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Dossier : Global experts "off radar"

Editorial

Johan Lagae et Kim De Raedt

Entrées d’index

Index de mots-clés :

archives, histoire de l’architecture, expert

Indice de palabras clave:

archivos, historia de la arquitectura, experto

Index chronologique :

XXe siècle
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Texte intégral

Some notes on a possible research agenda

  • 1 Session “Migration/Displacement and the Dissemination of Urban Planning Expertise in the Mid 20th (...)

1This issue of ABE Journal, which takes inspiration from a 2008 conference session as well as from the many conversations that took place within one of the working groups of the European funded COST-action “European Architecture beyond Europe,”1 seeks to contribute to a more thorough understanding of a particular type of professional who emerged in architecture and planning milieus from 1945 onwards: the “global expert”. Through a series of contributions, some resulting from long-lasting, in-depth study while others draw on work-in-progress research, a number of individuals are brought to the fore who, despite their often extensive production or prominent roles on a global scale, have remained “off the radar”. Included in this issue are discussions pertaining to people such as Michel Kalt, Henri-Jean Calsat, David Oakley, Erica Mann, or Max Lock, as well as other, more well-known figures such as Louis Kahn, Jacqueline Tyrwhitt and Hassan Fathy. Through this variety, this ABE Journal issue stresses the need to distinguish between various types of such “global experts,” from embedded practitioners to foreign consultants just passing through. More importantly, the issue also seeks to outline some of the challenges confronting architectural historians in writing the history of this new kind of professional. This is done explicitly in the lengthy editorial, which, through a discussion of recent literature, serves as an introduction to the current state of research on the theme. As such, we hope that this issue will help set a possible research agenda on a topic that in the last several years has triggered scholarly attention, yet still requires a sound theoretical and methodological framing.

The emergence of a new professional

  • 2 O. M. A., Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL, New York, NY: The Monacelli Press, 1995, p. 12–13.
  • 3 Beatriz Colomina, “Towards a global architect,” Domus, vol. 946, 2011, p. 80.
  • 4 Jean-Louis Cohen, “The Search for a Critical Practice,” Casabella, vol. 630–631, 1996, p. 23.
  • 5 Beatriz Colomina, “Towards a global architect,” op. cit. (note 3), p. 83.

2Anyone addressing the globalization of architectural practice at the end of the twentieth-century almost by default refers to the by-now-classical opening pages of Rem Koolhaas’ seminal book S,M,L,XL, which contains among other things a diagram entitled “OMA Travel Behavior,” describing the number of kilometers travelled and nights spent in hotels by the office.2 If Koolhaas thus serves as the self-acclaimed prototype of the “global architect,” Beatriz Colomina has recently argued that Le Corbusier was the first to anticipate the implications for the profession of the introduction of rapid air travel, namely that “practice is no longer local and time is continuous”. Ever since, the “hypermobile architect” has become “a symptom of a globalized society”.3 Of course, Le Corbusier had been a travelling architect from the very beginning of his career, to the point that the architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen wrote that his “wanderings were equaled only by those of Tintin in Hergé’s comics.”4 However, his appointment by the Punjab government as a consulting architect for the construction of a new capital in Chandigarh proved to be a watershed moment in the master’s travel behavior, bringing him to India a total of 23 times, “travelling twice a year, and staying over a month each time.”5

  • 6 For a discussion of the built production of this era and its consequences in an Anglophone context (...)

3Yet, it was not only the arrival of commercial jetliners and the consequent revolution of air travel that boosted the internationalization of the practice of architecture and urban planning from the early 1950s onwards. Not coincidentally, the figure of the “global expert” emerged during an era that witnessed a major geopolitical restructuring of the world through processes of decolonization, the emergence of the “Third World” and growing geopolitical and economic tensions triggered by the Cold War. Under late colonial rule, large-scale welfare programs had generated opportunities for architects and planners to work abroad on unprecedented scales. The decline of colonial and imperial structures and the subsequent forging of new alliances, often through development aid mechanisms, also created ample opportunities for both professions.6 A generation of young designers was able to begin professional life in such a context, while some already practicing professionals succeeded in adjusting their earlier modus operandi to the new context, becoming truly “global experts” with an impact that often by far superseded that of Le Corbusier.

  • 7 Although Doxiadis is mentioned in Charles Jencks’ 1973 survey Modern Movements of Architecture, he (...)
  • 8 Aside from early research conducted by Panayota Pyla and Richard Bromley, and the study of Michel (...)
  • 9 See the lemma on “Ekistics,” in Francis D. K. Ching, Mark Jarzombek and Vikramaditya Prakash (eds. (...)

4A case in point is Constantinos Doxiadis (1914–1975), whose name until recently remained absent from the canonical narratives of twentieth-century architecture, despite the fact that he was active in dozens of countries (including India, France, Ghana, Pakistan, Syria and Ethiopia) and authored seminal urban master plans in the postwar era, such as for Bagdad in Iraq (1958), Islamabad in Pakistan (1960) and Tema in Ghana (1961–1962). Moreover, he played a crucial role in the establishment of the science of “human settlements”.7 Since the early 2000s, various scholars have re-assessed Doxiadis’ seminal work8 and he has meanwhile made his way into some surveys, such as Ching, Jarzombek & Prakash’s A Global History of Architecture.9

  • 10 See, among others, Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, Casablanca. Mythes et figures d’une aventure (...)
  • 11 Tom Avermaete, “Framing the Afropolis: Michel Ecochard and the African City for the Greatest Numbe (...)
  • 12 Marlène Ghoyareb was one of the first scholars to devote attention to Michel Écochard’s work in Be (...)
  • 13 Luce Beeckmans, Making the African City. Kinshasa Dakar Dar es Salaam 1920-1980, Unpublished Ph.D. (...)
  • 14 Michel Écochard, for instance, designed master plans for the universities of Karachi, Pakistan (19 (...)
  • 15 Vandana Baweja, A Pre-history of Green Architecture: Otto Koenigsberger and Tropical Architecture, (...)
  • 16 Already during the 1990s, Hassan Fathy’s work was brought to the fore by, among others, James Stee (...)

5Similarly, the role of Michel Écochard (1905–1985) as a “global expert” has been the subject of renewed scholarly attention. Écochard is best known for having headed the Service de l’Urbanisme in Casablanca, Morocco, thus creating the urban context in which the groundbreaking architectural projects of the atbat-Afrique group found fertile ground, work that in turn would influence the debate within the milieu of the Congrès Internationaux de l’Architecture Moderne or ciam.10 He soon became, as Tom Avermaete has argued, representative of the “international development expert that operates in a variety of geographical and cultural contexts and engages relentlessly with new fields of actors and energies.”11 Over the last several years, Écochard’s later urban planning work in Beirut, Lebanon (1963)12 and Dakar, Senegal (1963–1967)13 has been investigated and critically assessed, but his architectural work in the domain of school building still deserves closer analysis.14 A third figure whose name appears in recent scholarship on “global experts” is the German architect Otto Koenigsberger (1908–1999). After having made a career in India in the 1940s and early 1950s, Koenigsberger played a crucial role in the training of architects and planners who were to operate in the developing world, first at the aa school and later at the University College (both in London). He also, however, gained a reputation as an expert in “tropical architecture,” to the point that some scholars have described him as a precursor of “green architecture”.15 The latter label has also been used in reference to another figure who is already an established reference in architectural historiography of the post-war era, although not commonly defined as a “global expert”: Hassan Fathy (1900–1989). Portrayed in most surveys as the most seminal twentieth-century Egyptian architect and as an example par excellence of an architect deeply embedded in and promoting a local vernacular building culture, more recent scholarship has begun to investigate the more global dimensions of Fathy’s career and work.16

Mapping “Nomadic expert(ise)s”

  • 17 Stephen Ward, “Transnational Planners in a Postcolonial World,” in Patsey Healey and Robert Upton (...)
  • 18 Rachel Kallus and Łukasz Stanek have made a similar claim by organizing a session under the title (...)

6While the names of Doxiadis, Écochard and Koenigsberger by now are rather familiar among architectural historians, they exemplify a professional practice that was much more widespread at the time and of which we are only starting to gain an understanding. In an article entitled “Transnational Planners in a Postcolonial World,” planning historian Stephen Ward provides a useful broad sketch of the emergence of such figures, demonstrating the important transition in established global flows of planning knowledge and expertise that marked the period from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s.17 Ward’s survey is of interest as he discusses the role and impact of both American and Soviet Bloc planners, thus emphasizing the need to investigate the role of both Cold War powers in the transfer of expertise to the developing world. He also, however, correctly argues that the “Cold War contours of global hegemony” do not permit us to draw a complete picture of the phenomenon, as British, French, Dutch, Japanese, Danish, or Canadian planners became involved in ways that illustrate more complex and indirect links between planning practices and ideological positions.18

  • 19 Eric Verdeil (ed.), “Expertises nomades,” themed issue of Géocarrefour, vol. 80, no. 3, 2005. URL: (...)
  • 20 Joe Nasr, “Saba Shiber, ‘Mr Arab Planner’. Parcours professional d’un urbaniste au Moyen-Orient,” (...)
  • 21 Łukasz Stanek and Tom Avermaete (eds.), “Cold War Transfer: Architecture and Planning from Sociali (...)
  • 22 In this regard, we should mention the work of such scholars as Zvi Efrat, Haim Yacobi, Rachel Kall (...)

7In 2005, Eric Verdeil, a geographer specialized in postwar urban planning in Beirut (and thus well acquainted with a figure like Michel Écochard), had already sketched out some of the mechanisms underlying the itinerant character of urban planning expertise in developing countries, a phenomenon he eloquently labelled “nomadic expertises”.19 In the editorial to a 2005 issue of the journal Géocarrefour devoted to the theme, Verdeil, like Ward, stressed the importance of paying attention to lesser known routes, inviting scholars to look beyond the common “north-south”-trajectories, pointing out, for instance, the crucial role of the ussr, Poland or Bulgaria in training planners who later became active in the Middle East. But the theme issue also reminds us of the importance of figures who have been forgotten in current historiography. Joe Nasr’s contribution on “Mr. Arab Planner” Saba Shiber (1923–1968), whom he described as combining in one person the profile of the “planificateur local” and “expert étranger,” forms a case in point.20 More recently, Łukasz Stanek has accomplished groundbreaking work on charting the role of architecture and planning experts from the former Socialist Bloc,21 while there also is a growing scholarship on figures coming from Israel.22

Beyond a designer’s history

  • 23 Carlo Olmo, “In the Precinct of Geneva: Internationalisms without Universalisms,” Casabella, vol.  (...)
  • 24 Andrea Yuri Flores Urushima and Benoît Jacquet, “Urban Modernization from Far East to Eastern Euro (...)
  • 25 We are borrowing the notion “global visionaries” from Ching, Jarzombek and Prakash, A Global Histo (...)
  • 26 Viviana d’Auria, Bruno De Meulder and Kelly Shannon (eds.), Human Settlements: Formulations and (r (...)

8Already in 1996, in a discussion on “internationalisms without universalisms,” Carlo Olmo suggested that writing the history of the architectural relations between western cultures and “extra-European countries,” particularly during the postwar era, would require new points of entry.23 Browsing recent scholarship on the theme suggests that architectural historians are beginning to venture into such uncharted domains of inquiry. In this respect, broadening the view on what the potential role of a global expert could actually entail is important. In fact, the activities of such figures often went well beyond the strict practice of design or planning. While some moved towards very specific specializations, others ventured into a more holistic approach to the challenges induced by the new conditions of a globalizing world. As will be demonstrated in this theme issue via the contributions on Michel Kalt (1925–) and Henri-Jean Calsat (1905–1991), specialization could consist of focusing on a particular subdomain of architectural practice, such as, for instance, the design of school buildings or of medical infrastructure. Sometimes such specialization ultimately drifted off towards domains that at first glance seem related only marginally to the design profession. Robert Home’s portrait of David Oakley (1927–2003) in this issue forms a case in point. While being trained as an architect at the AA School in London and having made a name in the domain of housing for the tropics, Oakley ultimately developed a career as a disaster management-expert. Even prominent figures in architectural history sometimes drew on such particular forms of specialization to obtain a commission. In 1963 Kenzo Tange (1913–2005), for instance, got invited to participate in a closed international competition to design the master plan for the reconstruction of Skopje in Macedonia largely because of the particular Japanese expertise in building for seismic regions, an expertise that the Japanese government was keen on promoting on an international scale.24 On the other side of the spectrum stands Constantinos Doxiadis, as the figure par excellence who exemplifies the “global expert” advocating a holistic approach. To tackle the challenges of organizing human settlements, Doxiadis called for an expansion of the scientific basis of architecture, urban design and planning, with insights taken from geography, economy, political sciences and anthropology, among other fields. Together with a group of “global visionaries” including Buckminster Fuller and Margaret Mead,25 and with the (editorial) aid of Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, Doxiadis would theorize and promote this approach under the label of Ekistics. But as Viviana d’Auria, Bruno De Meulder and Kelly Shannon have argued, this development of such a “con-disciplinary” approach was not without risks. Indeed, the domain of human settlements was soon hijacked by outsiders to the architectural and planning profession, to the extent that by the late 1970s the spatial disciplines seemed to have lost their relevance in this domain of practice.26

  • 27 Hannah Leroux, “The Networks of Tropical Architecture,” Journal of Architecture, vol. 8, 2003, p.  (...)
  • 28 See, among others, Eric Mumford, Defining Urban Design. CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Dis (...)
  • 29 The important role of the Technion as a training center for African planners was pointed out by Ha (...)
  • 30 Philipp Misselwitz and Rachel Lee are currently beginning to look into the history of the un Habit (...)
  • 31 On Poland, see the work by Łukasz Stanek. Stephen Ward provides information on the importance of i (...)
  • 32 On the Kumasi school of architecture, see Hannah Leroux, “Modern Architecture in Post-Colonial Gha (...)
  • 33 Pauline Van Roosmalen, Ontwerpen aan de stad. Stedenbouw in Nederlands-Indië en Indonesië (1905-19 (...)

9Telling the story of the “global expert” also requires taking seriously those architects whose importance lies less in their designs or built work, as they took up other roles in the making and shaping of the postwar built environment. Some, for instance, played crucial roles through their teaching. By now the importance of Maxwell Fry (1899–1987), Jane Drew (1911–1996) and Otto Koenigsberger, not only as architects in their own right, but also as “founding fathers” of the Tropical Architecture Department of the aa School in London, has been well established in architectural historiography,27 as is the international outreach of the Urban Design-program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard gsd) under the leadership of Josep Lluis Sert (1902–1983).28 We still know little to nothing, however, about other training centers related to design, building and planning practices for the developing world, although some recent scholarship has started unravelling the important role of planners trained in educational institutions such as the Technion in Haifa (Israel),29 the tu Berlin (Germany),30 or schools in Poland, the Soviet Bloc or China.31 It should also not be forgotten that some centers founded in formerly colonized territories with foreign experts among their staff became vectors of dissemination. We can consider in this regard the Faculty of Architecture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi (Ghana), where people like John Lloyd or Károly (Charles) Polónyi (1928–2002) were of major influence,32 but also of the Institut Teknologi Bandung in the former Dutch Indies, where from the late 1950s onwards, after the departure of the Dutch planner Jacob Thijsse, German, Austrian and American staff enrolled and the school also began to entertain close relationships with the Harvard gsd.33 In his contribution to this issue, Robert Home mentions the important role in education played by David Oakley on a global scale, by teaching, first at the AA in London, and then at the New Delhi School of Planning and Architecture, the University College Nairobi and finally the Polytechnic of Central London (currently known as the University of Westminster).

  • 34 In his article on Transnational Planners (see reference note 17), Stephen Ward focuses extensively (...)
  • 35 Kim De Raedt, “Between ‘True Believers’ and Operational Experts: Unesco Architects and School Buil (...)
  • 36 As president of the uia, Matthew worked in tandem with the French architect Pierre Vago, who gaine (...)
  • 37 Miles Glendinnig, Modern Architect: The Life and Times of Robert Matthew, London: RIBA Publishing, (...)
  • 38 Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Archit (...)

10Writing a more inclusive architectural history of the first decades of the postwar era also entails acknowledging the crucial role of those architects and planners who acted as “brokers”. Unraveling the reasons certain “global experts” appear in certain places at certain moments in time indeed requires an insight into the ways policies were developed, calls launched and commissions granted on a local, national and international scale. A key person who comes to mind in this respect is the Croatian Yugoslav architect Ernest Weissmann (1903–1985), who was already active in ciam circles during the interwar period, but through his power of granting commissions as head of the un Centre for Housing, Building and Planning from the early 1950s onwards helped define the kind of (modern) architecture and planning that was introduced in developing countries.34 Similar brokers appear in other domains of building expertise. Kim De Raedt’s PhD research is bringing to the fore the completely overlooked mit-trained architect John Beynon (1936–), who in 1964 was recruited to coordinate Unesco’s school building policy in the Third World and thus had a major impact on installing a so-called “R&D” approach within the agency.35 Miles Glendinning’s meticulously researched chapter on architect Robert Matthew’s (1906–1975) “global vision” during the 1960s, in which he provides a painstakingly detailed account of Matthew’s role as president of the International Union of Architects36 and as first president and “chief father figure” of the Commonwealth Association of Architects,37 marks a new kind of scholarship, setting a convincing example of how postwar architectural culture was influenced by parallel processes of decolonization and Cold War geopolitics. Viewing the built production of that time through these lenses will allow for the development of a new historiography that goes beyond the notion of “anxious modernisms” advanced by Sarah Goldhagen and Réjean Legault’s groundbreaking 2000 publication, which nevertheless still placed the emphasis almost exclusively on the designer.38

Architecture, Authorship and Bureaucracy

  • 39 Aggregate, Governing by Design: Architecture, Economy, and Politics in the Twentieth Century, Pitt (...)
  • 40 Salomon Frausto, “Introduction to the Topic,” themed issue on Bureaucracy, Hunch, vol. 12, 2009, p (...)

11More recent architectural history scholarship is beginning to acknowledge that the authorship of an architectural object does not only lie with the designer. As the Architectural History Collaborative Aggregate, for instance, formulates it: “Agency is complex and that authorship of the built environment is dispersed across multiple registers comprising not only architects and designers but also many other kinds of producers and consumers, along with a multitude of associations, institutions and bureaucracies.”39 Such a perspective invites us to look afresh at the production of the built environment by investigating the relationship between architecture and bureaucracy from at least two sides. As “the immense undertakings of time, space and money required to construct the built environment inherently make it susceptible to third-party interference,” architectural historians should consider the ways in which architects maneuver “the red tape of public policy, private investment interests, and architectural convention to effectively contribute to the creation of architecture and urbanism,” as Salomon Frausto puts it in his introduction to an issue of the journal Hunch devoted to the theme of bureaucracy.40 With regard to the particular figure of the “global expert,” a key question becomes how architects and planners have adapted their modus operandi to obtain and execute often large-scale commissions in far off regions. What kind of office structures were required to be taken seriously by international funding bodies or the local governmental services of developing countries? How, in other words, did designers create alliances with technical experts, contractors, local centers of expertise and so forth to place bids or, in cases where a commission was granted, to tackle complex and challenging planning and building projects?

  • 41 For a recent plea to acknowledge the importance of this topic, see two interrelated sessions organ (...)
  • 42 Charles Jencks, Modern Movements in Architecture, [1st edition 1973], Harmondsworth: Penguin Books (...)
  • 43 See, for instance, Reinhold Martin, The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate (...)
  • 44 Hyun-Tae Jung, “The Birth of American Corporate Architecture in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” in Hil (...)
  • 45 Clive Chipkin, Johannesburg Transition. Architecture and Society from 1950, Johannesburg: STE Publ (...)

12So far, such bureaucratic dimensions of the architectural profession have largely been ignored by architectural historians working on twentieth-century architecture.41 Charles Jencks’ critique of the so-called “Bureaucratic School of Architecture,” formulated in his 1973 survey Modern Movements in Architecture, has indeed remained a dominant trope in architecture history writing,42 only to be countered recently by the work of scholars such as those involved in Aggregate, as well as some others who have, among others things, started to re-assess corporate architecture.43 In this respect, the recent in-depth analysis conducted by Hyung-Tae Jung of the organizational structure of Skidmore, Owings and Merill, the architecture office par excellence of what Jencks considered the bureaucratic tradition of architecture, also opens up a promising perspective for investigating the modus operandi of “global experts”.44 som’s corporate office structure is indeed what made them a reliable partner in the eyes of foreign clients seeking to engage a skilled designer for large-scale and challenging projects. As Clive Chipkin has explained in detail, it was som’s reputation for building with a “competence unmatched elsewhere,” that got it the commission to design the so-called Carlton Center, a vast 1960s project best described as “Johannesburg’s Rockefeller Center.”45 In her contribution on kpdv included in this issue of ABE-journal, Kim De Raedt demonstrates how this French architecture office succeeded in remaining active in Africa for over 30 years, spanning a period from the late colonial to the post-independence era, by constantly reinventing and readjusting its modus operandi to the shifting contexts it was operating in, including changing power regimes and clients.

  • 46 Paul Rabinow, “Colonialism, Modernity. The French in Morocco,” in Nezar Alsayyad (ed.), Forms of D (...)

13If much is to be gained from scrutinizing the bureaucratic dimension of the architectural profession, it could be beneficial to also consider the architectural culture of bureaucracy when writing a history of “global experts”. What kind of norms and forms circulated within institutional agencies and financing bodies active in development aid, or within national and local technical services such as various departments of public works and urban planning? What kind of workflows and procedures were enforced upon practitioners in the terrain? To what extent did foreign consultants need to follow pre-established formats when submitting reports or writing assessments? Did there exist a shared culture or doctrine in such matters and if so, how did it come into being and who was defining it? An in-depth inquiry of such matters could help us determine if the concept of “middling modernism” that Paul Rabinow developed to assess Écochard’s 1950s work in French Morocco has stood the test of time. Rabinow defined “middling modernism” as a social practice that no longer operated on “the sedimented historical and cultural practices of a particular culture,” but instead focused on “a universal subject whose needs, potentialities and norms could be discovered, analyzed and formalized by science.”46 One can indeed wonder if the already mentioned description of Carlo Olmo’s “internationalisms without universalisms” does not offer a more promising point of entry, as most of the recent scholarship we discuss here indeed suggests that in the architectural and planning practice of the postwar era, the local and the global were still very much intertwined.

  • 47 Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait (eds.), Urbanism. Imported or exported? Native aspirations and foreig (...)
  • 48 Timothy Rothwell Livsey, “The University of Ibadan and Transnational Networks in the Colonial and (...)
  • 49 In this context, a fieldwork trip to Kinshasa, DR Congo to collect oral accounts and local archiva (...)
  • 50 Vikram Bhatt and Peter Scriver, After the Masters. Contemporary Indian Architecture, Ahmedabad: Ma (...)

14This brings us to another crucial aspect in assessing the “global expert”. Such figures, of course, never worked in a vacuum, but always operated in very specific contexts, with which they might have been acquainted to various degrees. While some possessed a profound understanding of a specific locality due to having resided in it for long periods, many foreign consultants were only passers-by, collecting information during short-term missions. Understanding the way the “global experts” engaged with a local context thus implies paying attention to how they dealt with a broad variety of local actors: central government officials and members of national and/or local technical services, with whom commissions, financial aspects and working procedures had to be negotiated; local informants who provided the necessary data for establishing assessment reports on specific topics; or local labor forces recruited for the execution of projects. Even if Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait have already pointed out in their seminal 2003 edited volume Urbanism Exported or Imported that we need to take into account local agency in the development and realization of “foreign plans,”47 so far few architectural historians have ventured to do so. Nevertheless, some promising work has been done. By introducing local actors to the narrative, Tim Livsey’s ongoing PhD research on university building in late colonial and post-independence Africa, for instance, offers an interesting alternative view on Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew’s seminal design for the University College campus in Ibadan, Nigeria.48 A similar inquiry on the various levels of local agency with regard to post-independence school-building programs in dr Congo during the 1960s and 1970s forms part of Kim De Raedt’s PhD project.49 Such perspectives on local agency have also led to alternative narratives on prominent projects of twentieth-century architectural history. Ever since Vikram Bhatt and Peter Scriver’s 1990 book After the Masters: Contemporary Indian Architecture in 1990, there has been a growing body of literature on the role of Indian designers in the making and shaping of various locales, such as, for instance, Chandigarh.50 In this issue, Kathleen James-Chakraborty takes up a similar challenge by discussing Louis Kahn’s (1901–1974) projects in Ahmedabad and Dhaka not as the work of a single architect or even architect’s office, but by crediting the many other (local) experts involved in their creation.

Towards a new biography of the “global expert”

  • 51 Tom Avermaete and Maristella Casciato, How Architects, Experts, Politicians, International Agencie (...)
  • 52 Łukasz Stanek, “Introduction: the ‘Second World’s’ architecture and planning in the ‘Third World’, (...)
  • 53 In his 2007 Ph.D. research “The Periphery Within. Modern Architecture and the Making of the Third (...)
  • 54 Christel Frapier, “The circulation of technical knowledge between France and Eastern Europe, 1945– (...)

15Such alternative architectural histories that take into account complex agencies can be constructed around various points of entry. The exhibition How Architects, experts, politicians, international agencies, and citizens negotiate modern planning: Casablanca Chandigarh, that only recently opened its doors at the cca in Montreal and was curated by Tom Avermaete and Maristella Casciato, forms an interesting experiment to re-assess two of the most seminal urban planning projects of the postwar era by shifting the focus to their modes of production and the various actors involved.51 One could also write such alternative histories by starting from what Łukasz Stanek has called “networks and aggregates”52: state planning institutions, international organizations such as the un (including its specific branches such as Unesco), global funding agencies like the World Bank, the Ford Foundation or the European Development Fund, or, on a national level, the French fides/fac.53 Professional associations such as ciam or, perhaps of greater importance, the International Union of Architects, form another promising avenue of approach, especially if one charts the nodal points where such international networks of expertise intersect. This should include the study of widely disseminated publications, of important international conferences on specific topics (such as, for instance, housing in the tropics or colonial medicine), of joint expert missions bringing together consultants from different nationalities or of specific working committees within various agencies and administrations. In this respect, architectural historians have much to gain from scholarship on transnational cultures of expertise in other domains, such as, for instance, engineering or municipal administration.54

  • 55 Andrew Leach, What is Architectural History, Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2010, p. 57.
  • 56 Ellen Shoshkes, Jacqueline Tyrwhitt: A Transnational Life in Urban Planning and Design, Farnham: A (...)
  • 57 The role of Roger Aujame as a global consultant in the domain of school building is examined as pa (...)

16There are ample arguments for legitimizing each of the approaches enumerated above. This theme issue, however, begins with the assumption that there is also still much to be gained by focusing on the individual. Our choice to opt for a biographical mode is not intended as a means to re-inscribe individuals into the canon via hagiographic accounts, however. Rather, the kind of biography we advocate is one in which, as Andrew Leach proclaims in his insightful book What is Architectural History?, a reflection is presented “on the various meanings that one might impose on the biographical subject, between free agent and index” and that “holds their subject accountable to the broader histories in which they take part, all the while retaining the clear limits imposed by life’s boundaries and trajectories.”55 In his portrait of David Oakley, included in this issue, Robert Home draws upon the “biographical interpretative method,” which relates an individual’s life events to the wider social context, arguing that it remains a meaningful research approach by which to discuss the relevance of a “global expert”. By charting Oakley’s various career moves, Home’s piece provides a compelling account of how an individual’s professional trajectory can develop along sinuous routes, bringing him at times to the center of debate, while on other occasions he drifts off the margins. The case of Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, who truly led, in the words of Ellen Shoshkes, “a transnational life in urban planning and design”, is another telling example to illustrate the benefits of a biographical approach.56 Often operating behind the scenes, yet fundamentally involved in promoting modern urban planning at a worldwide scale through her collaboration with prominent figures such as Siegfried Giedion or Constantinos Doxiadis, Tyrwhitt can, as David Peleman eloquently puts it in his review of Shoshkes’ monography, perhaps first and foremost be considered the “ventriloquist” of an emerging discipline with global ambitions rather than just the “woman behind the man” she appears to be at first sight. Charting the trajectory of someone like Tyrwhitt, and also of a figure like Roger Aujame (1922–2010), a French architect who in the interwar period was close to the milieu of Le Corbusier but later became involved in the circles of the un, will allow us to write an alternative history of the modern movement and illustrate how modernist architects and planners shifted gears over time, sometimes opting for a more specialized practice while at other moments adopting a wider profile as a consultant.57

  • 58 Alan Lester, “Personifying Colonial Governance: George Arthur and the Transition from Humanitarian (...)
  • 59 We are grateful to Iain Jackson for pointing out the importance of William Holford as a “committee (...)
  • 60 For a brief discussion of this global role of ciam, see, apart from the references mentioned in no (...)
  • 61 Jean-Louis Cohen, “The Search for a Critical Practice,” op. cit. (note 4), p. 23. For sources that (...)

17Writing the history of “global experts” in the field of architecture and planning can also benefit from the “new biography” turn that emerged in the humanities during the early 1990s. Geographers, for instance, have started to explore life geographies acknowledging the importance of the spatiality of personhood, an approach that already was successfully extended to the critical investigation of colonial governance.58 Mapping the professional trajectories of “global experts,” we argue, can also provide fresh insights into those “networks and aggregates” that were fundamental in shaping the built environment of the postwar era, especially by focusing, as we already argued earlier, precisely on those architects who acted as “brokers” or were prominent “committee men”. A part from the already discussed Robert Matthew, we can think here also of the British planner William Holford (1907–1975).59 This can help to re-assess the prominence in canonical historiography of the global role played by ciam60 and invite us to give more serious attention to a professional association like the International Union of Architects, which Jean-Louis Cohen in 1996 still described in derogatory terms as “little more than a specialized travel agency.”61 In this issue, Ola Uduku provides a short but insightful discussion of how the British architect and planner Max Lock (1909–1988) attempted to secure a commission for himself in the West Indies, illustrating that this required not only networking in international milieus, but also on a more local level in gentlemen’s clubs where important decisions in foreign policy making took place.

Unlocking the archives

18Mapping such life geographies and the various intersections with individuals as well as “aggregate actors” that occurred along an individual’s professional trajectory confronts architectural historians with a number of challenges, both on the level of methodology and of the sources to be used. Writing a new history of the “global expert” along the outlines of what was roughly sketched out above implies that we start to more intensively use various kinds of data and information that have often remained at the margins of our attention. Apart from the more conventional sources used for architecture history research, ranging from sketches and drawings to photographs and the built object itself, scholars interested in the topic should necessarily engage not just with correspondence between the various stakeholders involved (financing agencies, clients, construction firms and so forth), but also with reports written by consultants, technical manuals, documents regarding building regulations and even financial records.

  • 62 Ann Laura Stoler, “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance,” Archival Science, vol. 2, 2002, (...)

19The challenge of using such material does not only lie in the fact that architectural historians may not always be well trained to critically assess such sources. Analyzing the bureaucracy of an office in detail indeed requires the skills of an economic historian. We should also not forget, however, as Ann Laura Stoler has argued for colonial archives, that the “bureaucratic” archival material produced by “global experts” and the “aggregate actors” they interacted with requires a more critical approach, viewing archives not primarily as “sites of knowledge retrieval, but of knowledge production.”62 When available, internal correspondence between various administrations, reports on executed foreign missions and minutes of board meetings can provide useful data on the modus operandi of a “global expert,” although the use of such sources nevertheless requires a particular awareness and engagement of the historian as they in themselves constitute a “cultural agent of ‘fact’ production”. It is for this reason that it makes sense to take seriously Stoler’s plea for an “ethnographic” approach to the archive.

20Drawing on a prospection of the archival fund of Henri-Jean Calsat, a French architect who became a consultant for the World Health Organization in the late 1960s, Johan Lagae discusses some of the difficulties one encounters when working with such sources. Architectural historians, for one thing, are not particularly well equipped to make sense of bureaucratic documents, as these often do not provide insight into design choices or might be wrongly understood as being merely technocratic in nature. Even architectural drawings can be misleading. As Lagae argues when briefly discussing Calsat’s later architectural projects, which seem to be based on a growing use of repetitive formulae, one needs to be particularly aware of one’s own often implicit biases regarding how architectural value is defined. Indeed, even in our attempts to rewrite history, we are, albeit often unconsciously, still very much conditioned by the canon. Moreover, multiple silences can be embedded in the archive, either because of the absence of certain documents—Calsat indeed “edited” his own archive before donating it to the University of Geneva to the extent that it is almost impossible to obtain a precise view of the modus operandi of his office—or because some voices of the people with whom projects were negotiated simply do not appear in the documents. As many stakeholders may still be alive, oral history to some extent could offer a way out of this conundrum, but architectural historians have yet to develop, in line with other disciplines, a meticulous methodology to deal with such accounts, in which memory and history are often intertwined in complex ways. This being said, documents providing a more intimate glimpse into the life of a “global expert” should equally be considered valuable source material, as Rachel Lee argues in her discussion of a recent documentary on Erica Mann (1917–2007), who worked on urban and rural development planning in Kenya from the 1950s onwards. Eventually, investigating and combining an as-wide-as-possible range of sources and treating them with a certain critical distance seems to offer a certain guarantee of generating a nuanced in-depth study of these “global experts”.

  • 63 For a survey of architectural practice in the Global South that pursues issues already at stake du (...)

21As the various contributions to this theme issue make abundantly clear, writing an inclusive and nuanced history of the “global expert” is a challenging task that should be about more than just rediscovering certain figures that have remained “off the radar”. What is ultimately at stake is a better historical understanding of the modus operandi that underlie particular forms of architectural and planning practice of the first postwar decades in regions we nowadays commonly refer to as the “Global South”. Given the growing activities of contemporary practitioners in these regions over the last decade, writing such historical narratives is more timely than ever.63

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Notes

1 Session “Migration/Displacement and the Dissemination of Urban Planning Expertise in the Mid 20th Century in Non-Western Areas,” chaired by Johan Lagae and Marijke Martin at the IXth International Conference on Urban History (EAUH), 27–30 August 2008, Lyon (with participants: Eric Verdeil, Tom Avermaete, Maarten Goossens, Gaia Caramellino, Andrea Yuri Flores Urishima and Benoît Jacquet). URL: http://eauh.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/browse_sessions.html?idsession=24. Accessed 16 June 2014. Within the cost Action IS0904, Johan Lagae and Madalena Cunha Matos led a working group on the theme of “Actors and networks of expertise”. For more information on its goals, activities and members, see http://architecturebeyond.eu.huma-num.fr/. Accessed 14 November 2014.

2 O. M. A., Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL, New York, NY: The Monacelli Press, 1995, p. 12–13.

3 Beatriz Colomina, “Towards a global architect,” Domus, vol. 946, 2011, p. 80.

4 Jean-Louis Cohen, “The Search for a Critical Practice,” Casabella, vol. 630–631, 1996, p. 23.

5 Beatriz Colomina, “Towards a global architect,” op. cit. (note 3), p. 83.

6 For a discussion of the built production of this era and its consequences in an Anglophone context, see Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture at the End of Empire, Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2003 (British art and visual culture since 1750, new readings). For a broad survey of French architects and planners working in those years, albeit with little attention to the geopolitical context, see Maurice Culot and Jean-Marie Thiveaud (eds.), Architectures Françaises d’outre-mer, Liège: Mardaga, 1992. For a broader sketch, see Duanfang Lu (ed.), Third World Modernism. Architecture, development and identity, New York, NY; London: Routledge, 2011.

7 Although Doxiadis is mentioned in Charles Jencks’ 1973 survey Modern Movements of Architecture, he is only referred to in passing and appears most prominently for his critique on Archigram (see p. 292).

8 Aside from early research conducted by Panayota Pyla and Richard Bromley, and the study of Michel Provoost and Wouter Van Stiphout on postwar New Towns designed by Doxiadis, substantial work on the figure has been done by Viviana d’Auria and Ahmed Zaib Kahn Mahsud. For extensive bibliographical references, see the latter’s article “Rethinking Doxiadis’ Ekistical Urbanism,” Positions, vol. 1, 2010, p. 6–39.

9 See the lemma on “Ekistics,” in Francis D. K. Ching, Mark Jarzombek and Vikramaditya Prakash (eds.), A Global History of Architecture, [1st edition 2010], Hoboken: Wiley, 2011, p. 765.

10 See, among others, Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, Casablanca. Mythes et figures d’une aventure urbaine, Paris: Hazan, 1998; Tom Avermaete, Another Modern: The Post-war Architecture and Urbanism of Candilis-Josic-Woods, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2005.

11 Tom Avermaete, “Framing the Afropolis: Michel Ecochard and the African City for the Greatest Number,” OASE Journal for Architecture, no. 82, 2010, themed issue of L’Afrique c’est chic: Architecture and Planning in Africa 1950-1970, p. 77–100. URL: http://www.oasejournal.nl/en/Issues/82/FramingTheAfropolis#077. Accessed 29 June 2017.

12 Marlène Ghoyareb was one of the first scholars to devote attention to Michel Écochard’s work in Beirut, but the most substantial discussion to date is that of Eric Verdeil, Beyrouth et ses urbanistes : une ville en plans, 1946-1975, Beirut: Ifpo, 2010.

13 Luce Beeckmans, Making the African City. Kinshasa Dakar Dar es Salaam 1920-1980, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Groningen, Groningen, 2013. The abstract of this dissertation is available in the third issue of ABE Journal. URL: http://abe.revues.org/367. Accessed 23 June 2017.

14 Michel Écochard, for instance, designed master plans for the universities of Karachi, Pakistan (1958), Abidjan, the Ivory Coast (1962–1978) and Yaoundé, Cameroun (1963).

15 Vandana Baweja, A Pre-history of Green Architecture: Otto Koenigsberger and Tropical Architecture, from Princely Mysore to Post-colonial London, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 2008. URL: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/60709. Accessed 16 June 2014; Rachel Lee, Otto Koenigsberger: Bringing Modernism to India, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, TU Berlin, Berlin, 2014. The abstract of this dissertation is available in the fifth issue of ABE Journal. URL: http://abe.revues.org/696. Accessed 29 June 2017.

16 Already during the 1990s, Hassan Fathy’s work was brought to the fore by, among others, James Steele’s monography An Architecture for People. The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy, London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. More recently, Panayiota Pyla situated Fathy in a more global context: “Hassan Fathy Revisited: Postwar discourses on Science, Development, and Vernacular Architecture,” Journal of Architectural Education, vol. 60, no. 3, 2007, p. 28–39. For the most recent (European) scholarship on Fathy, see Leïla el-Wakil (ed.), Hassan Fathy dans son temps, Gollion: Infolio, 2013. Also see the review by Johan Lagae of the latter’s book included in this issue. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/abe/3402. Accessed 29 June 2017.

17 Stephen Ward, “Transnational Planners in a Postcolonial World,” in Patsey Healey and Robert Upton (eds.), Crossing Borders: International Exchange and Planning Practices, Abingdon: Routledge, 2010, p. 47–72 (rtpi Library Series, 19).

18 Rachel Kallus and Łukasz Stanek have made a similar claim by organizing a session under the title “‘Development’ from the Periphery. Architectural Knowledge Exchange Beyond U.S./Soviet Bipolarity, 1950s–1980s” at the 2nd International Conference of EAHN, held in Brussels in 2012.

19 Eric Verdeil (ed.), “Expertises nomades,” themed issue of Géocarrefour, vol. 80, no. 3, 2005. URL: https://geocarrefour.revues.org/596. Accessed 29 June 2017.

20 Joe Nasr, “Saba Shiber, ‘Mr Arab Planner’. Parcours professional d’un urbaniste au Moyen-Orient,” Géocarrefour, vol. 80, no. 3, 2005, p. 197–206. URL: https://geocarrefour.revues.org/1175. Accessed 29 June 2017.

21 Łukasz Stanek and Tom Avermaete (eds.), “Cold War Transfer: Architecture and Planning from Socialist Countries in the ‘Third World’,” themed issue of The Journal of Architecture, vol. 17, no. 3, 2012. URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjar20/17/3?nav=tocList. Accessed 29 June 2017.

22 In this regard, we should mention the work of such scholars as Zvi Efrat, Haim Yacobi, Rachel Kallus, Neta Feniger and Ayala Levin.

23 Carlo Olmo, “In the Precinct of Geneva: Internationalisms without Universalisms,” Casabella, vol. 630–631, 1996, p. 28–37.

24 Andrea Yuri Flores Urushima and Benoît Jacquet, “Urban Modernization from Far East to Eastern Europe: Tange Kenzô and the Reconstruction Scheme for the Centre of Skopje,” paper presented at the eauh Conference, Lyon, 2008 (see note 1). While this paper provides an in depth reading of Tange’s involvement in Skopje from a Japanese perspective, the Skopje project has more recently situated in a larger international context, see Mirjana Lozanovska, “The intriguing and forgotten international exchanges in the master plan for the reconstruction of Skopje,” in Hilde Heynen and Janina Gosseye (eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of the European Architectural History Network: Brussels, 31 May-2 June 2012, Brussels: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten, 2012, p. 436–441.

25 We are borrowing the notion “global visionaries” from Ching, Jarzombek and Prakash, A Global History of Architecture, op. cit. (note 9), p. 765.

26 Viviana d’Auria, Bruno De Meulder and Kelly Shannon (eds.), Human Settlements: Formulations and (re)Calibrations, Nijmegen: SUN, 2010.

27 Hannah Leroux, “The Networks of Tropical Architecture,” Journal of Architecture, vol. 8, 2003, p. 337–354. URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1360236032000134835. Accessed 29 June 2017.; “AA in Africa - The Modern Movement in West Africa,” exhibition curated by Hannah Leroux and Ola Uduku (London, AA School, 2003). See also Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture at the End of Empire, op. cit. (note 6), chapter 6 “Dialects of Internationalism: Architecture in Ghana, 1945–1966”.

28 See, among others, Eric Mumford, Defining Urban Design. CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Discipline, 1937–69, New Haven, CO: Yale University Press, 2009; Eric Mumford and Hashim Sarkis (eds.), Josep Lluis Sert. The Architect of Urban Design, 1953-1969, New Haven, CO: Yale University Press; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2008.

29 The important role of the Technion as a training center for African planners was pointed out by Haim Yacobi and Zvi Efrat during meetings in the context of the COST-Action “European Architecture beyond Europe,” but in-depth research on the topic has not yet been conducted.

30 Philipp Misselwitz and Rachel Lee are currently beginning to look into the history of the un Habitat unit of tu Berlin and the role of East German experts in development aid programs in Africa during the postwar era.

31 On Poland, see the work by Łukasz Stanek. Stephen Ward provides information on the importance of institutions in Moscow (see reference note 17). For the impact of China, some preliminary research is being done, among others, by Eduard Kögel. On the role of gdr-planners and architects during the development aid era, see also the contribution by Ludger Wimmelbrücker and Tom Avermaete in Łukasz Stanek and Tom Avermaete (eds.), “Cold War Transfer: Architecture and Planning from Socialist Countries in the ‘Third World’,” op. cit. (note 21). URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjar20/17/3?nav=tocList. Accessed 29 June 2017.

32 On the Kumasi school of architecture, see Hannah Leroux, “Modern Architecture in Post-Colonial Ghana and Nigeria,” Architectural History, vol. 47, 2004, p. 361–392. URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/architectural-history/article/modern-architecture-in-postcolonial-ghana-and-nigeria/010C140429BF494DCB6281FFB76B9363. Accessed 29 June 2017. On Charles Polónyi, see Akos Moravansky, “Peripheral Modernism: Charles Polónyi and the lessons of the village,” Journal of Architecture, vol. 17, no. 3, p. 333–359. URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13602365.2012.692601. Accessed 29 June 2017.

33 Pauline Van Roosmalen, Ontwerpen aan de stad. Stedenbouw in Nederlands-Indië en Indonesië (1905-1950), Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, tu Delft, Delft, 2008, p. 210. One of the people who acted as external advisor was Jacqueline Tyrwhitt.

34 In his article on Transnational Planners (see reference note 17), Stephen Ward focuses extensively on the role played by Ernest Weissmann. Weissman also features prominently in M. Iljal Muzaffar, “The Periphery Within. Modern Architecture and the Making of the Third World,” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Boston, MA, 2007.

35 Kim De Raedt, “Between ‘True Believers’ and Operational Experts: Unesco Architects and School Building in post-colonial Africa,” Journal of Architecture, vol. 19, no. 1, 2014. URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13602365.2014.881905. Accessed 29 June 2017.

36 As president of the uia, Matthew worked in tandem with the French architect Pierre Vago, who gained a reputation as the editor-in-chief of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. See Pierre Vago, Une vie intense, Brussels: AAM éditions, 2000. On uia and Vago’s role, see Aymone Nicolas, L’Apogée des concours d’architecture: L’action de l’UIA 1948-1975, Paris: Picard, 2007 (Architectures contemporaines, Études), p. 48–52.

37 Miles Glendinnig, Modern Architect: The Life and Times of Robert Matthew, London: RIBA Publishing, 2008 (in particular, see chapter 11 “Commonwealth of Design: Matthew’s Global Vision, 1962–1968”).

38 Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, Montreal: CCA; Cambridge, MA: MIT-Press, 2000.

39 Aggregate, Governing by Design: Architecture, Economy, and Politics in the Twentieth Century, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburg, 2012, p. ix.

40 Salomon Frausto, “Introduction to the Topic,” themed issue on Bureaucracy, Hunch, vol. 12, 2009, p. 20–21.

41 For a recent plea to acknowledge the importance of this topic, see two interrelated sessions organized at the 3rd EAHN International Meeting in Torino 2014: Ricardo Agarez and Nelson Mota, “‘Bread and Butter Architecture’: Accommodating the Everyday” and Rika Devos and Johan Lagae, “The Architecture of State Bureaucracy: Reassessing the Built Production of (Colonial) Governments,” in Michaela Rosso (ed.), Investigating and Writing Architectural History: Subjects, Methodologies and Frontiers. Papers from the Third EAHN International Meeting, Torino: Politecnico di Torino, 2014, p. 477–514 and 515–572.

42 Charles Jencks, Modern Movements in Architecture, [1st edition 1973], Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985.

43 See, for instance, Reinhold Martin, The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.

44 Hyun-Tae Jung, “The Birth of American Corporate Architecture in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” in Hilde Heynen and Janina Gosseye (eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of the European Architectural History Network, op. cit. (note 24), p. 533–537; Hyun-Tae Jung, “SOM 1939–1946: From ‘Engineered Dwelling’ to the Manhattan Project,” in Michaela Rosso (ed.), Investigating and Writing Architectural History, op. cit. (note 41), p. 517–526.

45 Clive Chipkin, Johannesburg Transition. Architecture and Society from 1950, Johannesburg: STE Publishers, 2008, p. 141–154.

46 Paul Rabinow, “Colonialism, Modernity. The French in Morocco,” in Nezar Alsayyad (ed.), Forms of Dominance. On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise, Aldershot: Avebury, 1992 (Ethnoscapes, 5), p. 167–182 (p. 168).

47 Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait (eds.), Urbanism. Imported or exported? Native aspirations and foreign plans, Chichester; Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Academy, 2003.

48 Timothy Rothwell Livsey, “The University of Ibadan and Transnational Networks in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1930–1966,” ongoing Ph.D. research, Birkbeck College, London.

49 In this context, a fieldwork trip to Kinshasa, DR Congo to collect oral accounts and local archival material, is scheduled for spring 2014.

50 Vikram Bhatt and Peter Scriver, After the Masters. Contemporary Indian Architecture, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishers, 1990 (Contemporary Indian Architecteture); Vikramaditya Prakash, Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier. The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India, Seattle: WA, University of Washington Press, 2002 (Studies in Modernity and National Identity). As part of her research on Pierre Jeanneret, Maristella Casciato is currently also charting the role of young Indian architects in the making of Chandigarh. See, among others, Ernst Schneider, Maristella Casciato and Stanislaus Von Moos, Chandigarh 1956: Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Jane B. Drew, E. Maxwell Fry, Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2010.

51 Tom Avermaete and Maristella Casciato, How Architects, Experts, Politicians, International Agencies, and Citizens Negotiate Modern Planning: Casablanca Chandigarh, exhibition (Montreal, CCA, 26 November 2013–20 April 2014).

52 Łukasz Stanek, “Introduction: the ‘Second World’s’ architecture and planning in the ‘Third World’,” in Łukasz Stanek and Tom Avermaete (eds.), “Cold War Transfer: Architecture and Planning from Socialist Countries in the ‘Third World’,” op. cit. (note 21). URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjar20/17/3?nav=tocList. Accessed 29 June 2017.

53 In his 2007 Ph.D. research “The Periphery Within. Modern Architecture and the Making of the Third World”, M. Iljal Muzafarr touches on the economic dimension of the architecture produced in the context of development aid (reference, see note 34). The impact of funding agencies involved in school building programs (Unesco, World Bank and the European Development Fund) are at the core of Kim De Raedt’s ongoing PhD research. On the role of the French Fonds d’Investissements pour le Développement Economique et Sociale or fides (which after decolonization changed name into Fonds d’Aide et de Coopération or fac), see Sophie Dulucq, La France et les villes d’Afrique noire francophone. Quarante ans d’intervention (1945-1985). Approche générale et études de cas: Niamey, Ouagadougou et Bamako, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997 (Villes et entreprises).

54 Christel Frapier, “The circulation of technical knowledge between France and Eastern Europe, 1945–1975,” Journal of Architecture, vol. 14, no. 2, 2009, p. 185–196. The transnational dimensions of municipal administrations has been studied in detail by Pierre Yves Saunier.

55 Andrew Leach, What is Architectural History, Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2010, p. 57.

56 Ellen Shoshkes, Jacqueline Tyrwhitt: A Transnational Life in Urban Planning and Design, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013 (Design and the Built Environment series).

57 The role of Roger Aujame as a global consultant in the domain of school building is examined as part of Kim De Raedts ongoing Ph.D. project.

58 Alan Lester, “Personifying Colonial Governance: George Arthur and the Transition from Humanitarian to Development Discourse,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 102, no. 6, 2012, p. 1468–1488.

59 We are grateful to Iain Jackson for pointing out the importance of William Holford as a “committee man”. In this context, see also Iain Jackson, “Tropical Architecture and the West Indies: From Military Advances and Tropical Medicine to Robert Gardner-Medwin and the Networks of Tropical Modernism,” Journal of Architecture, vol. 18, no. 2, 2013, p. 168–195. URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13602365.2013.781202. Accessed 29 June 2017.

60 For a brief discussion of this global role of ciam, see, apart from the references mentioned in note 26, the chapter “ciam mondial” in Kees Somer, The Functional City. The CIAM and Cornelis van Eesteren, 1928-1960, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2007, p. 222–237.

61 Jean-Louis Cohen, “The Search for a Critical Practice,” op. cit. (note 4), p. 23. For sources that take the role of the uia more seriously, see note 33 as well as Miles Glendinnig, “Cold-War Conciliation: International Architectural Congresses in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s,” Journal of Architecture, vol. 14, no. 2, 2009, p. 197–217. URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13602360802704869. Accessed 29 June 2017.

62 Ann Laura Stoler, “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance,” Archival Science, vol. 2, 2002, p. 87–109.

63 For a survey of architectural practice in the Global South that pursues issues already at stake during the period discussed here (1945–1975), see publications edited by Andres Lepik, such as Afritecture: Building Social Change, Exhibition Catalogue (Munich, Architekturmuseum der tu München; Pinakothek der Moderne, 13 September 2013–12 January 2014), Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz; Munich: Architekturmuseum der tu München, 2013 or the themed issue of “Think Global, Build Social,” Arch +, no. 211–212, 2013.

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Johan Lagae et Kim De Raedt, « Editorial »ABE Journal [En ligne], 4 | 2013, mis en ligne le 01 juillet 2014, consulté le 10 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abe/3384 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.3384

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Johan Lagae

Senior Lecturer, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

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Kim De Raedt

PhD Candidate, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

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