The 1970s, also known as the decade of “development,” witnessed not only an unprecedented flow of capital to the Global South but also a steady stream of technical specialists and advisors. Western-educated architects and engineers were contracted by the Ministries of Works to complete large-scale housing, healthcare, and educational projects. However, these “developmental” ventures often fell short of their ambitious goals. The post-1968 generation of architects working within networks of foreign aid grew increasingly disillusioned by the apparent disconnect between local problems and technological solutions imposed from abroad. With experience in low-cost construction in the Global South, upon their return, many questioned the detrimental Western over-reliance on environmentally harmful building technologies and explored alternative paths forward. Exacerbated by the 1973 oil crisis, this architectural activism merged the critique of the expansionist industrialised capitalism of the Global North with growing environmental concerns.
This panel is particularly interested in how the experience of architecture within different ecologies and networks of foreign aid contributed to and impacted the rise of environmental activism of the 1970s. Envisioned case studies might range from investigations of the experience of individual architects and singular projects to broader shifts in architectural discourse and the creation of new publications, activist organisations, and educational programs informed by a different relationship between architecture and the natural world. The panel is particularly interested in the reciprocity of ideas transfer and ways in which architectural practitioners faced the growing environmental challenges on either side of the globe. In doing so, the panel aims to expand the understanding of the environmental activism of the 1970s and provide a new perspective on the role of architects in nascent environmental discourse. It welcomes contributions that explore the networks and perspectives within the Global South and highlight the agency of the previously overlooked actors and groups.
Panel: The Ecologies of Aid and Activism
Chair: Maryia Rusak (Karlsruhe Institue of Technology)
Format: In person paper session
Deadline for individual paper abstracts: 2 June 2025, 5 pm (GMT)
Confirmation of accepted papers: August 2025
Conference dates: Saturday 22 – Monday 24 November 2025
Conference convenors:
Dr Ranald Lawrence, Dr Christina Malathouni, Dr Yat Shun Kei, University of Liverpool
For further details and regular updates, please see the AHRA 2025 conference website:
Generously supported by the British Academy, the 2025 Architectural Humanities Research Association international conference aims to highlight the critical contribution that humanities-driven studies can make to the intersections between subjects as complex and inter-disciplinary as architecture and environment(s). The conference will explore the multiplicity of meanings behind the term ‘environment’, and how these are used and interpreted in architecture and related disciplines, both in contemporary practice and in historical precedents. An ‘environment’ fundamentally describes a relationship: between an object (or subject), and something that surrounds it (from the French environer: ‘to surround, encircle, encompass’). We can only define our environment – what surrounds us – by assuming an understanding of who and what we are. While contemporary scholarship in disciplines including philosophy, science, sociology, history of science and geography explore humanity’s impact on the natural world, architects and planners are tasked with the unique responsibility to alter environment(s), with (or without) knowledge of how to work with (or overcome) constraints associated with these uncertainties.
