Contemporary Architectural History

The Connective Histories of the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe
Climate change. Pollution. Environmental injustice. Construction emissions. How do and should architectural historians engage with this present? What is the role of history (and the historian) in confronting present-day crises? Environmental issues of the present are of course interlinked with political and social changes represented in material histories of the past. The interest group in Contemporary History will investigate the power of history in societal change, and how the architectural historian can embrace these transformations. How can history and historians engage with contemporary politics, society, culture, and environment?

For us, new approaches are both thematic and methodological. Rather than discrete interventions or traditional surveys of events, we position contemporary history as a “practice of transformation.” This follows anthropologist Arturo Escobar, who, in his 2018 Designs for the Pluriverse, contends that “the practice of transformation really takes place in the process of enacting other worlds/practices, that is, in changing radically the ways in which we encounter things and people, not just theorizing about such practice.”

History as a “practice of transformation” is thus a radical expansion. It addresses the escalating velocities of our crisis moment while also understanding history as dwelling in other – much slower – speeds of knowledge production and narrative. Following Kristina Spohr Readman’s focus on the “history of the present” (2011), this interest group outlines new politics and practices of architectural history because we recognize today as a time when historians are facing new challenges to their authority and role.

Group coordinators: 

Jennifer Mack

KTH

jennifer.mack@arch.kth.se

 

Helena Mattsson

KTH

helena.mattsson@arch.kth.se

Group members: 

 

Heidi Svenningsen Kajita

University of Copenhagen

Daniel Barber

Eindhoven University of Technology

Jiat-Hwee Chang

National University of Singapore

Caitlin Blanchfield

Columbia University

Luca Csepely-Knorr

University of Liverpool

Isabelle Doucet

Chalmers Institute of Technology

Daniela Fabricius

University of Pennsylvania

Vasiliki Felekoura

National Technical University of Athens

Ingrid Halland

University of Bergen

Samia Henni

McGill University

Jesse Foster Honsa

KU Leuven

Kim Förster

Manchester University

Janina Gosseye

Delft University of Technology

Valeria Guzmán Verri

University of Costa Rica

Danielle Hewitt

UCL

Cheyn Lambert

Technion IIT

Pamela Karimi

UMass Dartmouth

Anne Kockelkorn

University of Ghent

Elke Krasny

Vienna Art Academy

Maros Krivy

Estonian Academy of Arts, EKA

Catherine Mzumi

University of Paris La Villette

Véronique Patteeuw

ENSAP Lille

Christina Pech

University of Oslo

Sabrina Puddu

University of Cambridge

Anna Renken

University of Toronto

Svava Riesto

University of Copenhagen

Lutz Robbers

Jade University

Rafico Ruiz

CCA

Léa-Catherine Szacka

University of Manchester

Meredith TenHoor

Pratt Institute

Wouter Van Acker

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Brian Ward

TU Dublin

Fatma Tanış

Delft UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

 

back to group overview