Architecture and Real Estate: Historical Perspectives

Zürich
Switzerland

International Conference. ETH Zurich, 10-11 June 2022

Today, we still think of urban transformation as a process led by planners and architects. And while it is undeniable that these two professions have made a major contribution to the global process of urbanization in the modern era, it is difficult to claim that our cities are the results of their efforts alone. Many other actors have been (and still are) involved in their continuous making and re- making. Arguably the most significant of these actors are real estate developers. Think of Georgian London, post-war Rome, or contemporary Delhi: all cities whose extraordinary growth was not led by grand plans or architectural visions, but by the logic of the real estate development and construction industries.
The relative unimportance of authorship in the general economy of real estate development partially explains the lack of literature devoted to the latter in our discipline. Instead, it is imperative that we, as architectural historians, start considering real estate development as a key site for architectural and urban production. The conference Architecture and Real Estate: Historical Perspectives proposes to discuss the processes and products of real estate development by foregrounding them as objects of architectural and urban history.

  • Organizers seek contributions from a broad range of historical and geographical contexts to foster a cross- disciplinary conversation between specialists in the histories of architecture, urban development, economics, politics, culture and technology. Potential contributions may explore:
  • The role of lesser-known voices and stakeholders, such as investors, developers and builders, and their specific role in the production of buildings.
  • The organization and management of labor in the development process, from the office to the construction site, and back to the office.
  • Economic and political interests emerging from the commodification of land and buildings (for example, between public and private sectors).
  • Methodological problems relating to the historiography of real estate, such as archival sources, disciplinary identification and research strategies.
  • Technologies utilized for designing, building and maintaining commercial architecture (e.g. prefabrication).
  • The impact of real estate processes on urban form (e.g. housing typologies).
  • Professional relations between the architectural and real estate realms.

To submit a proposal to the conference, please send an abstract of no more than 300 words, including name and affiliation, to architectureandrealestate22@gmail.com before 31 December 2021. More information is available on https://architectureandrealestate.arch.ethz.ch/.

Share this post

News from the field

Drawing Attention to the Periphery

October 25-27, 2023 Panel session for AHRA conference on Situated Ecologies of Care Portsmouth School of Architecture, UK. Submission deadline for abstracts: June 12, 2023 This paper session asks: How is the periphery reconfigured against collective life, culture,...

Research Assistant in the Field of Architecture and Landscape

Leibniz University Hanover The Faculty of Architecture and Landscape, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, Department of Architectural Theory (Prof. Dr. Nathalie Bredella), invites applications for the position of a Research Assistant (m/f/d) in the...

Materia Arquitectura N°25: Out of Place Matter

MATERIA ARQUITECTURA is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes original research, which can be exploratory and speculative. It is also open to visual and imaginative proposals. Its aim is to contribute to the development and questioning of the discipline and...

German Colonial Building Cultures in 100 Primary Sources

Exhibition at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte Munich, Germany, 20 April – 30 June 2023 From about 1880 to 1920, the German Empire was one of the European colonial powers. Its possessions included territories on three continents: in Africa (German South-West...