ABE Journal

Call for Varia articles 2026

2026-06-25

Varia articles are examined as they are received for possible inclusion in an all Varia issue or in the Varia section of a forthcoming themed issue.

ABE Journal provides a platform for historically grounded research on the built environment in relation to colonial and postcolonial contexts, and the transfers and transformations of modernity and modernism beyond its purported centers in Europe.

For the upcoming issue of the journal (submission deadline *30 September 2026*) we are particularly keen to receive contributions that, while in step with the general scope of the journal, reflect on aspects of the wider built environment in nineteenth and early twentieth-century imperial or colonial contexts. Articles may address issues such as professional networking, the circulation of media, and the transmission of models, technologies and doctrines across regions and cultures. Geographically, the scope may go beyond European metropolitan-colonial relations to include Central Asia, Eastern E...

Domestic Architecture in Dialogue: The Legacy of the Portuguese Colonisation in the Production of Domestic Spatiality in Contemporary Guinea-Bissau

Francesca Vita — 2026-06-11

Anthony King, in his seminal book “The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture,” suggested that “a distinctive form of housing, the bungalow, was an important element in the vast process of urbanization which, during the course of the 20th century, was instrumental in transforming the economic, social, cultural and political life of Africa.” In 2016, during a long stay in Guinea-Bissau, I was able to observe how urban and rural landscapes were characterized by the spread of this housing typology shaped during the colonial period. King’s provocation statement can be seen therefore as a challenge to understand how colonialism operated through domestic architecture. Hence, opening up to a discussion on the bungalow legacy in the present day.

To pursue this aim, my research studies focused on the transformation of the Ajuda neighborhood in Bissau (1965). This was the last colonial housing project promoted by the Provincial Office of the Public Works Department to accommodate mostly ...

Architectural Encounters in Asia Pacific

Peter Scriver — 2026-06-11

The privileged view of power—history as written by the conquerors—is a perennial problem of historiography that critical inquiry in the field of postcolonial studies consciously began to address decades ago from “subaltern” and other alternative perspectives. Growing interest more recently in the “transnational” transfer of architectural expertise, materials and technologies across the Global South reflects a similar stance among critical architectural historians attempting to discern neocolonial processes of North-South dependency-building, as differentiated from the ideal of equitable international trade and nation-building privileged in previous narratives of post-colonial modernisation.

Intercolonial trade is the novel alternative focus of the present collective volume. As editors Amanda Achmadi, Paul Walker and Soon-Tzu Speechley explain, “the production of buildings associated with [Asia Pacific] trade and industry did not conform to the politically constructed colonial borders...

Aniwee or the Warrior Queen: Florence Dixie and Fantasies of Female Empowerment (1879-1890)

María Eugenia Allende Correa — 2026-06-11

In 1879, an expedition led by the Scottish travel writer Lady Florence Dixie (1855-1905) arrived in Patagonia. Dixie undertook a journey on horseback through the Patagonian pampas that gave rise to a memoir (Across Patagonia, 1880). However, her stay in Patagonia left such a profound impression on her that she later reworked it into two children’s novels: The Young Castaways (1890) and Aniwee or the Warrior Queen (1890). In these works, Dixie constructs this landscape from a distinctly female European perspective. The present article argues that Dixie’s books provide a unique insight into the relationship between her self-conception as a British female subject and her reading of Patagonia and its Indigenous people. Dixie projects herself onto the heroine of these novels, a young Tehuelche woman named Aniwee, and contrasts the restrictions she faces as a woman in Europe with what she perceives as the freedom claimed by Indigenous women from Patagonia. Her reading of their ways of lif...

Controlling the Mujer Popular: 19th-Century Bourgeois Women Writers and the Contested Spaces of Domesticity in Bogota

Paula Salazar Rodríguez — 2026-06-11

This article explores the role that was played by women in Bogota from two antagonistic social classes in consolidating a modern Colombia. In line with modern theories of urban planning that prevailed globally during the 19th century, the moralizing discourses promulgated by women of the local bourgeoisie contributed to the colonization of the feminine imagination. These discourses also served to transform—and even erase—certain everyday spaces in the working-class neighborhoods of Bogota, spaces where the unsettling spirit and vitality of the mujeres populares (lower or working-class women) were expressed without reserve. I am interested in interpreting from a feminist perspective the works of three women writers associated with the local bourgeoisie at a time when Bogota was undergoing profound political, urban, and social transformations. My purpose is to identify the different stages in the process by which their discourses were influenced by their perception of mujeres populare...

Nuns Reporting the City: Convents, Urban Change, and Women’s Spatial Experiences in Santiago de Chile (1700-1812)

Sol Pérez Martínez — 2026-06-11

With the Spanish occupation of South America during the 16th century, Catholic organizations arrived from Spain to run a parallel “spiritual colonization.” As early as 1571, female religious groups established in Chile alongside male priests to propagate Catholicism. Nuns—women who took religious vows—fulfilled a spiritual and educational purpose in South America similar to the one they held in Europe, but within colonial cities, they also had an added social role. Convents—fort-like structures with accommodation, services, and gardens designed for nuns and those who lived with them—were part of the Spanish colonial project and its Christian mission. The convent served a dual purpose: it provided a space to instruct women in the Catholic way of life, and an enclosure for those who deviated from societal expectations. These buildings and other religious spaces played a central role in colonial society as a shelter or repository for girls, orphans, widows, single women, impoverished w...

Women Making Space in the Andes (1400-1900): A Cross-period Approach for Expanding Architectural Histories

Anne Hultzsch — 2026-06-11

Only fifteen years ago, the ground breaking archeological discovery of the remains of the Lady of Cao, a powerful female ruler of the Moche civilization, challenged the gendered and Western preconceptions of ancient Peruvian historiography. The funerary attire and spatial arrangement of the Lady of Cao’s tomb presented an undeniable display of power, equitable to the better known Lord of Sipan discovered in 1990. More recently, in 2024, archeologists uncovered a throne room with painted murals and columns depicting powerful women and men in Pañamarca, Perú. While previously the women in the murals in other sites of Pañamarca were dismissed as mythical or religious figures, the discovery of a throne with beads, threads, and human hair alongside images of a weaving woman on a throne indicated the existence of “a seventh-century woman leader,” confirming that the Lady of Cao was not the only female ruler of the Moche (fig. 1). These discoveries attest to the power of female leaders in ...

Editorial

Tania Sengupta — 2026-06-11

Issue 26 of ABE Journal opens with a Dossier on women’s agency in architectural and spatial production in Andean America from the 15th to the 19th centuries. This is the first time the theme section in our journal reaches back beyond the 19th and 20th centuries, the period for which we have established an acknowledged platform of discussion over the last 15 years.

Our decision this time is inextricably related to the scope of the dossier at hand: looking at this extended timeframe seems justified by the opportunity it offers to discuss the role of women in determining and appropriating space in a geography—the Andes—whose built environment was redefined, through colonisation and settlement and in very specific ways, in the course of those centuries. This dossier, therefore, becomes significant for four particular reasons. First, save for a few individual articles in some of our earlier issues, and more than a decade since ABE-7 was dedicated to South America between c. 1850 and 1950,...

Drawing the House for the Chosen Women: Guamán Poma de Ayala and Indigenous Perspectives on Gender in the Inca Built Environment

Stella Nair — 2026-06-11

In the early modern period, there was one female-centered building type that captured the imagination of the Iberians: the acllauasi or the Inca “House for the Chosen Women” (fig. 1). Early modern Iberian writers often compared the acllauasi to a convent and the aclla to nuns, emphasizing their beauty, youth, and virginity. In terms of scholarship, the acllauasi has come to define female Inca space today. This is significant as most Inca architecture is attributed to men (as designers, builders, patrons, and users). Yet we know very little about the architecture of this gendered complex. An image by the Indigenous author Guamán Poma de Ayala is often used to illustrate the acllauasi, though its potential for architectural insight has been left largely unexamined. This is not surprising, given the paucity of research into female Inca spaces. Yet this image and Guamán Poma de Ayala’s monograph (of which this image is a part) hold important clues to our understanding of the role of wom...

Reflections on Andean Women Making Space(s)

Catalina Mejía Moreno — 2026-06-11

The Andes. A world that contains many worlds. In this special issue, Women Making Space in the Andes: 1400-1900, the Andes emerge as an editorial, epistemological, and curatorial choice. This choice acknowledges a vast region that exists both within and beyond the so-called “ancient Andes” of the Inca Empire—a historiographical reference that remains prevalent within architectural history in European and Anglo-American contexts. As the Bolivian sociologist and Aymara activist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui reminds us, to speak of the Andes is to refer to a living entity; mountains are not inert geological formations, but guardians of memory and active participants in everyday social and political life. To “make space in the Andes,” is therefore to make space for practices that are, in most cases, as and as distinct as the mountains themselves.

In her contribution to this special issue, Paula Salazar Rodríguez invites readers to consider the present through the practices of the past. This i...