pages of Arkitekt. In my view, this double bind in Önal’s
criticism embodied in the house explains why this is not an American house.
In interviews, Önal has revealed his intentions and the inherent
contradictions involved in the design. His cultural references for the house
Figure 10
Cast concrete table and
benches in the patio of
the Önal House,
Bayramoğlu. Photo by
Maruf Önal. Courtesy of
the Istanbul
Metropolitan Branch of
UTCEA.
181
Elâ Kaçel
182
This is not an American House
Acknowledgements
Early versions of this paper were presented at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) and
the Middle East Technical University (Ankara) in April 2007 and December 2009
respectively. I am grateful to Chris Otto, Sibel Bozdoğan, Robert Gassner, and
Duanfang Lu for their valuable comments in various stages of its development.
Notes
1 The suffixes in Vanlı’s made-up word “Hiltonculuk” imply two meanings. First, the word connotes
a professional practice and its ideology of designing Hilton-like buildings. And secondly, it alludes
to a game in which participants (architects, in this case) pretend to be “experts of Hiltonculuk.”
Ş. Vanlı, “Hiltonculuk”, Kim, 28 November 1958, pp. 21–2.
2 Ş. Vanlı, Mimariden Konuşmak: Bilinmek Istenmeyen 20. Yüzyıl Türk Mimarlığı Eleştirel Bakış,
Ankara: Şevki Vanlı Mimarlık Vakfı, 2006, vol. I, p. 220.
3 The historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock differentiates between special buildings and regular
buildings – the former being a work of art by a genius architect and the latter being an ordinary
building by an architect of a multi-partnered office with a more bureaucratic character. H.-R.
Hitchcock, “The architecture of bureaucracy and the architecture of genius,” Architectural
Review, January 1947, pp. 3–6.
4 For narratives based on export-import rhetoric, see A. J. Wharton, Building the Cold War: Hilton
International Hotels and Modern Architecture, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001; J. W. Cody,
Exporting American Architecture, 1870–2000, London: Routledge, 2003. For Hitchcock’s
advocacy of the International Style, see H.-R. Hitchcock, The Rise to World Dominance of
American Architecture (vol. 1) and Looking Forward (vol. 12) in Voice of America Forum Lectures:
Architecture Series, Washington, DC: United States Information Agency, 1961.
5 For various depictions of the “Americanization of modernism,” see J. Ockman, Architecture
Culture 1943–1968: A Documentary Anthology, New York: Rizzoli, 1993, pp. 16–19; S. Bozdoğan,
“Democracy, development, and the Americanization of Turkish architectural culture in the
1950s,” in S. Isenstadt and K. Rizvi (eds), Modernism and the Middle East: Architecture and
Politics in the Twentieth Century, Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2008.
6 A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York: International Publishers, 1971, p.
328.
7 I refer to the sociologist Daniel Lerner’s understanding of modernism as a “style of life.” (D.
Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, New York: Free Press of
Glencoe, 1958, p. 60.) For modernizing countries including Turkey, Lerner suggests that “the
most cosmopolitan Turks … are at home with the ‘international’ (shall we say, late-Bauhaus) style
183
Elâ Kaçel
in personality as in architecture.” (D. Riesman and D. Lerner, “Self and society: reflections on
some Turks in transition,” Explorations 5, 1955, p. 77.)
8 Borrowing from Karl Mannheim, I understand architectural knowledge as “relational knowledge”
because of its non-autonomous (that is, objective) nature, its reciprocal operation, and its
dynamism (K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge,
trans. L. Wirth and E. Shils, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1936).
9 “26.ıncı İzmir Fuarında Amerikan Pavyonu,” Dostluk 19, August 28 1957, p. 6.
10 “Bu Haftanın Resimleri,” Dostluk 18, August 14 1957, p. 3. Translated by the author.
11 Antonio Gramsci points to the double functioning of architecture. On the one hand, architecture
is part of the “material structure of ideology,” that is, the material means by which intellectuals
transmit ideas (and also ideologies) to the public. But on the other hand, the discipline of
architecture has also “a special objective” character. A. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, vol. 2, trans.
and ed. J. A. Buttigieg, New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1996, p. 125.
12 This catchphrase became popular because of the Democrat Party’s pro-American foreign politics.
For a discussion of Americanism and Anti-Americanism in political and popular discourses of
Turkey in historical perspective, see Tanıl Bora, “Amerika: ‘En’ Batı ve ‘Başka’ Batı,” in U.
Kocabaşoğlu (ed.), Modernleşme ve Batıcılık, vol. 3, Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce, Istanbul:
İletişim Yayınları, 2002.
13 M. Jarzombek, “Good-life modernism and beyond: the American house in the 1950s and 1960s:
a commentary,” The Cornell Journal of Architecture 4, Fall 1990, pp. 76–93.
14 C. Stein, “Communities for the Good Life,” Journal of the AIA 26, no. 1 (1956), pp. 11–18; Carlos
Contreras, “Architecture for the Good Life, Part II,” Journal of the AIA, 1956, vol. 26, no. 6, pp.
263–6.
15 According to modernization theory, via literacy, consumption would spread out of city limits. “The
great symbol of this phase,” Lerner argues, “is the Sears-Roebuck catalogue.” Obviously, having
the image of an average American consumer living in suburbia in his mind, he even goes further
and states: “The mail-order house replaces the peddler only when enough people can read
catalogues and write letters.” Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society, pp. 61–2.
16 Ibid., p. 400.
17 Jarzombek, op. cit., p. 81.
18 Even though it is Lerner himself who mentions frustration as an outcome of the process of
modernization, he does not discuss any positive sense in particular. Visual knowledge is a concept
that I develop in order to account for the condition of being exposed to common sense in everyday
life and for its value and significance in the appropriation of modernism in the professional lives of
architects alongside relational knowledge.
19 Bütün Dünya 94, November 1955, p. 627.
20 D. Lerner, “Changing social structure and economic development – reflections on a decade of
international experience,” in J. R. Hopper and R. I. Levin (eds), The Turkish Administrator: A
Cultural Survey, Ankara: USAID Public Administration Division, 1968, p. 108.
21 My use of the term “mediated” refers to the fact that any knowledge Turkish architects had
about American architecture was the product of the mediating roles that intellectuals (such as
editors, cultural affairs officers, historians etc.) undertook between their agencies/fields and the
public/target audience. For further discussion, see E. Kaçel, Intellectualism and Consumerism:
Ideologies, Practices and Criticisms of Common Sense Modernism in Postwar Turkey,
unpublished dissertation, Cornell University, 2009.
22 “Amerika Birlesik Devletlerinde Fabrika Mamulü Hazir Ev Tipi,” Arkitekt, 1950, vol. 19, no. 3–4,
pp. 71–3.
23 “Unfolding house: Acorn Houses, Inc.”, Life, vol. 26, January 24 1949, p. 72.
24 Hitchcock exemplified the best of bureaucratic architecture in the work of SOM. However, it was
the figure of Gordon Bunshaft of SOM and the Istanbul Hilton project that problematized such a
rigid separation between the genius and the bureaucratic by redefining the term genius (in
184
This is not an American House
Hitchcock’s terms) as bureaucratic and vice versa outside of the American context. (Hitchcock,
op. cit., pp. 3–6.)
25 Vanlı, “Hiltonculuk”, p. 22.
26 Ş. Vanlı, Frank Lloyd Wright: Insana Dönüş, Ankara: Dost Yayınları, 1960. Şevki Vanlı, interview by
the author, November 7 2005, Ankara.
27 When Zevi pioneered organic architecture and its institutionalization in Italy via the Associations
for an Organic Architecture (APAO), he emphasized that it was not “any manner of Wrightism”
that was being disseminated (B. Zevi, “A message to the Congrès International d’Architecture
Moderne: concerning architectural culture”, Metron, 1948, vol. 4, nos. 31–32, p. 29). With this
statement, he was clearly trying to challenge the troubled position of a historian as an advocate
of a certain architectural ideology. Zevi concerned himself with the significance of a particular
building for architectural culture less than with its significance for its creator, or later, for the
historian.
28 Vanlı, Mimariden Konuşmak, vol. 1, p. xii. Translated by the author.
29 Maruf Önal, interview by the author, December 28 2005, Istanbul.
30 This house is also documented in a recent collection of interviews made with Önal. See M. Önal,
Maruf Önal. Oda Tarihinden Portreler 2, interview by M. Yapıcı, Istanbul: TMMOB Mimarlar Odası
İstanbul Büyükkent Şubesi, 2006, pp. 104–6.
31 Later, when the family needed more space for their two children, Önal enclosed half of the
ground floor from the massive wall to the edge of the garage and added rooms.
32 Economic constraints prevented most of these architects from traveling to see American
buildings in their physical and cultural contexts in the 1950s and 1960s. Thus, there was little
direct interaction with counterparts in the United States. A few architects who collaborated with
Americans (like Eldem) or worked in the United States (like Ali Kolsal, Nezahat Arıkoğlu, and Enis
Kortan) were uncommon exceptions.
33 Built on the site of a country house, serander is an additional structure used for storage purposes.
For an analysis of the plans, building materials, and the social context of this structure, see O.
Özgüner, Köyde Mimari Doğu Karadeniz, Ankara: ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi, 1970.
34 This house was co-designed by the architects A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey in Long Island,
New York. For more information on the Weekend House, see A. Roth (ed.), La Nouvelle
architecture: présentée en 20 examples, Zürich: Girsberger, 1940, pp. 11–16.
185
Part III
Entangled
modernities
187
Chapter 8
While working on the mid-century design shows in India, after hearing that a
cache of MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York) design objects of the late
1950s had ended up somewhere in Gujarat, I started my quest to trace the
journey of these objects. It was on a sunny day in early April 2009 – around the
end of Gujarat’s tantalizingly short spring – that I arrived at the National Institute
of Design in Ahmedabad. My friend Professor Ranjan ushered me to another part
of the campus; after traversing a long pathway we finally arrived at the door of
their storehouse. Through its glass wall, I could barely see the silhouette of a
heap of piled objects inside the room. Humming to myself, I walked into the
storeroom, which was located beneath the central cafe of the school. This was
the tomb of the 400 objects that MoMA sent half a century ago to hail the
greatest achievers of their time – Gropius, Le Corbusier, Jeanneret, Perriand,
Nelson, Saarinen, Mies, Thonet, and Ray and Charles Eames (Figure 1). All of the
objects were dusty and smeared with numerous fingerprints – a poignant satire
on the belief that nothing truly modern grows old. I could hear the tumultuous
sound of students in the cafe over my head: the objects appeared to me as if they
were messengers from a bygone time, still heralding the un-kept promise of an
industrial utopia, a vanished culture, one in which visions of and strategies for
modernization – and its global and local variants – overlapped. I was fascinated
after realizing that after all these years these objects were still performing in an
exhibition in this Ahmedabad design school. They were being studied as case
study objects in design studios and being exposed to the critical gaze of both
students and teachers. In order to impart knowledge about structural integrity
and construction methods, several times each year they are taken apart piece-by-
piece and then re-assembled. I realized I had found a story to tell.
This chapter will observe three strategies of modernization at work: (1) The
first was the promotion of a modernity of affluence, modeled and promoted by
189
Farhan Sirajul Karim
Figure 1
A portion of NID’s store
where they keep most
of the objects
reminiscent of MoMA’s
1959 design exhibition.
These objects are now
used as classroom
examples of the
modernist aesthetic and
production techniques.
Photo by the author.
America as part of its cold war cultural strategy that sought to demonstrate a
fantastic view of future domesticity before an Indian audience. Cold war dynamics
affected the flow of the Euro-American model of modernity that was predicted to
become dissipated in India. But now the Indian camp proved that it would not
merely play a role of passive receptor as was previously the case with colonial
modernity and was assumed to be the “norm.”1 Rather, this pro-active new
sense of India’s agency in its own development championed the uninterrupted
flow of modernity from the West. The old linear model of cultural imperialism
could not explain this form of flow. Modernity was no longer merely an imposition,
that is, a one-way flow from West to East, but the result of a two-way process.
(2) The second strategy was the self-promotion of this Indian agency to the West
as a model of a non-industrial material world. Although the dominant discourse of
modernity may tend to identify this model as regressive – in the way that the
architects of nineteenth-century colonial India sketched the country as a feminine
body of craft2 – immediate post-independence India’s post-colonial ideology was
dialectically complex, opting to retain its image of a country constrained by
non-industrial aesthetics whilst striving hard to attain a socialist form of state-
controlled industrialization at the same time. (3) Yet a third strategy was
represented in the approach of Pierre Jeanneret, who tried to reconcile the
previous two streams by synthesizing the modernist trope of machine-made,
luxurious consumer goods with the asceticism of a Gandhian material culture in
a bid to forge a true hybrid of ascetic modernity. Jeanneret investigated the
potential of vernacular materials to be manifested in a functionalist rhetoric of
modernist aesthetics that could go far beyond the tentative moves of adapting
cutting edge modern objects within the vernacular lifestyle but referred to a very
different possibility of modernity to be realized in a non-affluent model.
190
Modernity Transfers
The ambivalence and mutual tension that emerged from the exchanging of
modernity – the to-and-fro from the West to India and from India to the West – is
studied through two exhibitions that were organized by MoMA during the 1950s,
one featuring India mounted in New York and titled “Textile and Ornamental Arts
of India” and the other featuring the West, mounted in India and titled “Design
Today in Europe and America.” When it comes to any assessment of the effect
that these exhibitions may have had, it might be seen as asymmetric: the course
that the West rendered may become more visible. But my aim here is to identify
the historical context that made the exchange possible.
191
Farhan Sirajul Karim
various craft objects, creating a “prototype”6 for the exhibition. Sir Leigh Ashton
and John Irwin, of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, helped them to select
from their vast range of Indian objects to build up an authentic version of Indian
material culture that was to be presented in the USA. The Indian assistance came
through the “All India Handicraft Board,” particularly with the personal
involvement of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya and Pupul Jayakar – the two most
prominent figures of the post-independence craft movement. During the 1950s,
both became concerned at the possibility of the introduction of western methods
of factory-based mass production in India as part of Nehru’s vision for India’s
development.7 However, the show was conceived of as “a celebration of the
revival under India’s new commonwealth status of some of her oldest native
crafts.”8 The physical installation of the show was devised to invite the audience
to conjure up the lost world of fantastic objects of the East (Figure 2). Alexander
Girard, a renowned architect, textile designer and famous folk art collector,
designed the exhibition in the form of an “imaginary bazaar,”9 a prototype of an
Indian market place that seemed self explanatory of its setting. The exhibition
site included three consecutive rooms. A 50-foot-long water pool surrounded by
12 towering golden columns embellished the main exhibition hall. Over the pool,
a dazzling array of saris hung from the ceiling, creating a sky canopy resembling
those of Indian fables – rich gold and silver brocades, intricately hand woven and
tie-dyed silks, Kashmir shawls, gossamer cottons, vigorous muslins, feather
short wools, and beautifully patterned embroideries. However, the objects of
everyday use presented in this show were somewhat underscored since the
main objective of the exhibition was to emphasize the quality of the ornaments,
the vibrant colors and patterns, all of which – when it comes to Indian objects –
are historically regarded as an envelope exclusive to its use value.10 Elsewhere,
Girard expressed his notion that an exhibition of objects exclusive to its context
vitiates its meaning. As Kate P. Kent argues, it is imperative to construct a context
for the objects that will create a certain theatricality of presentation,11 instead of
inferring its true place of origin by constructing such contexts as Girard proposes,
that is, “a fantasy setting based on relationships perceived by Girard between it
and certain other objects, perhaps from other parts of the world.”12
Notwithstanding, the intention of the installation was to introduce the myth of
Indian exoticism and to spur the curiosity of both public and press. And to this
end it was an out-and-out success. As noted journalist Betty Pepis wrote in The
New York Times: “Glitter and gilt dazzle the eye as one enters the native Indian
bazaar just installed on the first floor of the Museum of Modern Art.”13 Lester
Gaba, writing in Woman’s Wear Daily, implored his reader to “Go west, young
displayman, go west on 53rd Street to see the town’s most exciting display.”14
The 1955 MoMA exhibition was effectively contrived to convey the spectacle of
Indian craft, a magical setting for equally exotic and magical objects amidst the
concrete “jungle” of Manhattan’s modernity.
While it was difficult to determine the impact that the show made on the
American mind, one could confidently suggest that India appeared as a piece of
192
Modernity Transfers
Figure 2
US textile and fashion
designer Nancy
Kenealy, posed for a
local “hybrid” design in
the 1958 exhibition
mounted by the
Institute for Industrial
Design. Designed by
“Rangoli” – an Indian
boutique house – this
dress showed the
adaptability of
Rajasthan cotton for
Western skirts. Source:
Art in Industry
Magazine, vol. 6, no. 3,
1958, p. 23. Courtesy of
the British Museum,
London.
fantasy amidst the modernity of American life. Alice Hughes wrote in the Times:
“The American beholder is swept with admiration for the ‘fantasy’ now displayed
in the ‘Arts of India’ show.”15 The exhibition drew in excess of 300,000 visitors:
public demand resulted in the prolongation of the exhibition for five months,
during which time the press became aware of the increasing news value of the
show.16 Optimistic comments echoed the American wish image: “The arts and
crafts of India are already influencing both fashions and home furnishing in this
country … [W]hat’s important to American eyes in viewing this handsome exhibit
is the shadow of the future it casts on our latest fashion for living.”17 The show
reflected the postwar faith in a future of open exchange – an avenue that would
make cultural transference possible among the seemingly asymmetric segments
of the world. MoMA saw the trade potential of this show as its highest stake. As
Wheeler maintained: “Its purpose is to guide the millions of skilled native
craftsmen in the way of traditional design and to publicize and market those folk
arts in India and other countries.”18 India’s post-independence international trade
potential was an important consideration for the National Planning Committee’s
pre-independence scheme.19 A propos the historical fracture of sovereign trade
193
Farhan Sirajul Karim
over two centuries when India was about to make her independent trade debut
with the West and embrace the notion of a modern democratic nation state, the
question at hand was forming a rhetoric of Indianness, the semantic construction
of a free India within a free market of consumer goods. When it came to Indian
Object, in the world’s eyes postwar India wanted to retain her exotic persona.20
The Indian magazine Life, describing this exhibition, declared with immense pride
that: “The East has been inching up on the US for several years.”21 At the Indian
end it was the superiority of India’s long tradition of crafts and art that was going
to take over the global trade market. K. Balaram, an eminent journalist, wrote a
series of articles in the Hindu (Madras), the Nagpur Times, and the Capital
(Calcutta) about the potential of India’s trade with the USA, expressing the hope
for a growing demand for the “saree-dress.” Several articles that appeared in the
Journal of Art for Industry expressed the view that the Indian saree would soon
find its place among global female dress.22 Although periodic statements of intent
of progressive socialization were issued from India, and some industries were
reserved only for the public sector, the government of India tried to attract
American capital by promising equal treatment, full remittance of profit, and fair
compensation in case of eventual nationalization.23 During the late 1950s and
early 1960s the USA, which had previously regarded India as little more than “a
scratch on our minds,”24 started to promote it as a democratic counterweight to
communist China.25 In the view of the US State Department:
South Asia became a testing ground for the free world; in this will be
determined whether nations can surmount tremendous economic and
social problems, can achieve far reaching changes in their entire
pattern of life without resorting to the totalitarian system of
communism.26
In a bid to prove the triumph of the free market and the free world over the
communist bloc, US assistance towards making India a consumer society
reached its peak between 1954 and 1964 when US aid totaled US$10 billion.27
This signaled an attempt to assuage the negative schema that the USA and India
had long held towards each other. Also it provided an opportunity to explore their
potential mutual relationship in the future free market, a possibility to sample the
blessing of a consumer society that America had long imbibed and India had yet
to relish.
194
Modernity Transfers
selected by Associate Curator Greata Daniel, MoMA engaged the same design
team as the Nelson office to mount their first ever and largest show in southeast
Asia. Lasting for two years from 1959 to 1961, the show traveled through nine
major cities and pulled more than a million visitors from all over India. Even
though they used the same design team and the same geodesic dome, the two
MoMA exhibitions were fundamentally dissimilar: one was produced by the USIA
as a way of undermining the Soviet state by depicting the USA as a consumer
paradise;29 the other, which generated from a request by local businessmen
operating under the umbrella of government bureaucracy, aimed to spur the
development of the national economy. NSIC’s expectations of this show were
that it would channel local artisans’ and designers’ tastes into producing objects
that by virtue of having a modern appearance would heighten the taste of the
Indian consumer class, resulting in a concomitant expansion of the Indian home
market for certain consumer goods.30 In effect, local businessmen interpreted
MoMA’s aesthetic mission as a trade potential. Thus the 1959 Indian show was
not solely an American diplomatic push but more of an Indian economic pull. On
the one hand, the USA seized the opportunity to explore India as a “testing
ground”31 for the promotion of a capitalist culture; on the other, it sought to
harness the potential of India as a future consumer (Figure 3). In MoMA’s words,
this endeavor was “a result of [a] unique venture in[to] international cooperation
by public and private agencies.”32 This show proved a classic example of the
symbiotic transference of mid century modernity from one part of the globe to
another.
The general setting of the exhibition was intended to portray an image of
western progress as well as illuminate the neutral appearance of the machine-
made modern product that stood in opposition to the vivid and colorful Indian
objects.33 Housed as it was in Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome,34 architect
Gordon Chadwick of the Nelson office had conceived the entire site as a
monochrome backdrop with the exception of the bright orange letters at the
entrance depicting the title of the exhibition, “Design Today in America and
Europe.” Upon entering the dome, the viewer saw an Indian-style brick courtyard:
in the centre were variously-shaped, cocoa-matted, wooden platforms on which
the exhibit materials were placed, each tagged with a general number signifying
its catalog entry. The 400 household objects included chairs, lamps, glassware,
kitchen utensils, textiles and tools from New York, all representative of a time
span from the 18th century to contemporary times and ranging in origin from
Europe to the USA. As an exhibition release by Pupul Jayakar suggested, the
objective of the exhibition was to draw the attention of the visitor to the place of
materials and tools and their function in the creation of objects for daily use – not
to replicate the object directly as part of Indian life nor to adopt the way of life that
the aforesaid objects demanded.35 The brown-stained deodar beams and white
plywood panels, illuminated by the diffused ambient light that streamed through
the dome, created a live domestic setting for the modern western goods. This
was MoMA’s aim – to draw a hard line between the eastern and western modes
195
Farhan Sirajul Karim
Figure 3
A long queue of people
awaiting their turn to
attend the opening
ceremony in New Delhi,
1959. Source: VII.
SP-ICE-17-57.6, MoMA
Archives, NY. Courtesy
of MoMA, NY.
196
Modernity Transfers
Figure 4
The strangeness of
MoMA’s domestic
modernity becomes
more than a subject of
curiosity, Delhi, 1959.
Source: VII.SP-ICE-17-
57.7, MoMA Archives,
NY. Courtesy of MoMA,
NY.
197
Farhan Sirajul Karim
198
Modernity Transfers
(Figure 5). In other words, these artifacts prescribe a specific vision of postwar
modern life, of which America was at the cutting edge in 1959.
MoMA’s show established that mass submission to comfort and pleasure
was achievable through a methodological change of production of objects, that
is, from craft to industrial. Referring to Plato’s notion of ideal and Thomas
Aquinas’s notion of perfection, MoMA contended that the newly invented “art
form” presented solutions that the West had evolved to accommodate the
mechanical production, new materials and energy potentials that scientific
research had made available and new consumer demands that had arisen over
the last 50 years.60 By discarding the relevance of the non-industrial, the domestic
working body of the craftsman was rendered subterranean amidst a mass of
reproducible objects. In MoMA’s words:
Figure 5
A page from the
exhibition catalogue.
Source: VII.SP-ICE-17-
57.8, MoMA Archives,
NY. Courtesy of MoMA,
NY.
199
Farhan Sirajul Karim
Regarding the conflicting concepts of crafts and industrial objects, MoMA argued
two points. First, mass produced objects do not lose their artistic quality: they are
still representative of western verity – irrefutable fundamentals of Classical purity
and ideals; secondly, modern living is essentially an artistic task since individual
crafts have been replaced by mass artistic proliferation, reproduced on the factory
line and recycled in consumer houses. Living in a modern era is essentially
practicing art amidst smoldering comfort, not practicing life to its bitter end.
Indian bureaucratic expectations of this exhibition – as described by
Manubhai Shah, Union Minister of Industry – were to learn how the visual
appearance of Indian objects could be made more appealing as mass consumption
goods.62 The Indian bureaucracy’s major concern was that the primary task of
design should be to make the objects more presentable on the global market.
Such a pragmatic role of design was closely linked to the synthesis of India’s
home market of consumer goods with its global dissipation. Manubhai, writing in
the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, stated: “The degree of success in
making a product depends greatly on the extent to which a fusion of technical
quality, functional excellence and visual design is achieved … [Design must
create] an immediate and overwhelming appeal to a buyer.” 63 Vice President Dr.
S. Radhakrishnan, in his opening remarks, beseeched the industrialists and
craftsmen of India to adopt “quality above cheapness,” calling on the local
manufacturers, designers and artisans to act under the rubric of “Blend Beauty
with Utility,”64 an approach notoriously similar to the Victorian revivalist attitude
towards industrial products.65 The immediate post-independence Indian
bureaucracy was troubled by its bid to locate itself among global cultural politics.
While on the one hand the nation’s collective memory was still enthralled by the
Gandhian spirit of asceticism, on the other, Nehru’s sympathy for Soviet-style
socialism paired with a counter demand for a free market66 created a complex
situation. This complexity resulted in the local businessman’s selection of
MoMA’s cutting edge exhibition artifacts, a careful selection of industrially
produced, transatlantic consumer goods that would inform both vernacular
craftsmen and community-based small industry (Figure 6).
The new role of mass produced, machine-made household objects as a
producer of everyday domestic experience contested the Indian notion of
domesticity as a personalized and contextualized experience that had its profound
connection with Gandhi’s alternative form of domesticity of ashram life.67 The
exhibited objects heralded a way of life forged on comfort, the lessening of
human labor on daily household tasks by means of the machine. This was quite
different from the Gandhian way of life that emphasized incorporating gender-
unspecified human labor as much as possible into all aspects of household work68
at a time when overwhelmingly, mass media and women’s magazines were
promoting an image of the picturesque home69 wherein the Indian woman’s
extended dual role was one of Indian and Western housewife at the same time.70
In nineteenth-century colonial exhibitions, machines were displayed as a single
entity, a single animated force bent upon producing a new phase of civilization:
200
Modernity Transfers
Figure 6
The MoMA show at
Amritsar, 1959. Exhibit
objects being inspected
at close range. One of
the major objectives of
this show was to evoke
demand for modern
household goods – the
installation was
considered a site for
virtual consumption.
Source: VII.SP-ICE-17-
57.6, MoMA Archives,
New York. Courtesy of
MoMA, NY.
modernity.71 Working bodies were almost erased from the scene other than
being depicted as the “human exotic.” Tim Barringer describes this as a “fantasy
of production without labour, a world without a working class.” 72 Throughout the
first half of the twentieth century, Gandhi assiduously promoted a material
culture73 – perhaps impossible to realize in a consumer society but at least
sounding more ethical to the Indian ear – that took effort to retain the value
system embedded in objects, a value system which the capitalist market reduced
to exchange value and freely floated as an independent, value free commodity.74
Gandhi’s challenge to the material culture of the modern West soon became a
challenge for his own countrymen when post-independence India recanted his
ascetic way of living. Gandhi, with his ascetic material culture, resisted
independent India’s ambition to become modern. After a decade of independence,
the century-long debate surrounding craft versus industrial product75 transformed
into a debate over accepting a different form of domesticity forged on a different
material culture. As Pupul Jayakar wrote in the flyer circulated at the 1959
exhibition: “It is a challenge to democracy and an industrial society whether or
not within its contours a great artisan tradition can flourish.”76 By 1959 it was well
established in India that the old way of producing objects, representative of a
bygone political order, was no longer acceptable. In fact, in decolonized India it
was confronting. But the fundamental incompatibility of the two forms of
domesticity led to an arbitrary juxtaposition, a soft form of modernity or lumpy
aggregates that would allow certain reminiscences of a bygone culture that India
had shown four years earlier in Manhattan or that Girard and Eames continued to
strive for.
201
Farhan Sirajul Karim
Ideas about what is comfortable ... seem to vary from one historical
era to another ... People seem to respond more to their ideas about
comfort than to their actual physical experience of it. Advertisers, of
course, capitalize on the difference between the reality of comfort and
its image in the marketing process. The most likely illusions and
allusions are to luxury, power, and prestige.77
Considering that the MoMA canon of modernist exemplars shown in India took
shape in the USA as part of Edgar Kaufmann Jr.’s Good Design project to market
modernism to American furniture consumers, it becomes clear that what is
encoded in this culturally constructed notion of comfort is luxurious mass
consumption. MoMA’s collection of canonic objects of “good design,” shipped
by the USIA throughout Western Europe as strategic assets of a “charm
offensive” intended to convince postwar Europeans that the USA wasn’t just an
uncultivated land of vulgar consumption, presents a transatlantic portrait of
modernism in which the USA is the tradition’s most recent and accomplished
heir. Manubhai Shah, expressing the view of Indian businessmen who established
their opinions of modernism as an aesthetic vs. a profitable commodity, stated:
202
Modernity Transfers
Figure 7
Jeanneret’s synthesized
modernity – an image
from the Simple
Furniture and Interior, a
government publication
circulating the new
form of Indian
domesticity. Source: D.
N. Anand, Simple
Furniture and Interior
Decoration, New Delhi,
Directorate of Extension
and Training, Ministry
of Food and Agriculture,
1959. Courtesy of
National Library of
India, Kolkata.
203
Farhan Sirajul Karim
204
Modernity Transfers
Figure 8
A bamboo chair
designed by Professor
M. P. Ranjan, NID. The
chair demonstrates an
industrially reproducible
bamboo joinery system.
Courtesy of National
Institute of Design, NID,
Ahmedabad, India.
At the end of this chapter I would like to go back to the design school at
Ahmedabad from where I started. After the MoMA show ended in 1961, the
objects were presented to the Indian government to form the nucleus of a
permanent collection so that the people of India could benefit from access to
them over a longer period of time. These objects were handed over to the NID
for presentation to students as examples of what could be the point of departure
for creating a new Indian modernity (Figure 8).91 For over four decades now,
these objects have been a source of inspiration for generations of Indian
designers. The guardian of these objects (the NID) is still exploring forms of
synthesis. Over the last two decades, their “Centre for Bamboo Initiatives” has
been experimenting with the possibility of turning traditional bamboo and cane
furniture into mass reproducible objects. In 2001 they published the results of
their experiments along with pieces of designs and with their production
methods.92 While designing mass reproducible bamboo trusses, folding chairs
and vertical partitions, Professor Ranjan, who is heading this project, developed
205
Farhan Sirajul Karim
a unique joinery system for bamboo structures, which can be used as a universally
applicable model for industrially-produced bamboo furniture. It is a classic
example of breaching the modern attitudes towards objects using natural
materials and direct human involvement. Hitherto, while such processes could
not have been considered democratic, the masses were denied access to objects
because they were not produced on a grand scale. Nevertheless, at the crossroads
of the mid-century global transference of modernity and its homegrown synthesis,
the discursive formation of a new material culture has been gradually opening up
over MoMA’s tomb that by sharing a common discourse of the Third World
underdevelopment pursued a very different trajectory of modernity.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to Greg Castillo for the many conversations and insights that helped
shape this chapter. I owe particular thanks to Duanfang Lu, Gay Mcdonald and
two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism and invaluable
suggestions.
Notes
1 Peter Scriver and Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh, “Between modernity and representation, framing and
architectural critique of colonial South Asia,” in Peter Scriver and Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh (eds),
Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon, New York:
Routledge, 2007.
2 Peter H. Hoffenberg, An Empire on Display: English, Indian, and Australian Exhibitions from the
Crystal Palace to the Great War, California: University of California Press, 2001.
3 Harold R. Isaac, Scratches on Our Minds, American Images of China and India, New York: The
John Day Company, 1958, pp. 243–4, 249, 259, 271.
4 “Interview with Hon. John Foster Dulles”, in Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi, the History
of the World’s Largest Democracy, London: Picador 2007, p. 160.
5 Ibid., p. 161.
6 Monroe Wheeler, “Forward” in Monroe Wheeler (ed.), Textiles and Ornaments of India, New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 1956, p. 11.
7 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya and Yusuf Meherally, At the Cross-roads, Bombay: National
Information and Publications Ltd., 1947; Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, America, The land of
Superlatives, Phoenix Publications, 1946.
8 International Council/International Program Exhibition Records. Textile and Ornamental Arts of
India: VI.ICE-D-5-54.2. New York, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.
9 Wheeler, op. cit., p. 11.
10 Abigail S. McGowan, “‘All That Is Rare, Characteristic Or Beautiful’, Design and the Defense of
Tradition in Colonial India, 1851–1903,” Journal of Material Culture, 2005, vol. 10, pp. 263–87.
11 Kate P. Kent, “The Girard Foundation Collection at the Museum of International Folk Art”, African
Arts, November 1983, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 60–4.
12 Ibid., p. 64.
13 VI.ICE-D-5-54.2. MoMA Archives, NY.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
206
Modernity Transfers
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ananda Gopal Mukherjee and Vinod Tagra (eds), Jawaharlal Nehru – The Architect of Modern
India (A Documentary Account of Nehru’s Concept of Planning Development), New Delhi:
Reliance Publishing House, 1989, p. viii.
20 India’s Chances in the German Market, Indian Ties with Germany: A Supplement to the Times of
India, 1959, September 30.
21 VI.ICE-D-5-54.2. MoMA Archives, NY.
22 Dinesh Dutt, “Traditional designs and their modern implication,” Art in Industry Magazine, vol. 2,
no. 1, Dec 1950, pp. 25–32. Ajit Mokerjee, “Sari: its role in international publicity and contemporary
fashion,” Art in Industry Magazine, vol. 2, no. 1, Dec 1950, pp. 32–9; D. P. Ghosh, “Industrial
application of ancient Orissan design,” Art in Industry Magazine, vol. 3, no. 1, Jan 1952, pp. 20–3;
Subrata Banerjee, “Indian influence on western design,” Art in Industry Magazine, vol. 3, no. 1,
Jan 1952, pp. 16–20.
23 Surjuit Mansingh, “India and the United States”, in B. R. Nanda (ed.), Indian Foreign Policy, The
Nehru Years, New Delhi: Radiant Publishers, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library 1976, p. 156.
24 Isaac, op. cit.
25 Arthur Robinoff, “Incompatible objectives and shortsighted politics”, in Sumit Ganguly, Brian
Shoup and Andrew Scobell (eds), US–Indian Strategic Cooperation into the 21st Century, More
than Words, NY: Routledge, 2006, p. 46.
26 US Department of State, The Subcontinent of South Asia, Near and Middle Eastern Series no. 41,
Washington Department of State, 1959, p. 6. Quoted in Robinoff, op. cit., p. 43.
27 Guha, op. cit.
28 John Elderfield (editor in chief), The Museum of Modern Art in Mid-Century At Home and Abroad,
The Museum of Modern Art, 1994, p. 138.
29 Greg Castillo, “Domesticating the cold war: household consumption as propaganda in Marshall
Plan Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History, April 2005, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 261–88.
30 International Council/International Program Exhibition Records. Design Today in America and
Europe: VII.SP-ICE-17-57.8. MoMA Archives, NY.
31 Robinoff, op. cit., p. 43.
32 VII.SP-ICE-17-57.2. MoMA Archives, NY.
33 “Design show opens in India, 1959,” Industrial Design, March 1959, p.14.
34 Fuller’s dome was used by USIA for erecting exhibition pavilions within short periods of time,
which was also a symbol of the USA’s engineering marvel. See Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd
Morgan, Cold War Confrontations, US Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War, Baden:
Lars Muller Publishers, 2008, pp. 58–67.
35 VII.SP-ICE-17-57.2. MoMA Archives, NY.
36 For the Ford Foundation’s role in India, see Leonard A. Gordon, “Wealth equals wisdom? the
Rockefeller and Ford Foundations in India,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science, vol. 554, The Role of NGOs: Charity and Empowerment, November 1997, pp.
104–16.
37 VII.SP-ICE-17-57.7: New Delhi. MoMA Archives, NY.
38 Castillo, op. cit.; Gay Mcdonald, “Selling the American Dream: MoMA, Industrial Design and
Post-War France,” Journal of Design History, 2004, vol. 17, no.4. Gay McDonald, Homemakers,
Domestic Wares and the Cold War: Exhibitions of US Design and the Construction of the
Domesticated Consumer Body, International Association of Societies of Design Research, The
Hongkong Polytechnic University, December 12–15 2007.
39 Kathleen D. McCarthy, “From cold war to cultural development: the international cultural activities
of the Ford Foundation, 1950–1980,” Daedalus, vol. 116, no. 1, Philanthropy, Patronage Politics,
Winter, 1987, pp. 93–117. India as a rising economic force won American attention during the
1950s. C. Douglas Dillon, Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, described the problem of
207
Farhan Sirajul Karim
India’s future development as the “most important economic project we have anywhere in the
world.” See VII.SP-ICE-17-57.2. MoMA Archives, NY.
40 Peter D. Bell, “The Ford Foundation as a transnational actor,” International Organization, vol. 25,
no. 3, Summer, 1971, pp. 465–78.
41 A program commonly known as the “Point Four Program” was initiated by President Truman for
underdeveloped countries to preempt the Marxist appeal to poverty-torn newly decolonized
countries by making American achievements available for their development. Mansingh, op. cit.
42 VII.SP-ICE-17-57.8. MoMA Archives, NY.
43 Ibid.
44 McCarthy, op. cit.
45 VII.SP-ICE-17-57.8. MoMA Archives, NY.
46 Galen Cranz, The Chair, New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998, pp. 79–89.
47 Greg Castillo,“The American ‘fat kitchen’ in Europe: postwar domestic modernity and Marshall
Plan strategies of enchantment,” in R. Oldenziel and K. Zachmann (eds), Cold War Kitchen:
Americanization, Technology, and European Users, New York: MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009.
48 Rustam J. Mehta, The Handicrafts and Industrial Art of India, Bombay: Taraporevala’s, 1960;
Ananda Coomaraswamy, The Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon, New York: Farrar, Straus, 1964;
K. Krishna Murthy, Ancient Indian Furniture, Sandeep Prakashan, 2004.
49 Arthur Drexler, “Design today in America and Europe,” in Design Today in America and Europe,
exhibition catalogue, 1959, pp. 9–10.
50 VII.SP-ICE-17-57.8. MoMA Archives, NY.
51 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
52 John Gloag, Victorian Comfort: A Social History of Design from 1830–1900, London: Adam and
Charles Black, 1961, p. xv.
53 Katherine C. Grier, Culture and Comfort: People, Parlors, and Upholstery, 1850–1930, Rochester,
NY, Strong Museum; Amherst, 1988, pp. 287–8.
54 Joyce Henry Robinson, “‘Hi Honey, I’m home,’: weary (neurasthenic) businessman and the
formulation of a serenely modern aesthetic,” in Andrew Ballantyne (ed.), What is Architecture?,
NY: Routledge, 2002, pp. 112–28.
55 Victoria Rosner, Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life, New York: Columbia University
Press, 2005, p. 121.
56 Penny Sparke, Furniture, London: Bell and Hyman, 1986, pp. 21–5.
57 John E. Crowley, The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain and
Early America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, p. 292.
58 E. Kaufman Jr., What is Modern Interior Design?, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1953,
p.5.
59 VII.SP-ICE-17-57.8. MoMA Archives, NY, p.4.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid., p. 34.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., p. 6.
64 The Times of India, January 16 1959.
65 Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of its Global Reproducibility, NY:
Routledge, 2006.
66 Guha, op. cit., pp. 692–3.
67 Mark Thompson, Gandhi and His Ashrams, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1993, pp. 91–173.
68 Lisa N. Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and Modern India, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2007, pp. 16–17.
69 Rajni Chadha, The Emerging Consumer, A Changing Profile of the Urban Indian House-wife and
its Implications, New Delhi: New Age International Publishers, 1995, p. 32.
208
Modernity Transfers
70 Ursula Sharma, Women’s Work, Class, and the Urban Household: a Study of Shimla, North India,
New York: Tavistock Publications, 1986, p.82.
71 Hoffenberg, op. cit., pp. 166–71. Terry Smith, Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design in
America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 6–11.
72 Tim Barringer, Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain, London: Yale University Press,
New Haven, 2005, p. 8.
73 Mohit Chakrabarti, The Gandhian Philosophy of the Spinning Wheel, New Delhi: Concept
Publishing Company, 2000, pp. 11–13.
74 Andrzej Piotrowski, “The spectacle of architectural discourses,” Architectural Theory Review, vol.
13, no. 2, August 2008, pp. 130–44.
75 Abigail McGowan, Crafting the Nation in Colonial India, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp.
187–91.
76 VII.SP-ICE-17-57.2. MoMA Archives, NY.
77 Cranz, op. cit., pp. 112–13.
78 “Blend beauty with utility, call to industrialists,” The Times of India, January 1959.
79 Modernity’s incarnation in vernacular furnishing was first endeavored by the forgotten European
tradition of ascetic modernity between the 1920s and the end of the 1940s. In the wake of
wartime economic construction, the immediate postwar European notion of dwelling, especially
as formulated by Werkbund and Bauhaus alumni, sought to formulate a low-consumption living
pattern that would discard any “false abundance.” They aestheticized poverty as a form of
redemption and promoted a minimal way of living furnished by ascetic objects – a mood that was
killed off by the West German economic miracle of the later 1950s. See Paul Betts, The Authority
of Everyday Objects, A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2007, pp. 82–3.
80 For a discussion of Jeanneret’s stay and work at Chandigarh see Surinder Bhaga, Le Corbusier
and Pierre Jeanneret: Footprints on the Sands of Indian Architecture, New Delhi: Galgotia Pub,
2000, pp. 23–37.
81 M. L. Malik, Guide to Chandigarh, Chandigarh: Navjeewan News Agency, 1968.
82 Jeanneret’s connection to the ascetic mood of objects can be traced back to his early career
during 1927, when he jointly designed with Le Corbusier three houses for the Deutscher
Werkbund in Stuttgart. This particular exhibition explored the possibility of post World War
reformation of European housing with the limited resources Europe could afford at that time. See
Karin Kirsch, The Weissenhofsiedlung, Experimental Housing Built for the Deutscher Werbund,
Stuttgart, 1927, New York: Rizzoli, 1989, pp. 100–19.
83 Kenneth Frampton, Le Corbusier, London: Thames and Hudson, 2001, p.187.
84 Model Houses Constructed in the International Exhibition on Low Cost Housing 1954, New Delhi:
Government of India, Ministry of Works, Housing and Supply, 1954.
85 D. N. Anand, Simple Furniture and Interior Decoration, New Delhi: Directorate of Extension and
Training, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, 1959.
86 This small booklet was divided into two sections; the first section has the series of mock-up
rooms design by Jeanneret and the second section consists of the work of local designers that
employs more traditional forms.
87 The legendary US modern designers Ray and Charles Eames’s experiment with vernacular
materials and primitive motifs were criticized as anti-modern. And Ray Eames was often accused
as the bad influence on her partner Charles Eames for having made him stray from the pure
modernist expression of steel, plastic etc. Pat Kirkham, “Humanizing modernism: the crafts,
‘functioning decoration’ and the Eameses,” Journal of Design History, 1998, vol. 11, no. 1, pp.
15–29.
88 Kent, op. cit.; Kirkham, op. cit.
89 Anand, op. cit.
209
Farhan Sirajul Karim
90 Helene Cauquil, “Pierre Jeanneret in India,” Architecture in India, Paris: Electa Moniteur, 1985,
quoted in Bhaga, op. cit., p. 29.
91 In conversation with Professor Ranjan in April 2009.
92 M. P. Ranjan, Katlamara Chalo: A Design for Development Strategy, Design as a Driver for the
Indian Rural Economy, Ahmedabad: Centre for Bamboo Initiative at NID, National Institute of
Design, 2001.
210
Chapter 9
Building a Colonial
Technoscientific Network:
tropical architecture,
building science and the
politics of decolonization
Jiat-Hwee Chang
The past few years have seen the emergence of an interesting body of new
research on tropical architecture. This scholarship focuses mainly on the work of
British architects in Africa during the mid-twentieth century. It examines a broad
range of social, political, and cultural issues in the production of tropical architecture
and engages in important debates on themes such as (post)colonialism and the
politics of (de)colonization, and internationalization versus regionalism.1 The
emergence of tropical architecture was linked to key figures such as Maxwell Fry,
Jane Drew, and Otto Koenigsberger, important metropolitan institutions such as
the Department of Tropical Architecture at the Architectural Association, and also
landmark events such as the 1953 Conference on Tropical Architecture. There is
no doubt that the best of this scholarship situates the production of tropical
architecture in the context of complex socio-political relations between the
metropole and the colonies, the British Empire and the postcolonial nations. It is,
however, largely silent on the technoscientific dimensions of tropical architecture.
This oversight is significant given the technical nature of most of the discourses
on tropical architecture in the mid-twentieth century.2
It has been argued that science and technology are social constructions.3
I share this view, though not in the epistemologically relativist sense, but in the
sense that science and technology are what Donna Haraway calls “situated
knowledge”4 in that what is assumed to be universally true and objective scientific
knowledge is necessarily local, mediated, situated, and partial to begin with.5 In
other words, the production of technoscientific knowledge could never be
211
Jiat-Hwee Chang
212
Building a Colonial Technoscientific Network
acclimatized to the tropics.10 I also argue that the network built has Foucauldian
power-effects, in that it enabled the metropole to become a center of calculation
in the network through the accumulation of power-knowledge. In the third section
of the chapter, I illustrate the specificities of how such a network actually
facilitated the accumulation of knowledge and the attendant power through the
production of immutable mobiles by studying CLU and TBD’s research on climatic
design and thermal comfort. I argue that by privileging climate in the knowledge
of place, the research on climatic design facilitated “action at a distance.”
213
Jiat-Hwee Chang
that addressed the colonial housing problems. For example, in the early twentieth
century, various initiatives were undertaken by the municipal and colonial
governments in different parts of the British Empire to improve housing conditions
for certain segments of the “native” population through the Improvement
Trusts.17 However, the earlier efforts were smaller scale local initiatives at the
municipality level which tended to be underfunded and/or were not supported by
strong political will. The new concerted effort taken to address the colonial
housing problem prompted a senior staff member of CO to remark in 1947 that:
“Colonial Housing and Building, hitherto a Colonial Office Cinderella, has suddenly
come very much on the tapis here.”18 Alongside the efforts of the Colonial
Housing Group, other housing initiatives, such as the appointment of Professor
William Graham Holford as the Honorary Town Planning Advisor to the Secretary
of State for the Colonies and the setting up of a Housing Advisory Panel, were
also made in the 1940s.19 The position on housing taken by the Colonial Housing
Research Group that the “general economic development must be pursued
concurrently with improved housing” reflects the official view following the
passing of the Colonial Development and Welfare Act (CDWA) in 1940.
The equal emphases on both economic development and the welfare
of the natives, through provision in areas such as health, education, and housing,
was seen by the British officials as a disavowal of any intention to merely exploit
the colonies more efficiently.20 This emphasis on welfare and its implementation
through comprehensive provision set the CDWA apart from earlier development
schemes. Previously, development priorities had been unambiguously economic
in focus, although the British administrators did pay lip-service to their mandate
of taking care of the welfare of the natives and “civilizing” them as a way to
legitimize colonial rule.21 But the new post-1940 concern for the welfare of the
natives did not merely arise from the “benevolence” of the British imperial
government. Rather, welfare was seen as an antidote to the “disorder” in many
colonial territories. After all, the CDWA was formulated primarily to deal with
what the British called “disturbances” – both labor unrest and anti-colonial
nationalist movements – in the colonies.22 Central in this shift was the report of
the West India Royal Commission, which was submitted in 1939 but it was so
controversial that it was not published until 1945. The recommendations of the
West India Royal Commission led to the establishment of CDWA. Some of the
earliest large scale colonial housing initiatives, including research, were
undertaken in the West Indies in the early 1940s under Sir Frank Stockdale, the
Comptroller for Development and Welfare, and his town planning advisor Robert
Gardner-Medwin.23
Secondly, the recommendations made by the Colonial Housing Group
were shaped by prior models of colonial scientific research. This is perhaps not
unexpected, as the Group consisted of members from the CO, the Crown
Agents, and also experts from organizations that had previously been engaged in
colonial research, such as the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the Imperial
Institute, and the Department of Science and Industrial Research (DSIR).24
214
Building a Colonial Technoscientific Network
Following the practice adopted for the Imperial Agricultural Bureau, the proposed
Colonial Housing Bureau was to be attached to an existing metropolitan institution
working on similar problems. In this case, the Bureau was to be attached to BRS,
which was first established in 1921 as part of the DSIR to carry out scientific
research on building materials and construction methods in order to address
post-First-World-War housing shortages.25 The regional research establishments
in the colonies were also to be modeled after the metropolitan model. After the
group’s report, two BRS officers, at the request of the CO, visited the British
West African colonies from December 1946 to January 1947. They submitted a
comprehensive proposal on the establishment of a West African Building
Research Station along the lines of the BRS.26
Methodologically, the Group proposed that colonial housing research
follow that of colonial nutrition. Michael Worboys has noted that British colonial
nutrition research in Africa followed the technical problem-solving approach in
which the problem of undernourishment was isolated from the larger socio-
economic conditions of poverty and turned into a specialized medical problem
that required professional expertise to solve.27 As a result, the prescribed solution
for the colonial nutrition problem overlooked the larger structural conditions that
caused poverty and undernourishment in the first place.28 In a not dissimilar
manner, the Group proposed that housing research be compartmentalized into
different spheres of specialization and the colonial housing bureau should
concentrate on the “study of the more physical and material aspects.”29 This was
despite the Group’s recognition that “[h]ousing research … is not a mere matter
of materials and construction” and “without a broad medico-sociologico-
economic background of knowledge, house design and the planning of housing
schemes are bound to suffer.”30
Even though the colonial model of research was derived from the
metropolitan model, there was a major difference between them. It has been
noted in the case of tropical medicine that there was a division of labor between
the specialist research work in the metropolitan institutions to discover the
causes of tropical diseases and the general practitioners in the colonies treating
the diseases.31 A similar hierarchical division of labor was also assumed between
the center and the periphery in the proposed organization of building research
institutions.32 It was stated in the Group’s report that the primary roles of the
regional centers would be to “act as local centres of information, and to carry out
those investigations which must necessarily be done on the spot.” In contrast,
“[c]ertain other investigations of a specialist character or of a more long-term or
general nature might well be undertaken in [Britain]” at metropolitan institutions
such as the BRS and the Imperial Institute.33 This center–periphery division of
labor in scientific research corresponded to the prevailing view of center–
periphery economic relations, in which tropical colonies in the periphery produced
raw materials for industrial production in the temperate metropole.34 From the
perspective of world system theory, such a welding of peripheral tropical
production to metropolitan temperate industrialization means that the tropical
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216
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217
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CDWA was also funding other schemes that involved the building of schools,
hospitals, and offices. Moreover, there was the “recognition of the difficulty of
separating the physical problems of building from those of general housing and
planning policies in the overseas territories.”43
Other than the aforementioned “discovery” of colonial housing
problems in the 1940s, another impetus behind the appointment of a Colonial
Liaison Officer was the need to control the escalating costs of building
construction in the colonies, especially those sponsored by CDWA funds.44
Although the escalating costs of building construction could be partially accounted
for by the shortage of building materials in the immediate postwar years, the CO
also attributed the cause to the lack of well-defined minimum building standards,
which led “imperceptibly to somewhat extravagant schemes.” To reduce cost,
the Secretary of State went as far as expressing his anxiety that “colonies should
avoid the error of constructing buildings of a more permanent character than
circumstances warrant.”45 As a result, one of the earliest tasks for Atkinson was
to formulate minimum standards for building in the tropics.46 Here, standards
referred not to standard plans for building types such as bungalows and barracks,
which have been in existence in the British Empire since the nineteenth century.47
Standards here should rather be understood in relation to building science
research. According to Sir Frederick Lea, the director of BRS from 1946 to 1965,
scientific methods were first systematically applied to building research from the
1920s with the establishment of the BRS in order to overcome the limitations of
a building industry that was largely craft-based.48 Traditional craft which depended
on rules of thumb established through generations of trial and error was deemed
inadequate in keeping up with the array of new construction materials that
industrialization brought about. Lea argued that “[w]ith new materials tradition
could be no guide and its blindfold application to them was a gamble”49 that
supposedly caused many building failures. In contrast to craft, the application of
scientific methods to building research sought to achieve predictability in
performance and replicability in different sites and contexts.50 To accomplish that,
not only were new building standards required, it also “infer[red] the dissemination
of the knowledge gained, a new outlook and new methods in architectural and
technical training and a new conception of the fundamentals of architecture on
the part of its practitioners.”51
Building standards would be useless if they were not adhered to
outside the building research stations where they were formulated or if they
were not adopted by people besides the building scientists who formulated
them. For standards to work, the knowledge gained from building research has
to be disseminated, the building industry has to be trained to follow established
norms of practices, and new tools and instruments may be required. In other
words, building standards have to remain constant when circulating between
different sites and situations – such as building research stations, construction
sites, architectural studios, and building material factories – and different people
– such as building scientists, architects, building contractors, and building material
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Building a Colonial Technoscientific Network
219
Jiat-Hwee Chang
Figure 2
Cover of Colonial
Building Notes.
220
Building a Colonial Technoscientific Network
221
Jiat-Hwee Chang
studied.”73 In another instance, when Atkinson was writing in a trade journal for
the building prefabrication industry, he reviewed the existing building techniques
and the state of the building industry in the colonies and advised on the
opportunities available to the British manufacturers for exporting their
prefabricated buildings to these places.74
Other than enrolling human actors, Latour also argued that nonhuman
actants are crucial to the construction of facts. By nonhuman actants, Latour
referred to entities such as tools, instruments, or even something as simple as a
graph. These tools or instruments might be critical in the conduct of an experiment
so that a hypothesis could be proven, and the graph might help one visualize
particular data and facts. In the case of building science and the work of the CLU
of the BRS, instruments such as the heliodon and graphical representations such
as the sun-path diagram and thermal comfort charts were especially important in
the attempt to enroll more architects in the construction of tropical building
science. As Henry Cowan, the self-professed first professor in building science,
noted, “the average architect is receptive to visual demonstrations, but that he
does not respond well to mathematical treatment.”75 The heliodon (Figure 3),
which was invented by A. F. Dufton and H. E. Beckett of the BRS in 1928,76 is one
such instrument that provides effective visual demonstration. It is a powerful
“device for determining the natural lightings of rooms, and the shadows cast on,
and by, buildings.”77 It shows the daylight level and the shadow cast three-
dimensionally by simulating the sun with a light bulb, the Earth’s surface with an
adjustable flat board, and the building with a model. The heliodon was designed
to allow it to simulate the sun’s position for all latitudes for all days of the year and
all the sunlight hours of a day. It is thus a useful design aid that could be used to
predict various aspects of building performance related to sun-shading and
sunlight penetration.
Most of the works described above were of course not undertaken by
Atkinson alone, as the CLU expanded fairly rapidly after his appointment as
Colonial Liaison Officer in 1948. In 1951, an assistant architect and an experiment
officer were appointed. Later on in 1954, a senior architect and a town planner
were added to the Unit. Three years later, a tropical paint research fellow was
Figure 3
View of the
components of a
heliodon (left) and
close-up view of the
heliodon with a model
attached (right). Source:
Colonial Building Notes.
222
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223
Jiat-Hwee Chang
224
Building a Colonial Technoscientific Network
British architects such as Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew through publications and
the networks of associations such as MARS (Modern Architecture Research
Group) and CIAM (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne).
There are a few problems with this normative narrative. First, it ignores
the prior history of “climatic design” in the British Empire. Climate, especially the
hot and humid tropical variant, and its influence on the built environment has
featured prominently in British colonial architectural discourses for more than a
century prior to the mid-twentieth century. For much of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, the prevalence of miasmic theories of disease transmission
and other related environmentalist discourse meant that a lot attention was
channeled towards modifying the built environment in order to mitigate the
supposedly pernicious effects of the torrid tropical climate on white men. As a
result, systematic bodies of knowledge on building in the colonial tropics were
developed from the early nineteenth century and they were especially apparent
in the design of building types such as bungalows, barracks, and hospitals.85 The
colonial environmentalist discourse on climate was not simply a neutral scientific
knowledge describing natural phenomena, it was entwined with the politics of
colonial governance and the related constructions of race, culture, and civilization.86
Secondly, climatic design, as we know it in the mid-twentieth century,
was a new concept, premised on the availability of comprehensive climatic data
and not the discovery of some ontological truth. For example, in North America,
the comprehensive climatic data – hourly readings of wet and dry bulb
temperatures and wind velocities at 110 weather bureau stations – used in a
climatic design manual was only available in 1935, and the raw climatic data only
became useful in 1938 when they were recorded on IBM punch cards and
analyzed.87 For the British colonial context, gathering and analyzing such
comprehensive climatic data from such vast territories and varied geographies
was difficult. As late as 1955, a technical officer of the Colonial Liaison Section,
BRS, reported that they, along with other Colonial Liaison Sections under the
DSIR, were “handicapped by the lack of climatological information for overseas
territories.”88 The technical officer was reacting to the responses to their circular
sent out to the various colonial meteorological organizations requesting
climatological data for the colonies.89 Most of the colonies replied that they did
not have consistent meteorological and climatological data. In extreme cases like
the Western Pacific and the Leeward Islands, they had “neither the staff nor the
instruments to supply the data required.”90 Even for the colonies where there
were summaries of existing data, those data presented many limitations. For
example, effective temperature, required to ascertain thermal comfort, could not
be calculated because “the summarized records of the different variables do not
refer to the same observation hour.”91 In order to obtain proper climatological
data, CLU tried to collaborate with the other colonial sections in DSIR. Initiatives
were also made to coordinate and collaborate between the meteorological
services of the different territories, both within the British Commonwealth, and
between the French, Belgian, and British colonies in Africa. 92
225
Jiat-Hwee Chang
Figure 4
Thermal comfort graph.
Source: Colonial
Building Notes.
226
Building a Colonial Technoscientific Network
takes the place of knowledge about the locality through the reduction,
simplification, and standardization of a complex life-world into a set of climatic
parameters. Secondly, knowing locality through climate might peculiarly mean
that socio-politically diverse entities such as Freetown and Singapore could be
conveniently grouped together because they both share the characteristics of hot
and humid tropical climate. Thirdly, by representing the climate and the question
of climatic design through a simple graph, which works like an immutable mobile
in that it is highly transportable and is stable, climatic design facilitates “action at
a distance on unfamiliar events, places and people.”94 In other words, for the
British architects in the metropole, this graph, along with the related expertise on
tropical building science available in what ANT would call the “center of
calculation,” allowed them to produce tropical architecture without even needing
to travel to the colonies. Given this, it is no wonder that the special issue of
Architectural Review focusing on Commonwealth architecture in the tropical
Commonwealth featured mainly tropical architecture “designed in England by
English architects (as in the case of many of those in West Africa) or designed by
architects of English origin, largely trained in England or America, who practice
locally.”95
227
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229
Jiat-Hwee Chang
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Greig Crysler and Anthony D. King for their insightful comments
on the earlier version of this chapter.
Notes
1 Notable among this scholarship are Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); Hannah Le Roux, “The networks of tropical architecture,” The Journal
of Architecture, 8 (2003); Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, “Modernism in late imperial British West
Africa: the work of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, 1946–56,“ Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians, 65, no. 2 (2006).
2 See the many technical textbooks and manuals of tropical architecture produced in the
mid-twentieth century, for example Miles Danby, Grammar of Architectural Design, with Special
Reference to the Tropics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew,
Tropical Architecture in the Dry and Humid Zones (London: Batsford, 1964), Georg Lippsmeier,
Walter Kluska, and Carol Gray Edrich, Tropenbau/Building in the Tropics (Munchen: Callwey,
1969), David Oakley, Tropical Houses: A Guide to Their Design (London: Batsford, 1961).
3 David J. Hess, Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction (New York: New York University
Press, 1997).
4 Donna Haraway, “Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of
partial perspective,“ Feminist Studies, 14, no. 3 (1988).
5 Latour made a similar argument, stating that all knowledges are local, except that the purportedly
“universal” knowledge is one that has the “shape of a network transporting back and forth
immutable mobiles to act a distance.” Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists
and Engineers through Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 229. Such a
standpoint epistemology seeks to negotiate between the dichotomy of objectivism and relativism.
It objects to the reductive idea of objectivity-as-transcendence, or the “god trick of seeing
everything from nowhere.” Haraway, op. cit., p. 581.
6 Warwick Anderson, “Introduction: postcolonial technoscience,” Social Studies of Science, 32,
no. 5/6, Special Issue: Postcolonial Technoscience (2002); Michael A. Osborne, “Introduction: the
social history of science, technoscience and imperialism,” Science, Technology & Society, 4, no.
2 (1999); Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1999).
7 Stephen J. Collier and Aihwa Ong, “Global assemblages, anthropological problems,” in Global
Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, Aihwa Ong and
Stephen J. Collier (eds), (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005).
8 Actant is used in place of actor of the classical social theory of Parsonian functionalism so that the
non-human actants could be attributed with the agency of shaping technological outcomes.
9 The recent so-called “Science Wars” between the natural scientists and the social scientists is a
case in point. A group of natural scientists accused social scientists in STS of assaulting rationality
and objectivity, caricaturing it as an “antiscience movement” and its exponents as “postmodern”
relativists and “science bashers.” For an overview of the “Science Wars,” see Andrew Ross,
“Introduction,” Social Text 46/47, Science Wars (1996).
10 For a related critique of tropical architecture as a “natural” variant, see Jiat-Hwee Chang, “Tropical
variants of sustainable architecture: a postcolonial perspective,” in Handbook of Architectural
Theory, Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns, and Hilde Heynen (eds), (London: Sage, forthcoming).
11 “Housing research in the colonies: report by the Housing Research Group” enclosed in CO
dispatch dated 4 December 1945. PRO CO927/6/7, Housing Research in the Colonies: Proposal
to Establish a Housing Research Centre in West Africa.
12 PRO CO1005/1, Colonial Housing Research Group: Minutes and Papers.
230
Building a Colonial Technoscientific Network
13 D. B. Blacklock, An Empire Problem: The House and Village in the Tropics (London: Hodder &
Stoughton Ltd, 1932).
14 Anthony Clayton, “Browne, Sir Granville St John Orde (1883–1947),” in Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). An example of the type of detailed
report Browne published on colonial labor problems is G. St. J. Orde Browne, Labour Conditions
in Ceylon, Mauritius, and Malaya (London: HMSO, 1943).
15 CO927/6/7, Housing Research.
16 Ibid.
17 For the work of the Bombay and Calcutta Improvement Trust, see Robert K. Home, Of Planting
and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities (London: Spon, 1997), pp. 85–116. For the
Singapore Improvement Trust, see J. M. Fraser, The Work of the Singapore Improvement Trust
1927–1947 (Singapore: Singapore Improvement Trust, 1948).
18 J. G. Hibbert in a letter dated December 19 1947. CO927/6/7, Housing Research.
19 Ibid.
20 Frederick Cooper, “Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans, and the Development
Concept,” in International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and
Politics of Knowledge, Frederick Cooper and Randall M. Packard (eds), (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997).
21 For a history of British colonial development, see Michael A. Havinden and David Meredith,
Colonialism and Development: Britain and Its Tropical Colonies, 1850–1960 (London: Routledge,
1993).
22 Frederick Cooper and Randall M. Packard, “Introduction,” in International Development and the
Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge, Frederick Cooper and Randall
M. Packard (eds), (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
23 PRO CO927/7/1, Proposals for Building Research Programme in the British West Indies and
British Guiana. Frank Stockdale, Robert Gardner-Medwin, and S. M. de Syllas, “Recent planning
developments in the colonies,” RIBA Journal, 55 (1948). Gardner-Medwin was to become an
expert on housing in the tropics and the Roscoe Professor of Architecture at Liverpool University.
Norman Kingham, “Obituary: Professor Robert Gardner-Medwin,” The Independent, July 8 1995.
24 Besides Evans, Blacklock, and Browne, the Group consisted of Mary Blacklock of Liverpool
School of Tropical Medicine; R. H. Burt of CO; C. Y. Carstairs, secretary of the Colonial Research
Committee; S. E. Chandler and S. J. Johnstone of the Imperial Institute; R. W. Foxlee, deputy
chief engineer to the Crown Agents for the colonies; and W. H. Kauntze, deputy medical advisor,
CO. For the work of the Crown Agents, see “Work of the Crown Agents,” The Crown Colonist,
Preliminary Number (1931). For the Imperial Institute’s involvement in colonial research, see
Michael Worboys, “The Imperial Institute: the state and the development of the natural resources
of the colonial empire, 1887–1923,” in Imperialism and the Natural World, John M. Mackenzie
(ed.) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990). For British imperial research on tropical
medicine, see Douglas Melvin Haynes, “The social production of metropolitan expertise in
tropical diseases: the Imperial State, Colonial Service and Tropical Diseases Research Fund,”
Science, Technology & Society, 4, no. 2 (1999).
25 BRS, The Building Research Station: Its History, Organization and Work (Garston, Watford: BRS,
1954); F. M. Lea, Science and Building: A History of the Building Research Station (London:
HMSO, 1971).
26 The two BRS officers were R. W. Nurse and A. W. Pott. CO927/6/7, Housing Research, PRO
DSIR4/2524, Establishment of a Building Research Station on the Gold Coast.
27 Michael Worboys, “The Discovery of Colonial Malnutrition between the Wars,” in Imperial
Medicine and Indigenous Societies, David Arnold (ed.) (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1988).
28 Arturo Escobar also makes a similar argument about the development discourses and practices
in the mid-twentieth century. See Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and
Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
231
Jiat-Hwee Chang
232
Building a Colonial Technoscientific Network
48 According to Atkinson, prior to the establishment of BRS, building research was carried out in a
fragmentary and unrelated manner. Some of the results were published in journals such as The
Builder and The Civil Engineer, etc. Building research was fragmentary because the building
industry was dominated by small firms that were resource-poor. Moreover, the industry was
characterized by the diversity of fields and it was also further split by the division of labor into
different specializations. See George Anthony Atkinson, “Thoughts during the Building Research
Establishment’s 75th anniversary,” Construction History, 12 (1996).
49 Lea, op. cit., p. 2.
50 “The Building Research Station: its origin, work and scope,” Journal of the Royal Institute of
British Architects, 43 (1936).
51 Ibid., p. 790. Scientific research in building during the mid-twentieth century should also be
understood in relation to the institutionalization of the sub-field of “building science” at the same
time. See chapter 4 of Jiat-Hwee Chang, “A genealogy of tropical architecture: Singapore in the
British (post)colonial networks of nature, technoscience and governmentality, 1830s to 1960s”
(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 2009).
52 Latour, op. cit., pp. 215–57.
53 John Law and John Hassard, Actor Network Theory and After (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999).
54 See, for example, Atkinson’s visit to Singapore. George Anthony Atkinson, “The work of the
colonial liaison building officer and building in the tropics,” The Quarterly Journal of the Institute
of Architects of Malaya, 2, no. 1 (1952).
55 George Anthony Atkinson: “British architects in the tropics,” Architectural Association Journal, 69
(1953), “Building in the tropics,” RIBA Journal, 57 (1950), “Principles of tropical design,”
Architectural Review, 128 (1960), “West Indian houses,” Architectural Association Journal, 67
(1952).
56 George Anthony Atkinson: “Building techniques overseas,” Prefabrication, 1, no. 9 (1954),
“Building techniques overseas – II,” Prefabrication, 1, no. 10 (1954).
57 Atkinson, “The work of the colonial liaison building officer and building in the tropics.”
58 George Anthony Atkinson, “African housing,” African Affairs, 49, no. 196 (1950).
59 Lea describes the research on climatic design as work on “the functional efficiency of buildings
in the tropics.” See Lea, op. cit., 165.
60 PRO DSIR4/3361, Tropical Building Division.
61 Ibid.
62 He was included in the list of lecturers and critics of the 1954 and 1955 Prospectuses for
Department of Tropical Architecture at the Architectural Association.
63 D. C. Robinson, “Towards a tropical architecture: the work of Architects Co-Partnership in
Nigeria,” Architectural Design, April (1959).
64 PRO CO927/35/2, Trinidad: Proposed Establishment of Building Research Station.
65 DSIR4/3361, Tropical Building Division.
66 Natal Regional Research Committee and the University of Natal, Symposium on Design for
Tropical Living (Durban: The University of Natal, 1957).
67 See PRO DSIR4/3647, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research: Establishment of a Building
Research Station in India.
68 Bruno Latour, “On recalling ANT,” in Actor Network Theory and After, John Law and John
Hassard (eds), (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999).
69 Latour, Science in Action, p. 108.
70 For an overview of some of the problems of articulating interest narrowly as economic self-
interest not covered in this paper, see Corinne P. Hayden, When Nature Goes Public: The Making
and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp.
19–29.
71 Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1998), pp. 92–123.
72 Atkinson, “British architects in the tropics.”
233
Jiat-Hwee Chang
73 Atkinson, “The work of the colonial liaison building officer and building in the tropics,” p. 36.
74 Atkinson: “Building techniques overseas”, “Building techniques overseas – II.”
75 Henry J. Cowan, “The Architectural Science Laboratory,” Royal Institute of British Architects
Journal, 66, no. 12 (1959). Cowan claims that he is the first professor of building science in his
autobiography. See Henry J. Cowan, A Contradiction in Terms: The Autobiography of Henry J.
Cowan (Sydney: Hermitage Press, 1993).
76 The RIBA Joint Committee on the Orientation of Buildings, The Orientation of Buildings, Being
the Report with Appendices of the RIBA Joint Committee on the Orientation of Buildings (London:
RIBA, 1933).
77 George Anthony Atkinson, “Construction and erection of the heliodon,” Colonial Building Notes,
26, January (1955): 12.
78 DSIR4/3361, Tropical Building Division.
79 Ibid.
80 Lea, op. cit.
81 John Law, “Technology and heterogeneous engineering: the case of Portuguese expansion,” in
The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History
of Technology, Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and T. J. Pinch (eds), (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1987), p. 114.
82 Latour, Science in Action, p. 180.
83 Building Research Advisory Board, Weather and the Building Industry; a Research Correlation
Conference on Climatological Research and Its Impact on Building Design, Construction, Materials
and Equipment, National Academy of Science, January 11 and 12, 1950 (Washington: Building
Research Advisory Board, Division of Engineering and Industrial Research, National Research
Council, 1950).
84 See Le Roux, op. cit.; Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, “The suppression and rethinking of
regionalism and tropicalism after 1945,” in Tropical Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age
of Globalization, Alexander Tzonis, Bruno Stagno, and Liane Lefaivre (eds), (Chichester: Wiley-
Academic, 2001).
85 See Chang, “A genealogy of tropical architecture”; King, The Bungalow.
86 See, for example, David Arnold, The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture and European
Expansion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 141–68; Felix Driver and Brenda S. A. Yeoh, “Constructing
the tropics: introduction,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 21, no. 1 (2000).
87 Walter A. Taylor, “Regional climate analyses and design data,” in The House Beautiful Climate
Control Project: Regional Climate Analyses and Design Data, American Institute of Architects
(ed.) (Washington: American Institute of Architects, 1949–52), p. 556.
88 PRO CO937/365, The Role of Meteorology and Climatology in Tropical Building and Housing.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid.
92 Ibid.
93 George Anthony Atkinson, “Warm climates and building design,” Colonial Building Notes, 12,
April (1953).
94 Latour, Science in Action. See also the literature in science technology studies and actor network
theory, for example, T. J. Pinch, Thomas Parke Hughes, and Wiebe E. Bijker (eds), The Social
Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of
Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).
95 Editors, “Editorial: Commonwealth 2,” Architectural Review, 127 (1960).
96 Much has been written about the problems of critical regionalism. Especially notable for critical
regionalism in the context of the developing countries are Mark Crinson, “Singapore’s moment:
critical regionalism, its colonial roots and profound aftermaths,” The Journal of Architecture, 13,
no. 5 (2008); Keith L. Eggener, “Placing resistance: a critique of critical regionalism,” Journal of
Architectural Education, 55, no. 4 (2002).
234
Building a Colonial Technoscientific Network
97 See, for example, the essays in Alexander Tzonis, Bruno Stagno, and Liane Lefaivre (eds), Tropical
Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization (Chichester: Wiley-Academic, 2001).
98 Kenneth Frampton, “Towards a critical regionalism: six points for an architecture of resistance,”
in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, Hal Foster (ed.) (New York: New Press,
1998 [1983]).
99 See, for example, Le Roux, op. cit.
100 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction into Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 173–90.
101 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition
Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
102 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p.
117.
103 Sibel Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early
Republic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001).
104 Arindam Dutta, “Review of Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2003),” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 67, no. 2 (2008), p. 293.
105 See, for example, Chang, “Tropicalising technologies of environment and government”; Stephen
Legg, Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities (Malden: Blackwell, 2007).
235
Chapter 10
Climate responsive design was central to the Third Worldist practice of Tropical
Architecture during the 1950s and 1960s. However, climate responsiveness,
which meant designing a building climate specifically so that it could function
with minimum or no mechanical conditioning, seemed redundant to European
and North American architects. In particular, Peter and Alison Smithson, who
established themselves as the new generation of British postwar architects with
the Hunstanton School in 1949, were critical of the climate responsive design
method of Tropical Architecture. In 1960, in an article titled “The function of
architecture in cultures-in-change” in the journal Architectural Design, they
addressed the problem of generating architectural form in the tropics, which
were going through rapid modernization. They wrote:
236
Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture
237
Vandana Baweja
colonial hygiene manuals. From the 1930s through the 1950s, Tropical
Architecture established its disciplinary home in the field of architecture through
a number of inter-colonial conferences held globally, not only in the imperial
capitals such as Paris, Lisbon, Washington, D.C., and London, but also in the
former and existing colonies, such as India, Uganda, and Nairobi. The first
conference on Tropical Architecture was organized in Paris under the chairmanship
of Henri Prost and Marshall Lyautey.6 The International Federation organized the
next conference on Tropical Architecture for Housing and Planning in Mexico.7
These interwar conferences served as a forum of exchange for colonial architects
and planners and facilitated the establishment of Tropical Architecture as an
institutionally endorsed architectural discipline.
In the 1950s, Tropical Architecture completely migrated from the
discipline of hygiene to architecture and was recast as Modernism for the tropics,
which were largely the decolonizing and decolonized zones of the British and
French Empires. In its 1950s and 1960s incarnation, Tropical Architecture became
a Modernist movement that was based largely on the notion that Modern
Architecture in the Third World tropics should be based on climate responsive
design. Architects practicing in the Third World tropics were aware that they
could use mechanical means of climate control, but the economic conditions in
the Third World tropical countries made mechanical conditioning unaffordable.
The most significant practicing architects and educators in the field of postwar
Tropical Architecture included Otto Koenisgberger, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry,
Geoffrey Bawa, Fello Atkinson, George Atkinson, and Leo De Syllas.
In 1954, the AA School of Architecture in London became the
first school of architecture to establish a department dedicated to Tropical
Architecture. In the 1950s and 1960s, as most of the former colonial tropics were
reconstituted as the “Third World,” Tropical Architecture flourished as a climate
responsive design movement in the Third World along the networks of the
British Empire.8
This chapter shows how ideas developed through a Third Worldist
architectural movement impacted the work of Peter and Alison Smithson in
London long after the demise of the Empire and Tropical Architecture movement
in the early 1970s. I propose that Otto Koenigsberger, one of the key players in
the Department of Tropical Architecture at the AA, influenced the Smithsons in
changing their ideas about the relationship between climate and architecture.
Otto Koenigsberger
Climate responsiveness had different and changing meanings for Koenigsberger
and the Smithsons. In order to convey the impact of Tropical Architecture on the
Smithsons, I would like to present Koenigsberger’s career trajectory to show
how it intersected with the Smithsons’ career, vis-à-vis the relationship between
climate and architecture. As one of the founders of the Department of Tropical
Architecture at the Architectural Association, Koenigsberger established himself
238
Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture
239
Vandana Baweja
240
Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture
which the building would be ventilated during the hours when the studio was not
on air. The studio has double glazed ventilators placed at high level, yet accessible
by attendants. The shutters were opened when the studio was off air, but closed
for the brief time that the studio went on air. He recorded his AIR project as an
example of how architectural form ought to be generated according to climatic
requirements. This project furthered Koenigsberger’s interest in theorizing
climate responsive architecture as a balancing act between contradictory design
requirements, such as how to let in light and fresh air without compromising the
acoustical requirements. In India, he was forced to work with what we now call
passive technologies, using renewable sources of energy such as wind and
natural light.
To use passive techniques in order to design for conflicting
requirements, such as letting in breeze without excessive light, would be a
recurring theme in Tropical Architecture later in London. This kind of contradiction
frequently constituted studio design problems at the AA later. After his experience
in India, Koenigsberger would always practice universal energy conservation as a
principle, not just as a specific design requirement. Even in places like Kuwait,
where energy was abundant and cheap, he always recommended passive design
techniques to conserve energy.
241
Vandana Baweja
242
Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture
At the level of the home, the Smithsons elaborated how English architecture
could be tropicalized or follow the principles of Tropical Architecture through
climate responsiveness. They wrote:
243
Vandana Baweja
But our climate would seem to demand that the circulation between
such things as shops, places of entertainment, municipal offices, etc.
should take place under cover. And if we have cars we want to be able
to use them for just those things that take place at the centre. The big
hotel with its foyers, shops, restaurants, palm courts, etc. under
centralized control and with adequate parking arrangements is the
prototype for this type of indoor centre.30
244
Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture
245
Vandana Baweja
Figure 2
Axonometric of Kuwait
Mat-Building showing
the courtyards. Source:
Redrawn by Simon
Barrow based on an
axonometric of the
Kuwait Mat-Building
published in Alison and
Peter Smithson, The
Charged Void –
Architecture (New York:
Monacelli Press, 2001).
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Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture
Figure 3
A sketch of a section
through the courtyard
showing the stepped
profile of the Kuwait
Mat-Building, 1969.
Source: Redrawn by
Simon Barrow, based
on a sketch by Peter
and Alison Smithson
published in Alison and
Peter Smithson, The
Charged Void –
Architecture (New York:
Monacelli Press, 2001).
Koenigsberger calculated the sun penetration into the interstitial spaces within
the building for four possible orientation angles: 0°, 22.5°, 40°, and 67.5°. These
calculations were made by a series of sun diagrams which calculated the width
of the sun-patch for each angle to determine the best possible orientation for the
Kuwait complex (Figure 4).
Students of the Tropical Department used climatic data to calculate
wall thickness, window openings, ventilation methods, and other passive
methods to arrive at architectural solutions. The climatic data included
geographical coordinates such as latitude, longitude, and altitude, and
meteorological data such as annual range of temperature, daily range of
temperature, rainfall pattern, and wind flow patterns.35 The architectural
presentations of the tropical students were distinguished from the other AA
students’ work by the juxtaposition of visual representations of climatic data in
the form of solar path diagrams, wind flow diagrams, and rainfall charts, which
rationalized architectural form in terms of climate and gave Tropical Architecture
its distinct identity as climate responsive design.
In the case of the Kuwait Mat project, the Smithsons claimed that they
approached the design problem with the intention of grounding the building in its
Kuwaiti context through cultural and climatic responsiveness, which was a
departure from their reliance on total mechanical conditioning. Koenigsberger’s
design objective as a climate consultant to the Kuwait Mat project was to cut
down on energy expenditure. The Smithsons followed Koenigsberger’s advice to
approach design as a climatic problem and adopted most of the design solutions
suggested by him, including orientation, the stepped profile of the buildings, and
shaded walkways. In the process, the Smithsons privileged climate
responsiveness to determine architectural form and contradicted their 1960
statement, in which they had remarked that any building form could be
mechanically conditioned to achieve physiological comfort anywhere, so long as
it responded to the culture of the place. Their notions of climate responsiveness
and cultural responsiveness had somewhat merged in the Kuwait Mat project.
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Vandana Baweja
Figure 4
Sun diagrams for
Kuwait Mat-Building.
Source: Redrawn by
Simon Barrow, based
on sun diagrams
published in Tropical
Advisory Service,
“Climate analysis and
design
recommendations for
Kuwait Old City”
(London, prepared for
Peter and Alison
Smithson by Tropical
Advisory Service,
Department of Tropical
Architecture,
Architectural
Association School of
Architecture).
248
Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture
The sun diagrams of the Bath project determined the orientation and the location
of rooms within the building (Figure 5). The Smithsons adopted what they called
a “delta” plan, which would let in the sun into the southeast and southwest
facing rooms. In sun-facing rooms, the Smithsons located the teachers’ and
administrators’ rooms, where people were likely to spend more time. In the
zig-zag surface of the building, facing northeast and northwest, the Smithsons
located large teaching rooms, in which teaching time was short and the sun
would interfere with activities of the classroom.
In the Second Arts Building, University of Bath, the Smithsons
presented solar path diagrams in a presentation style which was typical of
249
Vandana Baweja
Tropical Architects. They claimed that they chose the orientation of the building Figure 5
after careful analysis of the sun diagrams to ensure that the building got the Sun diagrams for
second arts building at
maximum amount of sun. Clearly, the Smithsons had adopted the climatic
Bath. Source: Redrawn
responsive design methods of the Tropical Department. Although there was no by Simon Barrow based
objective to conserve energy in the Second Arts Building, and no compulsion to on sun diagrams
design with the climate, the Smithsons nevertheless made extensive sun published in Lorenzo
diagram studies to determine the location of the rooms based on their function Wong, Climate Register:
Four Works by Alison
and building orientation.
and Peter Smithson
Likewise, in their 1986 project for the Lutzowstrasse housing in Berlin,
(London: Architectural
the Smithsons used the term “sun consciousness” and placed the terraces on Association, 1994), p.
the south side of the building to get the maximum amount of sun. The Smithsons’ 47.
idea of climatic design changed over the course of their career and eventually
aligned with that of the Third Worldist praxis of Tropical Architecture.
While I have focused on the work of the Smithsons and their
relationship to Tropical Architecture, I want to end this chapter by addressing
how a Third Worldist discourse such as Tropical Architecture was eventually
subsumed into global discourses such as Solar Architecture and Sustainable
Architecture.
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Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture
251
Vandana Baweja
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Robert Fishman at the University of Michigan for his advice;
Duanfang Lu for her patience and generosity with her feedback; the Architectural
Association School of Architecture for letting me access their archives; Renate
Koenisgberger, the widow of Otto Koenisberger, for letting me access the private
papers of Otto Koenisgberger in London; and Mary Daniels and Ines Zalduendo
at the Special Collections Department at the Frances Loeb Library in the Graduate
School of Design at Harvard University, for letting me access the Smithson
archive.
Notes
252
Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture
4 Felix Driver and Brenda Yeoh, “Constructing the tropics: introduction,” Singapore Journal of
Tropical Geography, 21, no. 1 (2000), pp. 1–5.
5 David Arnold, “‘Illusory riches’: representations of the Tropical World, 1840–1950,” Singapore
Journal of Tropical Geography, 21, no. 1 (2000), pp. 6–18.
6 Jean Royer, L’Urbanisme aux colonies et dans les pays tropicaux; communications et rapports du
Congrès International de l’Urbanisme aux Colonies et dans les Pays de Latitude Intertropicale,
Congrès International de l’Urbanisme aux Colonies et dans les Pays de Latitude Intertropicale (La
Charité-sur-Loire: Delayance, 1932).
7 International Federation for Housing and Planning, Papers and Reports: XVI International Housing
and Town Planning Congress, Mexico, 1938 (Bruxelles: International Federation for Housing and
Planning, 1938).
8 Hannah Le Roux, “The networks of Tropical Architecture,” The Journal of Architecture, 8, no. 3
(2003), pp. 337–54.
9 Otto H. Koenigsberger, Die Konstruktion der Ägyptischen Tür (Glückstadt: Verlag von J. J.
Augustin, 1936).
10 See Otto H. Koenigsberger, “Jamshedpur Development Plan” (Bombay: Tata Iron and Steel
Company, 1945).
11 See Ravi Kalia, Bhubaneswar: From a Temple Town to a Capital City (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1994).
12 Otto H. Koenigsberger, “New Towns in India,” The Town Planning Review, 23, no. 2 (1952), pp.
94–132.
13 Otto H. Koenigsberger et al., Manual of Tropical Housing and Building (London: Longman, 1974).
14 Jeffrey Cook, “Six evolutionary phases toward solar architecture: thermal application of solar
energy in buildings,” in Solar World Congress: Proceedings of the Eighth Biennial Congress of the
International Solar Energy Society, Perth, 14–19 August, 1983, ed. International Solar Energy
Society and S. V. Szokolay (Oxford [Oxfordshire]; New York: Pergamon Press, 1984), pp. 4–15.
15 Victor Olgyay, Design with Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963).
16 See Adam Ward Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of
American Environmentalism, Studies in Environment and History (Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2001).
17 See Journal of Architectural Education, vol. 30 no. 3, Energy and Architecture (1977).
18 Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2003); Hannah Le Roux, op. cit.
19 Cook, op. cit.
20 Vandana Baweja, “A Pre-History of Green Architecture: Otto Koenigsberger and Tropical
Architecture, from Princely Mysore to Post-Colonial London (University of Michigan, 2008).”
21 Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment (London; Chicago:
Architectural Press; University of Chicago 1973), pp. 18–28.
22 Tropical Advisory Service, “British High Commission, Islamabad: Climatic Design Report”
(London, prepared for the Ministry of Public Building and Works, London by Tropical Advisory
Service, Department of Tropical Studies, Architectural Association School of Architecture
1965–6).
23 Colin Porteus, “Green trail to now – ecology vs economy,” in The New Eco-Architecture:
Alternatives from the Modern Movement (London and New York: Spon Press, 2002), pp. 121–5.
24 Banham, op. cit.
25 Alison and Peter Smithson, “Collective housing in Morocco,” Architectural Design, 25 (January
1955), pp. 2–7.
26 Monique Eleb, “An alternative to functionalist universalism: Ecohard, Candilis, and Atbat-Afrique,”
in Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, ed. Sarah Goldhagen
and Rejean Legault (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 25–54.
253
Vandana Baweja
27 Alison and Peter Smithson, “An alternative to the garden city idea,” Architectural Design, 26, no.
7 (July 1956), pp. 229–31.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Alison and Peter Smithson, “The function of architecture in cultures-in-change.”
32 W. A. Henderson et al., “Annual exhibition of school work,” Architectural Association Journal, vol.
71 (September/October 1955), pp. 66–73.
33 Tropical Advisory Service, “Climate analysis and design recommendations for Kuwait Old City”
(London, prepared for Peter and Alison Smithson by Tropical Advisory Service, Department of
Tropical Architecture, Architectural Association School of Architecture 1969).
34 Ibid.
35 George Anthony Atkinson, “Mass housing in rapidly developing tropical areas,” Town Planning
Review, vol. 31, no. 2 (1960), pp. 85–102.
36 Tropical Advisory Service, op. cit.
37 Wong, Climate Register: Four Works by Alison and Peter Smithson.
38 Ibid.
39 Peter Smithson, “Bath walks within the walls: a study of Bath as a built-form taken over by other
uses,” Architectural Design, 39, no. 10 (Oct 1969), pp. 554–64.
40 Koenigsberger et al., op. cit.
41 Vandana Baweja, “A Pre-History of Green Architecture: Otto Koenigsberger and Tropical
Architecture, from Princely Mysore to Post-Colonial London (University of Michigan, 2008).”
42 See S. Szokolay, Solar Energy and Building (London, New York: Architectural Press; Halsted Press
Division Wiley, 1975), World Solar Architecture (London, New York: Architectural Press; Halsted
Press, 1980), Architecture and Climate Change (Red Hill A.C.T.: Royal Australian Institute of
Architects Education Division, 1992), Introduction to Architectural Science: The Basis of
Sustainable Design (Amsterdam; London: Architectural 2008); Cook, op. cit.
43 See Harris J. Sobin, “3 museums,” Architectural Association Journal, vol. 77, no. 860 (March
1962), pp. 209–15.
44 Salman S. Minhas, “Kamil Khan Mumtaz: the grand master of traditional & green architecture in
Pakistan,” The-south-asian.com, October 2004, 1–4.
45 Koenigsberger et al., op. cit.
254
Chapter 11
Recently, with the much talked about rise of China and India, and their imminent
location in the pantheon of super-powers, I have increasingly found that
conversations between Indian origin “native informants” such as myself and my
Chinese counterparts often turn to speculation and contestation on issues such
as: “Is globalization good for the cities of India and China?”, “Is there a genuine
local architecture and urbanism emerging in Asia?”, “Must sustainability and
energy efficiency be the new mantras of development?”, “Who is doing better
– China or India?” and, of course, “What can our role be as US-based architect-
academics in influencing and participating in this new development?”1 In one
such conversation, when I was bemoaning the need for us to break free of the
persistent circuit of debates of the “global versus the local,” the “universal
versus the regional” type, a Chinese colleague suggested that what he was
interested in was thinking about architecture of the “New Third World.”2 While
our conversation did not advance into specifics, I was intrigued by his renewal of
the term “Third World” with the prefix “New” – a move to re-don that tattered
old title, that generally signals economic deprivation, as the title for asserting new
found power under globalization. As the act of recasting a former slur as a badge
of honor, the idea of a “New Third World” could be understood as a genuinely
postcolonial act, if being postcolonial is described as the work of inverting and
reinscribing colonial ideologies in the service of the postcolonies rather than the
metropolitan centers. The backwardness of the colonized world was described
by colonial ideology as a consequence of the inherent civilizational backwardness,
255
Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh
rather than the specific cause of two-plus centuries of colonial deprivation that
had resulted in the creation of the poverty of the postcolonial Third World.
Re-wearing the badge of poverty with the “New” prefix, thus, insists on seeing
the postcolonial world’s new accession to power on the world stage as a revising
of history, rather than a completion of the colonial project by discarding that
supposed backwardness and “opening up” to Western style capitalism/
civilization.
The project of what the architecture of this “New Third World” might
specifically look like must remain latent in this essay. By way of preparation for
this project, here I am interested in unpacking aspects of the term “Third World”
and in particular its relationships with its suffix “modernism.” The term “Third
World Modernism” purports to describe a “modernism” that is specific to, or
belongs to, the “Third World.” I am interested in “modernism” as a term and an
ideology because from the very outset it signals a civilizational claim, authorized
by the European Enlightenment, about the superiority and accomplishments of
modern Western civilization. What does it mean to claim “modernism” for the
“Third World”? While I recognize that “modernism” is hardly a term that is
uncontested, in this essay I am using “modernism” as the normative that is
usually used to describe the modern movement in architecture or just modern
architecture.3 I am in sympathy but in contestatory relationship with the claims of
“alternative modernisms” or “many modernisms,” the claim that modern
architecture took many forms world-wide each of which must be recognized for
its own, unique distinctiveness.4 While I am sympathetic to critiques of
metropolitan discourses that inevitably locate non-Euro-American modernism as
only secondary derivatives of a mythologized Eurocentric canon, I am here
interested in describing not so much the distinctiveness of a Third World
Modernism (which it inevitably always possesses) but rather in tracking the
manner in which modernism “itself” is deployed in the various theaters of
decolonization, including the so-called Third World.
In this essay I begin by reviewing a history of the term “Third World”
as a political claim, and then offer a reading of a Third World Modernism using the
making of Chandigarh as a case study. Finally, I hazard some notes on the
theoretical work that would be needed to develop a more generalized theory of
what might be called a New Third World modernism.
256
Epilogue: Third World Modernism, or Just Modernism
nations, however, are never attributed by those descriptors but others such as
“The West,” the “Developed World,” “G8,” and so on. The reason why the
developed nations of the First/Second worlds are not known by those terms is
because the term “Third World” did not come into being as a derivative of a First
and Second Worlds, but as its own third alternative. It came into being in the
context of the Cold War, as a global marker of resistance and difference. In the
1950s, when the Cold War was heating up between the USA and the former
USSR and their allies, the geo-politics of the world were often described in terms
of the “Two Worlds” theory,5 that is, as being split up between two political
perspectives, that of the capitalist world and the communist world, both vying for
legitimacy and domination in the post Second World War, postcolonial world. As
a new kind of world war, from which no nation on Earth could strictly be said to
be immune as a consequence of the global or “inter-continental” reach of new
weaponry, all the nations of the world were expected to align with one “world”
or the other. It was in this context that a series of nations first met in Bandung,
Indonesia on April 18–24 1955 and by rejecting the bi-polar choices of the two
world theory, chose to remain non-aligned with either of the capitalist or the
communist worlds. Instead, they proposed the creation of a third perspective, a
third alternative against the bi-polar choices of the two-worlds theory. This third
alternative came to be known as the “Third World” alternative.6
The Bandung Conference, also known as the Afro-Asian Conference,
was convened collectively by Indonesia, Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and India,
with Indonesia’s President Sukarno the instigator and host of the event. The
immediate cause for the conference was the continued occupation of West New
Guinea by the Dutch, which Sukarno claimed, with the support of convening
countries, as belonging to Indonesia.7 The official stated goal of the Bandung
Conference was to promote collaboration and cooperation amongst the older and
recently independent nations of Asia and Africa, thereby encouraging self-reliance
and reducing their continued dependence on the former colonial powers. Quickly,
however, the agenda of the conference turned to broader issues, instigated by the
West New Guinea issue. The majority of the conference was dedicated to
denouncing the acts of what were perceived as new colonial powers of the time,
that is, the USA and the USSR. The conference delegates denounced the
non-consultative, dictatorial policies of what were described as the “neo-colonial”
powers that were seen as using their undisputed status as rival military powers to
coerce and bully the rest of the world to join their respective blocs.8 The conference
broadly condemned “colonialism in all of its manifestations” and adopted a set of
ten principles based on those of the UN Charter emphasizing national sovereignty
and negotiated resolution of disputes and abjuring arrangements of collective
defense of the kinds sought by the USA and the USSR.9
The Third World therefore began essentially as a theory or a statement
of principles whose main purport can be described as being pacifist and anti-big
power alliances. The kernel for the principles of the Bandung Conference was
based on an agreement over Tibet between China and India that was crafted
257
Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh
between Zhao En-lai, the Premier of the new Republic of China, and Jawaharlal
Nehru, the first Prime Minister of the newly independent India. Known as the
“Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” or Panchsheel, these principles stood at
the head of a more detailed treaty on trade and cultural exchanges between Tibet
and India. The principles were: mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity
and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in domestic
affairs, equality and mutual benefit and, most importantly, peaceful co-existence.10
In June 1954, just a year before the Bandung Conference, Jawaharlal Nehru and
Zhou En-lai met for three days in New Delhi. The value of extending the Panchsheel
agreement beyond India and China into a generalized “area of peace” based on
non-aggression and neutrality, was first developed in their conversations at this
meeting.11 Both Nehru and Zhou En-lai were deeply cognizant of the regional “big
power” status of their respective nations, and committed themselves to developing
an “area of peace” in South-East Asia by not building defensive alliances in the
region and by offering similar treaties to the other countries in the region, especially
Burma, Indonesia, Cambodia, Ceylon, and Afghanistan. They envisioned that this
zone could emerge as a bulwark against Cold War alliances, and project China and
India as leaders in an alternative global perspective.12
Fresh from his conversations with Zhou En-lai, Nehru played an
important part in laying down the ideological framework at the Bandung
Conference. When a proposal was also advanced that a new power under India’s
leadership be created, Nehru refused, underlining his commitment to
non-alignment as a principled stance rather than a political alliance.13 For Nehru,
the very concept of “pacts” was questionable. “I submit to you,” he noted:
[E]very pact has brought insecurity and not security to the countries
which have entered into them. They have brought the danger of atomic
bombs and the rest of it nearer to them than would have been the
case otherwise. They have not added to the strength of any country, I
submit, which it had singly. It may have produced some idea of
security, but it is a false security. It is a bad thing for any country thus
to be lulled into security...14
Nehru articulated his position as that of not wishing to align with any one group,
not just in terms of defensive alliance, but also in terms of ideological positions.
“We do not agree with the communist teachings,” he noted, and “we do not
agree with the anti-communist teachings, because they are both based on wrong
principles.” For Nehru, the critical thing was to truly assert independence from
the former colonial powers, to no longer be “hangers-on,” and make a show of
independent thinking:
[A]re we, the countries of Asia and Africa, devoid of any positive
position except being pro-communist or anti-communist? Has it come
to this, that the leaders of thought who have given religions and all
258
Epilogue: Third World Modernism, or Just Modernism
kinds of things to the world have to tag on to this kind of group or that
and be hangers-on of this party or the other carrying out their wishes
and occasionally giving an idea? It is most degrading and humiliating to
any self-respecting people or nation. It is an intolerable thought to me
that the great countries of Asia and Africa should come out of bondage
into freedom only to degrade themselves or humiliate themselves in
this way...15
259
Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh
While its principled stance made heroes out of its initiators in their
home countries such as India, NAM had negligible influence on the development
and eventual victory of the capitalist bloc. As it was, it was mostly the largely
under-developed nations that joined the Non Aligned Movement, so that, in
common parlance, the term “Third World,” from being an explicitly political term
that expressed a stance of principled opposition, came to be known as an
economic term, descriptive of the poor or under-developed, often euphemized as
the “developing” world.
Today, the Third World is usually referred to as the “Global South,” an
alternate reference produced to counter the discourses, generally organized
around the rubric “globalization,” that describe the new economic logics of the
post-Cold War world. The Global South, thus, can be said to be the new name of
the Third Worldist position, used primarily as an economic descriptor. Discourses
on globalization tend to traverse familiar themes such as neo-imperialism,
transnationalism and regionalization, while those of the Global South generally
tend to focus on the local, in particular the role of the not-for-profit non
governmental sector and their work in stewarding “change from below.”19 In
both of these, the status of the autonomous, independent nation state is routinely
undermined, a long way from the principled alliance of the kind proposed by
NAM.20 In this global versus local context, a renewed focus on a New Third World,
which by now must be clear that it begins as a historical project, offers the
possibility of re-thinking the status of the nation state, and alliances of nation
states, not as an economic alliance negotiating at Davos, but as something of a
not global–local entity, responsible to its citizenry.21
260
Epilogue: Third World Modernism, or Just Modernism
261
Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh
262
Epilogue: Third World Modernism, or Just Modernism
Figure 1
Hostel of the Panjab
Agricultural University,
Ludhiana by Aditya
Prakash, 1964, in
“Chandigarh style”
Indian modernism.
Courtesy of The Aditya
Prakash Foundation,
Chandigarh.
263
Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh
Figure 2
Nehru visiting the PAU
Hostel, c. 1964.
Courtesy of The Aditya
Prakash Foundation,
Chandigarh.
of the European sun that shone its light throughout the world, but as a global
process that lumbered into being as a polycentric network, rather than a unifocal
spread.35 Conceived as such, an Indian modernism is both inextricably linked to
global modernism and is uniquely located in the history of India and its Third-
Worldist non-aligned aspirations. As a global event, verified more in the colonies
than in the metropolitan centers, it is a decentered rendition of the history of
264
Epilogue: Third World Modernism, or Just Modernism
modernism, that makes modernism a global heritage, at once as much, and in the
counter-colonial register, more Indian than Western.
265
Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh
not alternative in the explicitly political sense, but only in the intra-disciplinary
sense of an alternative formal expression.39 But if one wants to preserve the
political import of an architecture of the Third World (economic asymmetry,
political alternative), it would be necessary to insist on the reading of the Third
World first as a historical category and only then in formal and other terms. This
history-first reading of the “Third World” can of course lead us back to the
discourses of economic marginality and/or alternative world visions, but here I
would like to move towards another reading by returning to the discussion of
modernism and universality.
One of the implications of situating modernism’s universality as the
specific inheritance of the West is that it produces asymmetry in readings of
universality. When one views it from the “First World” or non-Third World
context, the universal can surely be particularized as in Regional Modernism. But
when one views it from within the context of the Third World, universal
modernism as just-modernism, is first Western modernism. It is as such already
“localized” or particularized. Universality itself is already localized, a consequence
of the fact that modernism was conceived in the crucible of colonization. It is, in
other words, already a “local modernism” and inevitably so. Thus from the point
of view of the Third World, the task of defining a Third World modernism as a
postcolonial act, I would argue, can simply be construed as the project of creating
symmetry (or of undoing colonial asymmetry): as there is a Western modernism,
there can also be a Third World modernism, not as a derivative project, but as an
equivalent project. As an equivalent project, modernism claimed universality
does not have to be bracketed with a nod towards an insistent localism. Rather,
by seeing all modernisms as always already local, we can instead bracket the
discourse of primary and derivative modernisms, and move towards a new
horizon where the universal only exists as the particular, not as the derivative
particularization of a universal type, but as the universal itself.
The point here, in terms of a globalized reading of the history of modern
architecture, is to try to move towards a horizon where the asymmetries in the
postcolonial reading of modernism can be productively drawn into dialogue with
the more disciplinary reading of modernism as the negotiation between the
universal and the particular. This work, I would suggest, points towards the
direction of what in recent art history is being called cosmopolitan modernism. As
Partha Mitter describes it, this is an effort to “shift the center of gravity from the
original discourse to a more heterogeneous definition of global modernism …
this calls into question the purity of the modernist canon and the consequent
imputation of the derivative character of the periphery.”40 Rather than thinking of
modernism as a “closed system of discourse,” which can admit new modernist
discourses at best only as derivative discourses derived from a master narrative,
it is more productive, I would suggest, to think of “just modernism” itself as the
concatenation of multiple local discourses that enumerates and promotes a
worldwide modernism replete with “plurality, heterogeneity and difference.”41 In
this work it is precisely modernism’s core claim to universality that is its crucial
266
Epilogue: Third World Modernism, or Just Modernism
component; that is, not universality that has been circumscribed, sublated or
transformed through a negotiation with locality or the region or the individual, but
universality as such. Or, what Anthony Appiah celebrates as everyone’s “right to
share the common human heritage.”42 This is not however to champion the
abstract universal individual as an ideal, but rather to attach the notion “universality
of the human experience,” like that of universal human rights; to precisely assert
the right of local lives to take control of their very local lives, not against
universality, but precisely in the name of universality – a process that James
Clifford calls “cosmopolitanism from below.”43
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Cheryl Gilge, Jiawen Hu, and Tyler Sprague, dedicated Ph.D.
students, for reading this paper and making valuable suggestions. Thanks also to
Duanfang Lu for the thankless task of compiling this volume.
Notes
1 Elsewhere I have offered an opinion on globalization and the Western academy in “Engaging
Asia: The Ear of the Other”, JAE: Journal of Architectural Education, 2010, vol. 61, no. 3, p. 78.
Duanfang Lu has suggested that the present essay be published as something of an “Epilogue”
to this book. Accordingly, I have inserted a more conversational tone into this essay, to keep
things open-ended.
2 Conversation with Yang Ho Chang, during the Critical Practice in a Globalizing World Symposium
held at the University of Washington, October 2006.
3 See for instance “Coda: Reconceptualizing the Modern” in Goldhagen, Sarah Williams, and
Réjean Legault, Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture.
Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2000.
4 See for instance Fraser, Valerie, Building the New World: Studies in the Modern Architecture of
Latin America 1930–1960. London: Verso, 2000.
5 See Dan Diner, Cataclysms: A History of the Twentieth Century from Europe’s Edge, University
of Wisconsin Press, 2007, p. 201.
6 Apparently the term “Third World” was first used by the French demographer Alfred Sauvy, in an
article published in L’Observateur, August 14 1952, where he used the term as derived from the
conception of the Third Estate, the commoners of France who, during the French Revolution,
opposed both priests and nobles, who were said to define the First and Second Estates.
Discussed in Mason, Mike, Development and Disorder: A History of the Third World since 1945.
Hanover N.H.: University Press of New England, 1997, p. 30.
7 The Bandung Conference was preceded by a series of Asian Relations Conferences: The Asian
Relations Conference, New Delhi, 1947; the Second Asian Relations Conference (on Indonesia),
New Delhi, January 1949; the First Colombo Powers Conference, Colombo, April 1954, and the
Second Colombo Powers Conference, Bogor, Indonesia, December 1954. Muthiah Alagappa,
Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features. Stanford, California: Stanford
University Press, 2003, p. 216.
8 Certainly the huge shadow at the Bandung Conference were the CENTO (Central Treaty
Organization) and SEATO (South East Asian Treaty Organization) that, at the initiative of the USA,
bound West Asian and South East Asian allies of the USA into a NATO style collective defense
agreement. CENTO was signed by Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, and the UK. CENTO was dissolved
in 1979. SEATO was signed by the US, the UK, France, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, New
267
Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh
Zealand, and Pakistan. SEATO was of course designed to counter the US perception of the
Communist threat in South East Asia, with Korea and Vietnam (Indo-China) as the focal theaters
of confrontation. SEATO was dissolved in 1977. For a discussion of the treaties and their role in
shaping the Third World see E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World,
1914–1991. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994, pp. 357–9.
9 These were: 1. Respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes and principles of the
charter of the United Nations; 2. Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations;
3. Recognition of the equality of all races and of the equality of all nations large and small; 4.
Abstention from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another country; 5. Respect
for the right of each nation to defend itself, singly or collectively, in conformity with the charter of
the United Nations; 6. (a) Abstention from the use of arrangements of collective defense to serve
any particular interests of the big powers; (b) Abstention by any country from exerting pressures
on other countries; 7. Refraining from acts or threats of aggression or the use of force against the
territorial integrity or political independence of any country; 8. Settlement of all international
disputes by peaceful means, such as negotiation, conciliation, arbitration, or judicial settlement as
well as other peaceful means of the parties’ own choice, in conformity with the charter of the
United Nations; 9. Promotion of mutual interests and cooperation; 10. Respect for justice and
international obligations. See Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions
and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 102.
10 From “Agreement between the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China on Trade
and Intercourse between Tibet Region of China and India,” http://www.claudearpi.net/
maintenance/uploaded_pics/ThePancheelAgreement.pdf accessed on March 4 2010.
11 From “Talks between Nehru and Zhou, June 1954,” http://www.claudearpi.net/maintenance/
uploaded_pics/195406VisitZhouinDelhi.pdf accessed on March 4 2010. This is the record of the
five sessions of conversation between Nehru and Zhou En-lai held from June 25 to 27 1954 in
New Delhi. The minutes of the conversations were maintained by T. N. Kaul, Joint Secretary,
Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.
12 For Nehru similar areas of peace could be developed in postcolonial Africa and West Asia, similar
postcolonial areas of the world facing an uncertain future in the Cold War climate. “Talks Between
Nehru and Zhou,” op. cit.
13 Darryl C. Thomas The Theory and Practice of Third World Solidarity. Westport, Connecticut:
Praeger Publisher, 2001, p. 72.
14 Jawaharlal Nehru, “Speech to the Bandung Conference Political Committee, 1955” in The Asian-
African Conference, ed. G. M. Kahim, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1956, pp. 64–72.
15 Ibid.
16 Famously the aircraft taking him to Bandung was sabotaged, killing all the members of his team.
Zhao En-lai had luckily boarded another aircraft.
17 The Indo-Chinese War made Panchsheel a symbol of mockery for the opposition in India.
18 See “Third World – Origins”, Science Encyclopedia, http://science.jrank.org/pages/11447/Third-
World-Origins.html, accessed March 5 2010.
19 Of course, the newest co-efficient of globalization is the environment, with climate change and
sustainability increasingly being defined as the new modernism of our times, with their sense of
a global human crisis with redemption offered by a technological fix authored by the West.
20 NAM conferences now actively have to address the question of their continued relevance, now
that the Cold War is deemed to have ended.
21 As I noted before, this work of course remains to be done.
22 When I moved to the United States in the 1980s, I was constantly surprised how often even my
academic audiences had never heard of NAM, far less of India’s role in it, just as they were not
well aware of any legitimate Third World Modernism, other than the great works of Le Corbusier
and Louis Kahn etc., which were largely conceived simply as extensions of their personal oeuvre.
268
Epilogue: Third World Modernism, or Just Modernism
23 One of the best summaries of the plurality of these discussions is captured in Lang, Jon T.,
Madhavi Desai, and Miki Desai, Architecture and Independence: the Search for Identity – India
1880 to 1980. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. The specific reference is on pp. 194–5, but
discussion from pp. 114–210 chronicles the various positions.
24 Quoted in S. C. Bhatt and Gopal K. Bhargava (eds), Land and the People of Indian States and
Union Territories, Chandigarh. Delhi: Kalpaz Publications, p. 54. Also quoted in the newspaper
Hindustan Times, New Delhi, July 8 1950. Though this quote by Nehru, in various iterations, can
be found on every pamphlet and publication on Chandigarh, I have still not been able to locate an
authoritative source from Nehru’s papers.
25 Similar synonymity between “modern” and “new” is found in multiple other sources, including
Fraser, op. cit., p. 4.
26 In a speech given at the Indian Institute of Engineers in 1959, for instance, Nehru claimed that the
British had managed to colonize India because Indian civilization had become fossilized. See
Jawaharlal Nehru, “Mr. Nehru on architecture,” Urban and Rural Planning Thought, vol. 2.2, April
1959, p. 49.
27 See C. V. J. Sharma (ed.), Modern Temples of India: Selected Speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru at
Irrigation and Power Projects. Delhi: Central Board of Irrigation and Power, 1989, pp. 40–9.
28 But not a reading of secularism as equality of the state with respect to all religions, which is how
secularism came to be defined in Nehruvian India, but in the more French or Western sense, in
that secularism means the disassociation and even public suppression of religious identity,
particularly as an expression of state.
29 For the “not yet” of historicism see the Introduction in Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing
Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference.Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University
Press, 2000, pp. 3–26.
30 One could juxtapose New Delhi and Chandigarh on the same page, as Stanislos von Moos does,
and suggest graphically a direct continuity between the colonial and the postcolonial acts, both as
expressions of Western architectural identities imported into Indian soil. And to a certain extent
this is of course certainly true, and one can simply note that New Delhi and Chandigarh are just
another chapter in the unfolding drama of global influences playing themselves out in the Indian
theatre. Moos, Stanislaus von,.Le Corbusier, Elements of a Synthesis. Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press, 1979, p. 259.
31 Later this claim to universality was re-presented as the highly disputed “International Style”
which came to stand for a certain contextless formalism. International as the transnational, I
would suggest, must be rigorously distinguished from international as the contextless.
32 Nehru, op. cit., p. 49.
33 That flourished until the mid-1970s, until postmodernism came into vogue, insisting on the
non-Indianness of modern architecture.
34 Cohen, Jean-Louis and Monique Eleb, Casablanca: Colonial Myths and Architectural Ventures.
New York: Monacelli Press, 2002.
35 An example of approaching architectural history from alternate “positions” can be found in Upton,
Dell, “Starting from Baalbek,” JSAH, December 2009, v. 68, n. 4, pp. 457–65.
36 Interestingly enough, the preliminary work of Matthew Nowicki in India was described by Lewis
Mumford as “a genuine universalism in which the warm, the intimate, the personal attributes of
a local culture would have mingled with the ideas and forms that are common to all men in our
time,” in “The Life, Teaching and Architecture of Matthew Nowicki,” Part III, Architectural
Record, August 1954, v. 116, p. 169.
37 Mitter, Partha, “Interventions – decentering Modernism: art history and avant-garde art from the
periphery,” The Art Bulletin, 90 (4): p. 535.
38 Which connects to attendant discourses on “tectonics” and such.
39 The mechanics that connect a formal expression to a politics, is of course something that remains
un-discussed here.
269
Vikramaˉditya Prakaˉsh
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276
Contributors
Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler teaches modern art and architectural history at Tel Aviv
University, Ben Gurion University and Sapir Academic College, Israel. Her research
has concentrated upon modern Israeli architecture and urbanism, and Orien-
talism in the arts. She has published papers on British Mandatory art and archi-
tecture and urbanism in Israel/Palestine.
277
Contributors
Sharif S. Kahatt holds a Master’s degree in Architecture and Urban Design from
Harvard GSD, a Master’s degree in Theory and History of Architecture from the
ETSAB, Barcelona, and a professional degree in Architecture from Ricardo Palma
University, Lima. He is currently completing a doctoral dissertation on design
strategies for collective housing in Lima at the ETSAB, Barcelona. He is an archi-
tect, urban designer and founder of K+M Arquitectura y Urbanismo, and has
taught in Peru, Spain, and the United States.
Anoma Pieris is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Plan-
ning at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of Hidden Hands
and Divided Landscapes: the Penal History of Singapore’s Plural Society (Univer-
sity of Hawaii Press, 2009); Imagining Modernity: The Architecture of Valentine
Gunasekara (2007); JCY: The Architecture of Jones Coulter Young (2005) and
co-author (with P. Goad) of New Directions in Tropical Asian Architecture (2005).
She has a B.Sc. (Built Env.) from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka; M.Arch.
and S.M.Arch.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D.
from the University of California, Berkeley.
278
Contributors
has published several papers and books including Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The
Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India (2002), A Global History of Architec-
ture (with Francis D. K. Ching and Mark Jarzombek, 2006) and Colonial Moderni-
ties: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon (co-edited
with Peter Scriver, 2007). Professor Prakāsh is currently working on “A New
History of the Architecture of India,” a multi-media, multi-format project intended
to put colonial histories of India finally to rest.
279
Index
Page references to Figures are in italic print, while references to Notes are followed by the letter ‘n’
281
Index
282
Index
283
Index
common sense modernism, 167–8, 170; “Desert of Modernity” exhibition (Berlin), 84n
criticism, 183; individualism within, 177–8; Design Group Nigeria, 133
learning from, 171–5 “Design Today in America and Europe” show
Commonwealth Experimental Station, Australia, (1959), 191, 195–200, 201
221 Dessau, Bauhaus school, 113, 119
Commonwealth Relations Office, and Colombo developed and underdeveloped countries, 216
Plan, 147 Development Planning Unit, UCL, 239, 251
Communism, image of, 48 developmentalism: in Brazil, 42–3, 45;
community structuring, 103 modernism as, 9–12
concrete, use of, 36, 37, 41, 45, 46, 126 Di Carlo, Gian Carlo, 78
Conkin, Alice, 82n Dieste, Eladio, 51, 56n
Conrads, Ulrich, 26n Diner, Dan, 267n
consumption, 170, 184n Dirlik, Arif, 27n
Contreras, Carlos, 170 Dominican Monastery, Ibadan, 133
Cook, Jeffrey, 253n Dorich, Luis, 86, 90, 91, 95, 97–101, 98, 107n,
Coomaraswamy, Ananda, 208n 108n, 109n, 110n
Cooper, Frederick, 231n, 232n Dostluk (Turkish newspaper), 168
Córdova, Adolfo, 86, 94, 102, 104, 106, 107n, double functioning of architecture, 184n
108n, 109n Drew, Jane, 17, 123, 124, 140n, 149, 211, 225,
CORPAC (Corporación Peruana de Aeropuertos y 230n, 238
Aviación Comercial), Peru, 87 Drewal, Margaret Thompson, 135n, 139n
Correa, Charles, 1, 155 Drexler, Arthur, 197, 208n
cosmopolitan modernism, 18, 255–67 Driver, Felix, 234n, 253n
Costa, Lucio, 33, 34, 40, 44, 53n, 54n, 151, 224 DSIR (Department of Science and Industrial
courtyard, Morocco, 79–80, 81 Research), 214, 215, 223
Cowan, Henry J., 222, 234n Dubrovnik, CIAM congress held in, 71, 102
CPA (Corporación Peruana del Amazonas), Peru, Dufton, A. F., 222
87 Dulles, John Foster, 191, 206n
CPS (Corporación Peruana del Santa), Peru, 87 Durell Stone, Edward, 149, 150
crafts and industrial objects debate, 200, 201 Dutt, Dinesh, 207n
Cranz, Gaelen, 202, 208n Dutta, Arindam, 143, 155, 162n, 163n, 208n, 229,
Crinson, Mark, 25n, 26n, 27n, 140n, 143, 162n, 235n
230n, 234n, 253n
critical regionalism, 21, 22, 227, 234n Eames, Charles, 110n, 170, 189, 201, 204, 209n
Crowley, John E., 208n Eames, Ray, 170, 189, 209n
Cruchaga, Miguel, 106 EAP (El Arquitecto Peruano), 90, 92, 103
Crysler, Greg, 28n, 230n Ecochard, Michel, 59–61, 67, 71, 73, 74, 76, 79,
Crystal Palace, 144 81, 83n, 84n; dismissal of (1952), 65;
cubic forms, 37 influence of, 62–5; Service of Urbanism see
Cubitt, James, 137n Service of Urbanism, Morocco
Cueto F, Carlos, 107n Ecole des Beaux Arts see Beaux Arts School,
Curtis, William J., 28n Casablanca
Edrich, Carol Gray, 230n
Da Costa Meyer, Esther, 44, 49, 55n Efrat, Zvi, 136n
Dai Nianci, 7, 8 Egbor, A. A., 118, 137n
Dalai Lama, 259 EGBORAMI Company, 118
Dammert, Alfredo, 98 Eggener, Keith L., 28n, 234n
dams, hydroelectric, 261 Eiffel Tower, 144
Danby, Miles, 230n El Arquitecto Peruano, 94
Daniel, Greata, 195 El Comercio, 94
Daniels, Mary, 106 Eldem, Sedad Hakki, 165, 168, 175, 176, 185n
Dasso, David, 108n Elderfield, John, 207n
Dawson, Layla, 64, 84n Eleb, Monique, 82n, 83n, 84n, 253n, 269n
De Syllas, Leo, 238 Elleh, Nnamdi, 138n
Deckker, Zilah Quezado, 54n Elliott, Simon, 106
Declaration of Human Rights, 71 Emmery, Pierre Andre, 59
decolonization of Asian nation-states, 142 ENI (Escuela Nacional de Ingeniería), Peru, 92
Demazière, Morocco, 66, 67, 72, 78 En-lai, Zhou, 258, 259, 268n
democratization of comfort, 198 Ensminger, Dr., 196
Department of Science and Industrial Research episteme, 228
(DSIR), 214, 215, 223 Erskine, Ralph, 71
Department of Tropical Architecture, Escobar, Arturo, 11, 27n, 231n, 232n
Architectural Association, 17, 211, 220, 237, Espacio en el Tiempo (Quesada), 92, 93, 94
238 Estado Novo (New State), 42
Derb Jdid housing project, Casablanca, 74–5, 76 Etchells, Frederick, 26n
Desai, Madhavi, 25n, 269n ethnic groups: Morocco, 64, 65; Nigeria, 114,
Desai, Miki, 25n, 269n 135n
284
Index
285
Index
Harvard University Graduate School of Design, (1959), 191, 195–200, 201; and Ford
101 Foundation, 7, 196–7, 207n; “International
Hassard, John, 233n Exhibition on Low Cost Housing (1954), 204;
Hausa-Fulani (ethnic group), 114, 135n Koenigsberger in Mysore, 240–1; mass
Havinden, Michael A., 231n, 232n production and consumption, 196–7, 200;
Havkin, Daniel, 137n modernism and Third World, 260–5;
Hayden, Corinne P., 233n postcolonial, and MoMA, 189–206;
Haynes, Douglas Melvin, 231n, 232n post-independence international trade,
Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 122, 124 193–4; relations with US, 191, 194; “Textiles
Hecker, Zvi, 120 and Ornamental Arts of India” show (1955),
Henderson, W. A., 254n 191–3; see also Chandigarh
Hennayake, Nalani, 157, 161, 163n, 164n Indian architecture, 155
Hensens, Jean, 76 Indianness, 194
Hentsch, Jean, 58 Indic architectural styles, 144
Hermassi, Elbaki, 25n individualism, within common sense modernism,
Hernandez, Felipe, 85–6, 106n 177–8
Hess, David J., 230n Indonesia: Bandung Conference see Bandung
Heynen, Hilde, 26n, 28n, 102, 110n, 135, 230n Conference (Afro-Asian Conference), 1955;
Hibbert, J. G., 231n indigenous traditions, 156, 157
high-rise buildings: Morocco, 74; Peru, 88; Ingersoll, T. G., 251
Singapore, 10 İnşaat ve Mimarlik Atölyesi (İMA), 166, 177
Hilton, Conrad, 11 Instituto de Urbanismo, Peru, 88, 90, 101
Hilton Hotel, Istanbul, 16, 167, 175, 180 “International Exhibition on Low Cost Housing
“Hiltonculuk,” 16, 165, 166, 167, 175, 176, (1954), 204
183 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 216
historian, role, 176–7 International Style architecture, 119, 155; in
Histradrut (Israeli Federation of Trade Unions), Turkey, 7, 167, 168, 175
116, 117 International Style, The (Hitchcock and Johnson),
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, 26n, 108n, 110n, 167, 108n
175, 183n, 184n Irbouh, Hamid, 84n
Hitler, Adolf, 239 Irwin, John, 192
Hobsbawm, E. J., 14, 27n, 268n Isaac, Harold R., 191, 206n
Hoddesdon, 8th CIAM congress, 60, 61, 82n Isenstadt, Sandy, 25n
Hoffenberg, Peter H., 206n, 209n Ismail, Sir Mirza, 239
Holford, William Graham, 213 Israel: Agricultural Cooperatives Headquarters,
Holm, Lonberg, 108n Tel Aviv, 126, 127; aid to developing
Holston, James, 25n countries, 116; declaration of State of (1948),
Home, Robert K., 231n 119; Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 122,
Hopper, J. R., 184n 124; isolation of, 115; National Master Plan,
“Horizontal Property Law,” Peru, 88 120; Productivity Institute, 118;
Horkheimer, Max, 20, 28n progressiveness, 116; socialism, 116; Soroka
Hosagrahar, Jyoti, 143 Medical Center, Beer-Sheba, 120, 122;
Housing Advisory Panel, 214 technical assistance programs, to Africa,
housing for the largest number see social 115–19; Technion Institute of Technology,
housing (housing for the largest number), Haifa, 120, 122, 124; and Third World, 140n;
Group GAMMA see also Sharon, Arieh; Sharon, Eldar
Howell, 60 Izenour, Steven, 163n
Huarochiri expedition, 103 Izmir: American Pavilion in, 168, 169; co-op
Hughes, Alice, 193 house plans, 179; International Fair (1957),
Hughes, Thomas Parke, 234n 168, 174
Hulusi, Ihap, 173
Hunstanton School, 236, 242 Jacobs, Jane M., 27n
hybridization, Peruvian, 85–6, 92, 103, 104 Jakarta, 156
Jarzombek, Mark, 170, 172, 179, 184n
Ibadan, University of, 114, 115, 124 Jaubert, Gaston, 71, 74
ideal, Plato’s notion of, 199 Jayakar, Pupul, 192, 195, 201
Idelson, Benjamin, 122 Jayatileke, Sumangala, 163n
Ife Shrines (Fabunmi), 129 Jeanneret, Pierre, 18, 149, 189, 190, 202, 203–4,
Ife University see Obafemi Awolowo University 209n
(OAU) Campus, Ile-Ife (Nigeria) Jeanneret-Griz, Charles-Édouard see Le
Imperial Agricultural Bureau, 215 Corbusier
Imperial Institute, 214 Jeffries, Sir Charles Joseph, 232n
Império, Flavio, 51 Jianfei, Zhu, 25n
India: American view of Indians, 191; ashram life, Johnson, Philip, 26n, 108n, 170
200; bureaucracy in, 200; Central Building Johnson, Randel, 52n
Research Station, 221; crafts tradition, 194; Johnstone, S. J., 231n
“Design Today in America and Europe” show Josic, 66
286
Index
JVP (Janata Vimukthi Peramuna), People’s Latour, Bruno, 212, 221, 222, 223, 228, 230n,
Liberation Front (Sri Lanka), 154, 158 233n, 234n, 235n
Laufer, Leopold, 136n, 140n
Kaçel, Elâ, 16, 165–83, 184n Law, John, 233n, 234n
Kahatt, Sharif S., 12, 85–106 Le Corbusier, 4, 23, 26n, 35, 38, 40, 55n, 68, 69,
Kahn, Louis, 23, 129, 149, 243, 268n 83n, 92, 94, 98, 99, 101, 102, 109n, 122, 149,
Kalia, Ravi, 253n 182, 189, 224, 268n; “Application of the
Karamental Studio, 180 Athens Charter” plenary session, 61; and
Karim, Farhan Sirajul, 18, 189–206 Jeanneret, 203; La Charte d’Athens, 108n; La
Kasbahs (Morocco), 66, 78 Tourette Convent, nr. Lyon, 127; and
Kassner, Lily, 135 Warchavchik, 33, 37
Kaufman, Edgar, Jr., 191–2, 198, 202, 208n Le Roux, Hannah, 133, 136n, 137n, 138n, 139n,
Kaul, T. N., 268n 140n, 230n, 234n, 253n
Kauntze, W. H., 231n Lea, Sir Frederick M., 218, 231n, 232n, 233n
Kenealy, Nancy, 193 Lecca, Gerardo, 109n
Kennedy, 84n Lee, Leo O., 28n
Kent, Kate P., 192, 206n, 209n Leeward Islands, 225
Kenyatta, Jomo, 116 Lefaivre, Liane, 28n, 234n, 235n
kibbutzim, 116 Lefèvre, Rodrigo, 51
Kim magazine, 176 Legault, Réjean, 19, 28n
King, Anthony D., 26n, 230n, 232n Lemos, Carlos, 33, 37, 40, 53n, 54n
Kingham, Norman, 231n Lerner, Daniel, 170–1, 172, 183n, 184n
Kirkham, Pat, 209n Levin, Ayala, 135
Kirsh, Karin, 26n, 209n Levin, Michael, 138n
Kluska, Walter, 230n Levin, R. I., 184n
knowledge: 4, 20, 23, 24, 25; local, 228, 230n; Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 54n
objective, 173; power-knowledge, Levitas, R., 27n
postcolonial network of, 213, 227–9; liberation movement, Morocco, 65
relational, 177, 184n; situated, 211; Lico, Gerard, 163n
technoscientific, 211–12, 216, 224, 226, 228; Liernur, Jorge F., 90, 107n
visual, 172, 184n Life, 174, 194
KocabaşoĠlu, U., 184n Lima, Zeuler, 48, 56n
Koch, Carl, 174 Lima Housing Plan, 88, 91, 96, 105
Kocher, A. Lawrence, 185n Linder, Paul, 94, 101, 107n, 109n
Kocher Weekend House, 182 lines, 37
Koenigsberger, Otto H., 17, 18, 149, 211, Lippsmeier, Georg, 230n
237–40, 242, 243, 245–9, 251, 253n; career/ Lira, José, 33, 35, 53n, 54n, 56n
achievements, 239–40; in Mysore, 240–1 Liu Yunhe, 28n
Koenigsberger, Renate, 252 Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, 214, 216
Kolsal, Ali, 185n living zoning, Athens Charter four function, 61,
Koral, Füreya, 180 83n
Kortan, Enis, 185n Llosa, Manuel B., 108n
Krämer, Kark, 136n Lobo, Carlos Gonzalez, 51, 56n
Krapf-Askari, Eva, 138n Lods, Marcel, 61
Kreinin, Mordechai E., 136n, 137n Loeffler, Jane C., 27n, 140n, 150, 163n
Krieger, Milton, 115, 135n, 136n, 139n London School of Tropical Medicine, 216
Krishna Murthy, K., 208n Lu, Duanfang, 1–25, 25n, 26n, 27n, 28n, 183,
Kruschev, Nikita, 144 206, 267
Kuan, Seng, 25n Ludena, Wiley, 97, 107n, 109n
Kubitschek, Juscelino, 42, 48, 55n Lughod, Abu, 64
Kulasinghe, A. N. S., 151 Lundy, Victor, 150
Kulasinghe, Jack, 159, 160, 164n Lutyens, Edwin, 144
Kushner, Marilyn, 162n Lutzowstrasse housing, Berlin, 250
Kusno, Abidin, 157, 163n Lyautey, Marshall, 238
Kuwait Mat Project, 237, 244, 245–9
Macchiavello, Carlos Morales, 90, 98, 108n, 110n
La Charte d’Athens (Le Corbusier), 108n Mackenzie, John M., 231n
La Cité, 61 Mackie, Jamie, 163n
La Tourette Convent, nr Lyon (Le Corbusier), MacLeod, Roy, 232n
127 Mahiyangana, Gam Udawa exhibition at, 158
Labor Party, Israel, 116 Mahoney, Carl, 252
Lai Chee Kien, 27n Maia, Prestes, 46
Laitin, David D., 135n de Maissonseult, Jean, 59
Lang, John T., 269n Malachowski B, Ricardo, 109n
Lang, Jon, 25n Malaya, Design and Research Branch, 221
Latin America: modernity in, 32, 33, 50, 85; see Malik, M. L., 209n
also Brazil; Peruvian Modern Project Al Mansour, Yacoub, 82n
287
Index
288
Index
289
Index
290
Index
291
Index
UNAM (Universidad Autónoma de México) immigration to Brazil, 34, 50, 51; as Ukrainian
campus buildings, 129–30 Jew, 56n
unidades vecinales (neighborhood units), 86, 91, Warchavchik, Mina, 38
95–7, 98, 105 “Weather and the Building Industry” conference
Union Internationale des Architectes, 73 (1950), 224
Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles, 61, 69, 83n Weerakoon, Jayathi, 152, 163n
United National Party, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, 147, Weese, Henry, 140n
153, 154, 161 Weisman, 108n
United Nations (UN), 268n Weiss, Daniel, 82n, 106
United States: Americanization of modernism, Weissenhofsiedlung, 5
16, 43, 85, 167; Bio-Climatic Architecture, Werkbund, 5
241; furniture industry, 198; and International West African Research Station, 215, 221
Style, 168; and modernism in Turkey, 170; Westad, Odd Arne, 268n
National Exhibition in Moscow, 145, 194; Western Pacific, 225
Pan-American Congress of Architecture, 101; Wharton, Annabel J., 10, 27n, 183n
postwar American architecture, 167; relations Wheeler, Monroe, 193, 206n
with India see under MoMA (Museum of Wiener, Paul Lester, 86, 88, 90–1, 92, 95–6, 97,
Modern Art), New York 107n, 108n, 109n
universal modernism, 22, 23 Williams, Carlos, 86, 104, 107n, 110n
University College London (UCL), Development Williams, Patrick, 135n, 140n
Planning Unit at, 239, 251 Williams, Raymond, 50–1, 56n
Urbanism Department, reform of administrative Williams, Richard, 25n, 52n
system (Ecochard), 63 Windsor-Liscombe, Rhodri, 230n
Urbanistic Legislation, 88 Winslow, Deborah, 163n
USIA (United States Information Agency), 194 Wirth, L., 184n
USIS (United States Information Service), 168, Wisnik, Guilherme, 54n
173 Wolf, Eric R., 3, 25n
utopianism, 7 Wong, Lorenzo, 236–7, 252n, 254n
Utzon, John, 22 Wong Chong Thai, 28n
Woods, Bryce, 63, 66, 69, 84n, 87, 107n
Vale, Lawrence J., 14, 27n Woost, Michael D., 163n
Valega, Manuel, 98 Worboys, Michael, 215, 231n, 232n
Van Heyk, 78 work, excessive emphasis on, 198
Vanlı, Şevki, 16, 165, 166, 175–7, 183n, 185n World Bank, 216
vâo livre do MASP (free span of MASP), 47 world system theory, 232n
Vásquez, Luis, 110n Wright, Frank Lloyd, 176
Vaughan-Richards, Allan, 133, 139n Wright, Gwendolyn, 31, 64, 93, 94
Velarde, Hector, 100, 110n Wu Huanjia, 23, 28n
Venegas, Ramón, 110n
Venturi, Robert, 163n Yeoh, Brenda S. A., 234n, 253n
Vera, Luis, 107n, 110n Yom Kippur War (1973), 117
Verlag, Karl Kramer, 83n Yoruba art, 126, 129, 130, 132; and architecture,
vernacular architecture (Group GAMMA), 78–81 133
vernacular furnishing, 209n Yoruba Palace, 122–3
Vers une Architecture, 94 Youssoufia quarter masterplan project, Morocco,
Vesentini, José William, 55n 60
Vignaud, Claude, 84n Yuen, Belinda, 27n
Village India Complex, 155
visible politics, 229 Zachmann, K., 208n
visual knowledge, 172, 184n Zalduendo, Ines, 106
Vlach, John Michael, 136n Zapata, Eduardo, 107n
Von Osten, Marion, 64 Zehrfuss, Bernard, 59
Zevaco, Jean-François, 58, 62, 67, 68, 73, 75, 78,
Wakeham, Roberto, 109n 80, 82n, 83n, 84n
Wallerstein, Immanuel M., 232n de Zevallos, Louis Ortiz, 90, 107n
Warchavchik, Gregori, 11, 32–41, 39, 43–4, 53, Zevi, Bruno, 110n, 120, 176, 185n
54n, 55n; criticism of, 33–4, 35, 37, 41; Zoltan, Jerzy, 110n
292