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Mapping the Discourse. Architecture Periodicals in/for the Teaching of Architecture History

Une cartographie du discours. Périodiques d’architecture dans/pour l’enseignement de l’histoire de l’architecture
Gaia Caramellino, Valeria Casali et Nicole De Togni

Résumés

L’article réfléchit sur le rôle des revues d’architecture en tant que sources, instruments, méthodes et dispositifs narratifs pour l’enseignement de l’histoire de l’architecture, en questionnant leur place comme médiateurs entre différents milieux intellectuels et professionnels. Conçu autour du séminaire proposé pendant les derniers six ans aux étudiants du cours d’Histoire et Théorie de l’Architecture du Politecnico di Milano, le projet pédagogique réfléchit l’attention croissante pour l’étude de relations entre l’architecture et des différents médias, et le débat récent sur l’histoire de l’architecture en tant que pratique transnationale.
Un corpus de 50 revues publiées dans 18 pays différents a été traité comme un "système organique de connaissance" et un réseau, en surmontant les lectures monographiques et locales, basées sur l’histoire de revues isolées ou des projets éditoriaux nationaux. Les revues ont été examinées dans leurs interrelations et interconnexions par le biais d’analyses comparatives et interculturelles, en traversant diverses géographies, afin d’interroger la circulation des mots et des idées.
Croisant deux attitudes antithétiques, qui ont considéré au cours des dernières décennies les revues comme des sources pour l’écriture d’histoire ou, alternativement, comme des objets d’enquête, les revues sont examinées de manière critique en tant qu’objets complexes, étudiées dans leurs dimension économique, matérielle, culturelle, visuelle et graphiques. En disséquant la structure de chaque revue et en examinant ses éléments constitutifs, l’étude de ce réseau de revues met en lumière les interconnexions entre une constellation des acteurs et agents impliqués dans la production de connaissance.
L’analyse des divers rationalités, lignes éditoriales et réseaux entre les éditeurs, les propriétaires, les institutions et le grand public a permis de remettre en question la notion même de milieu que les magazines contribuent à créer et animer. La lecture croisée des " biographies de journaux" et l’étude de "l’anatomie" de divers genres contribuent à remettre en question les interprétations canoniques et les temporalités d’une histoire de l’architecture du XXe siècle encore centrée sur la scène éditoriale européenne et nord-américaine, offrant une compréhension plus nuancée des temps et des formes de production de la culture architecturale. D’autre part, l’utilisation d’un corpus d’outils analytiques et de formes de communication visuels moins conventionnels a révélé le potentiel de la cartographie thématique, des lignes de temps et des diagrammes en tant que dispositifs narratifs innovants. Ces moyens pourraient enrichir les méthodes et les outils de l’enseignement de l’histoire de l’architecture, en ouvrant un nouveau champ de réflexion sur les opportunités offertes par la contamination avec la recherche quantitative et avec les technologies et méthodologies des digital humanities.

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Introduction

  • 1 This kaleidoscope also comprises websites like Designboom, Dezeen, and other recent collections lik (...)

1Online periodical publications and specialized digital platforms dedicated to architecture and design have progressively expanded their presence and visibility over the past few decades. Informative websites and visual-oriented repertoires, like ArchDaily or Divisare,1 hasten the dissemination of information characterized by diverse levels of professional specialization, often finding a virtually unlimited and less-institutionalized extension on their social media channels. Moreover, online versions of established print journals and original editorial projects, like E-Flux, Klat, and Failed Architecture, or more situated blogs, like Socks and Bldgblog, produce and transmit divergent forms of knowledge and criticism, acquiring a new centrality for architectural students as sites and tools for formation and information.

2This heterogeneous panorama of online publications codifies fertile landscapes of design references and original project cultures, a function that architecture periodicals performed long before the digital era. Admittedly, print journals often had a more substantial critical stance than most current online sources. Therefore, alignment with the cultural position of an oriented magazine meant, for students, incorporating and developing a repertoire of critical-theoretical and design references that projected and mirrored the intellectual and professional milieu of the publication itself. Reading a specific magazine did, in fact, take on an incisive dimension in the education and cultural positioning of architecture students. At any rate, the above-mentioned virtual collectors make up a familiar territory for design culture. In the framework of design studios, architecture periodicals and their digital heirs are still interpreted both as valuable research instruments and substantial teaching devices.

3However, only a limited number of teaching experiences, like the well-known course held by Beatriz Colomina, tested the limits and potentialities of architecture magazines as teaching and learning instruments, as well as their role in adding levels and perspectives to historical discourse. Apart from anthological collections proposing them as selected references, why are periodicals still performing a peripheral role as pedagogical tools in the teaching and learning of architecture history?

4The seminar Mapping the Discourse mediates with this inclination, questioning and exploring the twofold role of architecture periodicals as objects of inquiry and educational devices. First introduced in 2015 as part of the curricular course of History and Theory of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano, it uses architecture periodicals as didactic tools to investigate specific moments, debates, and concepts that marked the production of 20th-century architectural culture. To this end, the pedagogical project builds on a preliminary series of introductory lectures and readings by scholars, critics, and editors to provide a theoretical framework and a set of valuable interpretative paradigms for studying publishing culture. At the same time, the seminar prompts historical investigation on and with architecture periodicals, structuring its methodology on two main conceptual “pillars” and experiencing different research approaches and instruments over the diverse phases of the work.

5First, students are invited to investigate and outline a set of “journal biographies” that interpret 20th century architecture, design, and planning periodicals as complex objects. Examining the DNA and anatomy of an architectural journal requires decoding its constituent elements and recording their evolution and relevant changes over a significant time frame. These initial quantitative appraisals constitute the basis for subsequent qualitative investigations that, for instance, interrogate journals through thematic and diachronic analyses constructed through critical anthologies of textual and visual material.

6As a second step, research works surpass monographic perspectives in favor of cross-readings, inquiring about periodicals in their interconnections as a system of knowledge. These non-linear operations explore and connect the sites, modalities, and production processes of architectural thinking. At the same time, they substantiate the significance of transnational narrations and problematize the relationship between journals and specific milieux from a diachronic perspective, sometimes debunking the very notion of genre.

  • 2 Hélène Jannière and France Vanlaethem, “Architectural Magazines as Historical Source or Object? A M (...)

7The seminar’s empirical and experimental approach embraces the methodological direction introduced by Hélène Jannière, whose interest in the search for a “third avenue” within architecture journal inquiries mediates between two consolidated scholarly positions. Indeed, as highlighted by Jannière, magazines have been regarded as the principal sources for writing the histories of 20th century architecture, before the first architectural archives and their corpus of primary sources were made available. After this moment, between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, a renewed interest in architectural periodicals as objects of historical investigation started to emerge, finally consolidating their twofold role in the research of – and for – architecture history. Therefore, the seminar adopts Jannière’s perspective, critically exploring magazines in their material, cultural, intellectual, financial, and visual dimensions.2

  • 3 Recent scholarship includes, among others, Richard Wittman, Architecture, Print Culture, and the Pu (...)
  • 4 Beatriz Colomina and Joan Ockman (eds.), Architectureproduction, New York/Princeton Architectural P (...)
  • 5 Scholarship comprises the studies dedicated to periodicals such as Casabella, SA: Sovremennaja Arkh (...)
  • 6 Roberto Gabetti and Carlo Olmo, Le Corbusier e L’Esprit Nouveau, Torino, Einaudi (Saggi 555), 1988; (...)

8Moreover, the course builds on recent prolific scholarship that places architecture periodicals at the center of historical investigations.3 This interest is rooted in works from the 1980s that started exploring the implications of architectural representation in its various forms.4 Within this framework, current research observes publications from heterogeneous standpoints: monographic reconstructions and long-term cross-cultural comparisons and examinations flank studies looking at specific editorial cultures and types of periodicals.5 Among them, several contributions enrich a consolidated field of investigation devoted to the building and writing of distinct journal biographies, inaugurated by groundbreaking inquiries such as Roberto Gabetti and Carlo Olmo’s research on L’Esprit Nouveau or Jacques Gubler’s study of ABC.6

“A printed network”: Building the corpus of architecture periodicals as a system of knowledge

9The seminar Mapping the Discourse is part of the fourth-year educational curriculum of the international master’s program in Architecture at Politecnico di Milano. The student community, composed of short and long-term Italian and foreign graduates, communicated and connected diverse learning and research attitudes, intellectual positions, and understandings of modern architecture. As expressions of distinct national design and teaching cultures, these instances offered a fertile ground for testing the potentialities of unconventional pedagogies.

  • 7 National campaigns of digitalization responded to the urgent need to collect and preserve this frag (...)

10Moreover, the international breadth of the course prompted the development of a shared corpus of printed and digital architecture periodicals characterized by a global reach. First, a systematic survey of available resources allowed to sew together national and international library collections, institutional archives, databases, and repositories, ranging from materials available in the Milanese network of libraries to those belonging to students’ diverse home institutions. Inspections of physical repositories flanked explorations of online databases and digital collections of periodicals created over the past decades by professional and cultural organizations, libraries, independent foundations, or government bodies.7

  • 8 The boundaries of the selected reference chronology correspond to two moments of shift and transiti (...)

11As a result, new and relatively understudied territories of knowledge, whose accessibility is hindered by language barriers, broadened the existing reference system of sources and resources, still profoundly centered on European and North American architectural publishing. In fact, over the course of six years, students researched around fifty journals published in eighteen countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Iran, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia), structuring a database that operates as a digital collection, a shared research platform, and a teaching device. Activities focused on the chronological time frame between the 1920s and the 1970s, with particular attention devoted to editorial production during and after World War II.8

  • 9 For instance, the scrutinized corpus of Italian periodicals mirrors the attempt to cross and compar (...)

12Within this framework, academic, institutional, technical, professional, and commercial magazines selected according to their editorial strategies, cultural positions, and intended readership constituted the starting point for questioning the manifold identities of architecture journals and their role in producing multiple and divergent narratives – or histories – of modern architecture.9

  • 10 Hereafter, in brackets, the text cites the years examined by the students.

13Some students reflected on publications affiliated with or produced under the patronage of professional associations and state-sponsored organizations. These journals, which focus on the architect’s everyday practice and agency, are identified as the interface between professional and institutional discourses, mediating between the languages, conventions, and registers that codify architectural knowledge.10 Research works scrutinized, for instance, the reviews and bulletins produced as official organs of professional bodies, including well-known post-war publications like the A.I.A. Journal and its predecessor, known as The American Architect (1935-1942), or the Royal Australian Institute of Architects’ Architecture in Australia (1955-1965). Other examples were provided by the journal of the Turkish Chamber of Architects, Mimarlik (1963-1973), and the issues of the Iranian periodical The Architect published in the late 1940s, or those of the Argentinian Revista de Arquitectura of the early 1930s, promoted by the Sociedad Central de Arquitectos and the Centro Estudiantes de Arquitectura. The corpus also includes their European counterparts, such as Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo promoted by the Madrid professional institute of architects (the COAM), or the journal of its Catalan equivalent (the COACB), entitled Cuadernos de Arquitectura (1957-1968), as well as the British Official Architect and Planning Review (1950-1960). Furthermore, several students devoted their attention to the network of journals affiliated with national planning institutes, such as the post-war issues of the Italian Urbanistica. Rivista Bimestrale dell’INU, or the French Urbanisme.

14In order to question the entanglements of the relations between the journal, its milieu, as well as forms and processes of knowledge and criticism production, the course also explored more engaged publications which served as sounding boards for political groups, often identified with unions crossing regimes and political ideologies. Such periodicals mirror the changing institutional discourse on the legitimacy of professional practice in response to paradigmatic moments of cultural and political rupture. This is the case regarding the Italian Architettura - Sindacato Nazionale Fascista Architetti (1932-1942) and the Spanish Hogar y Arquitectura - Revista Bimestral de la Obra Sindacal del Hogar (1955-1959), as well as the issues of the Chinese Architectural Society’s Architectural Journal published between the 1960s and the 1970s. Another significant example was offered by the Hungarian Epites-Epiteszet (1949-1951), published as the journal of the Union of Hungarian Construction Workers, which was the institutional evolution of the avant-garde Tér és Forma (1944-1948) and Új Építészet (1946-1949), the journal of the communist trade union (Fig. 1). These analyses reveal the interferences between publishing cultures, design practices, and political groups, advancing newfound attention for the institutionalization processes of both architectural discourses and practice. Also, they acknowledge the nuanced role of editorial board members, positioned in-between foreign circuits, local instances, and political agendas.

Figure 1. A multi-layered timeline provides a visual synthesis of the relationship between Hungarian cultural and political life and the five journals structuring the national disciplinary debate in the period between 1945 and 1960

Figure 1. A multi-layered timeline provides a visual synthesis of the relationship between Hungarian cultural and political life and the five journals structuring the national disciplinary debate in the period between 1945 and 1960

Architecture and politics: Hungary 1945-1960, by the student Fanni Szarva

15On a second stand, the seminar aimed at questioning the flourishing corpus of post-war professional journals, where critical and theoretical reflections progressively became marginal or took different narrative forms compared to increasingly influential commercial and technical aspects. Such periodicals reported on and for the architect’s training and everyday practice through the extensive use of technical drawings, blueprints, schemes, and other representation devices. Moreover, they contributed to embedding and legitimizing the role of professionals in post-war society. These tendencies are symbolized mainly by the editorial strategies of North American commercial and trade magazines, such as Architectural Record and Architectural Forum. However, in-depth analyses reveal their presence also in the slightly divergent cultural projects pursued by journals like Progressive Architecture and Arts&Architecture, where specific modes of communicating and representing current architectural debates often reflected the primary interests and driving forces involved in the journal’s production. Students’ investigations of these periodicals emphasized, in fact, the multiple forms of the professionalization processes that affected the architectural discourse in diverse cultural and political frameworks. This underscored how they were tracked, reflected, and registered by a post-war editorial world driven by an emergent consumerist culture and by the building industry’s preoccupations.

16The analyses conducted on a set of European professional journals confirmed, for example, their role as incubators of the instances of postwar reconstruction during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Such publications fostered the diffusion of technical and political culture, crystallizing emergent concerns linked to public housing programs and policies, neighborhood design, territorial and regional planning, or technological research. Within this well-known framework, a particular attention was devoted to less explored monographic sections, which discussed and presented regulations, managerial information, technical writings, and detailed drawings. In the post-war Italian context, these inquiries revealed a nuanced and multifaceted understanding of the professional journal as a genre. Indeed, the cross-reading of opposing editorial attitudes and projects portrayed the tensions underpinning the complex scene of the Italian reconstruction. These reflections are exemplified in the exploration of divergent narratives produced by diverse milieux and the various publishing strategies of journals like Edilizia Popolare (1954-1964), edited under the patronage of the Ministry of Interiors, and Edilizia Moderna (1950-1960), promoted by the Italian representatives of the building industry, as well as the antithetical position of Metron (1945-1954), the printed expression of the Roman-based Association for Organic Architecture (APAO) edited by Edizioni Comunità, the publishing house owned by Adriano Olivetti. These experiences showed different degrees and capabilities of mediating between a porosity towards foreign examples, editorial interests, national reconstruction programs, and professional discourses.

  • 11 Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Andrew Peckham (eds.), Modernism and the Professional Architecture Journ (...)

17Besides the seminar wanted to interrogate how and to what extent established periodicals like Casabella (or Architectural Review) managed to successfully combine a professionalization tendency with a consistent critical production through intellectual and editorial projects carried out under specific directorships during the 1950s.11 Similarly, other networks of periodicals became occasions for students to question the dominant narratives, common understandings, and acknowledged readings linked to their identities. This was the case in the research conducted on the Indian magazine Marg. Magazine for the Arts (1946-1959), studied in relation to the exchanges between architectural groups and specific artistic and intellectual circles, or the Polish journal Projekt (1956-1960, Fig. 2), along with more explored cases like the emblematic seven issues of the Italian Spazio, which crystallized the intellectual project of its editor, Luigi Moretti (1950-1953).

Figure 2. Annual maps relate subjects and type of articles, as well as their localizations and authors for the Polish journal Projekt

Figure 2. Annual maps relate subjects and type of articles, as well as their localizations and authors for the Polish journal Projekt

Projekt 1956-1960, by the students Feng Borui, Qui Danni, Stanislaw Gulkowski, Kacper Kuczynski, Pan Siy.

18The fragmented editorial arena scrutinized by the seminar was enriched by publications explicitly preoccupied with the multiple understandings of domesticity between the 1940s and the 1960s. Reflecting cultural and societal changes, magazines like the American House&Home or, later, the Italian Abitare, reveal their role as bridges between disciplinary discourse and the lay public’s popular aspirations, with the aim of educating the taste of practitioners and their clientele. The course provided the opportunity to look at the nuanced and tacit discourses promoted through their pages, unveiling their implicit critical and cultural positions. Therefore, students reflected on issues related to urban planning, preservation, or landscape design through the lenses of domestic space and residential architecture.

  • 12 Beatriz Colomina and Craig Buckley (eds.), Clip Stamp Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Maga (...)
  • 13 Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, op. cit. Kenneth Frampt (...)

19Although the relations between established professional and commercial periodicals and their respective milieux were one of the focus points of the seminar, divergent interpretations emerged when, in only a few cases, students shifted their attention to the study of publishing culture between the late 1960s and the 1970s. This set of publications, comprising journals of architectural theory, neo-avant-garde little magazines, and counter-culture periodicals, is in fact characterized by an ambiguous, yet well-acknowledged,12 symbiotic relationship with the discourses of individuals and collectives engaged in their production. At any rate, the interest focused more on questioning the echo and implications of these less-established publications on the agenda, graphic composition, and design attitude of mainstream journals, looking at the innovations they introduced in terms of contents, language, typographic culture, and representation techniques. This trend was registered, for example, in the analysis of Casabella under the directorship of Alessandro Mendini, and was documented and confirmed through a cross-comparison with the issues of André Bloc’s Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, or through the investigation of specific sections, such as Architectural Design’s “Cosmorama.”13 In this framework, the printed network of independent and experimental periodicals, leaflets, and pamphlets published in Italy and commonly identified with the broader experience of radical culture, such as Progettare Inpiù, Marcatré, Pineta, In, or Fresco, Global Tools, Environmedia, and Che, offered a testing ground to observe and interrogate interconnections with the mainstream architectural press and other disciplinary fields in Italy between 1964 and 1978. Similarly, several other works explored the common traits between academic journals produced in the newly established Departments of Architecture Theory of North American schools, like the Yale-based Perspecta, or those elaborating autonomous theoretical discourses increasingly detached from professional practice, such as the AA Files, Oppositions, or the Italian Lotus.

20Overall, in these last analyses, students underscored the role of “bridge-authors” fluctuating between independent and mainstream journals, and the overlapping discourses and images found in the editorial cultures and policies of independent and established press.

Mapping the discourses. Journal biographies and the DNA of architectural periodicals

21The seminar built the terrain for experimenting innovative teaching and learning methods. The pedagogical project, in fact, builds on an empirical approach that interweaves multiple tools and scales of inquiry. Above all, it combines quantitative and qualitative operations into the writing of “journal biographies” and the cross-reading of the printed network of periodicals analyzed by their interrelations.

  • 14 André Tavares, The Anatomy of the Architectural Book, Montréal/Zurich, Centre canadien d’architectu (...)

22When addressing the history of the selected magazine over a specific timeframe, students were first asked to sketch journal identities – their “anatomy”14 and their DNA. Writing journal biographies usually prompted investigations on their factual features and material qualities, as well as their cultural, intellectual, economic, and professional dimensions. In this phase, the seminar approaches periodicals as primary sources and as complex documents: just as databases, they collect images and texts to be decoded and analyzed. On a second level, students analyzed the protagonists, textual and graphic contents, themes, structure, and article typologies over the selected period. This standpoint implies decomposing the articulation of a journal and scrutinizing all its constituent parts, such as covers, colophons, table of contents, and inner sections, as well as the profiles involved in the editorial process. Therefore, results questioned the cultural autonomy of each section in producing diverse – and sometimes divergent – narratives. As critical reflection on the journal’s DNA considers the variations of these aspects over a decade, it brings to light continuities and ruptures in the long history of the magazine. Besides, these variations also emerge by juxtaposing the analyses conducted on different years of the same publication from a diachronic perspective.

23In this conceptual framework, attention devoted to the analysis of colophons introduces issues related to the journal’s cost, publisher, owners, business model, international distribution, and financing systems. Inquiries aimed at documenting the changing composition of the editorial board over time, as well as the varying involvement of owners, directors, editors, graphic designers, correspondents, or authors (Fig. 3). Students problematized caesuras and moments of change by observing the shifting institutional, professional, or educational affiliations recorded over a decade of publication (Fig. 4). Therefore, the appraisal of editorial cultures, strategies, and policies calls into question the wider intellectual milieu behind the production and reception of architecture journals. These can indeed vary in the long-term history of a periodical. Moreover, their punctual decoding is challenged by the fragmented and multifaceted constellation of actors that contribute to a magazine’s production, but whose voices often remain in the background of historical inquiry.

Figure 3. Timeline tracking the changing involvement of the journal’s protagonists in their different roles and positions through Metron’s colophons

Figure 3. Timeline tracking the changing involvement of the journal’s protagonists in their different roles and positions through Metron’s colophons

Metron 1945-1954, by the students Valeria Casali, Sharon Piccolo, Giulia Repossi, Luca Rizzo, Marco Villa.

Figure 4. A focus on the protagonists of the journal intertwines their role in the publication with their biographies

Figure 4. A focus on the protagonists of the journal intertwines their role in the publication with their biographies

Mimarlik 1963-1972, by the students Tulay Seray, Uyeturk Didem, Vural Tuana.

24Likewise, studying the table of contents expands reflections concerning the figures actively involved in a journal’s production through an exploration of its overall structure and articulation. Besides highlighting the recurrence, form, role, contents, and aims of diverse thematic sections and article typologies, decoding a journal’s DNA also involves mapping themes, topics, authors, designers, buildings, and places over specific time frames. Analyses tracked the attention dedicated to each subject with the support of an excel grid listing and categorizing the visual and textual elements appearing in the periodical and collected in the digital platform.

  • 15 The study of the graphic dimension of the magazine materializes in the design, composition, and lay (...)

25Furthermore, students combined the analysis of textual contributions with that of aesthetic, graphic, and visual projects structuring the periodicals. The examinations concern variations in the layout, subject, language, and purposes of both covers and advertisements, or their relations with written content across different editorial seasons (Fig5). The goal was to disclose how graphic identities and techniques entangle with editorial strategies and delineate their contribution to the cultural positioning of a magazine. Works also observed to what extent typographic and iconographic choices appeal to the intended readership, reflect distinct editorial interests, or engage specific figures.15

Figure 5. The analysis of covers highlights the relationship with the contents of each issue, as well as the authorship behind the visual project

Figure 5. The analysis of covers highlights the relationship with the contents of each issue, as well as the authorship behind the visual project

The Architectural Forum 1950-1959, by the students Asrin Sanguanwongwan, Huwen Hao, Irem Karabulut, Maria Ekhina.

26As previously mentioned, students also devoted attention to parts of the journals that often remain at the “peripheries of the discourse”. These marginal and frequently undervalued columns and sections comprise press and book reviews, letters to the editors, thematic editorials, or professional advice and updates concerning, for instance, legislative and technical matters. Through each “journal biography”, students contributed to charting and measuring the design, content, and weight of these secondary domains, questioning their role, purposes, narrative devices, registers, and critical positioning in relation to the comprehensive editorial project and its primary narrative.

27With these points in mind, students were encouraged to use experimental graphic-based modes and devices to synthesize the data and images collected in the analysis of the journals’ DNA. For instance, less conventional narrative strategies and tools, still rarely explored in relation to the teaching of architectural history – like multilayered timelines, pie charts, histograms, clouds, meta-clouds, and thematic maps – crystalize how each architectural periodical addressed design culture, supporting comparative readings quantifying and highlighting the recurrence of figures, places, discourses, and topics. These devices, visualizing both spatial and temporal connections, either work as a “chronotope”, capturing a still in a specific moment (Fig. 6), or as diachronic accounts, tracing and mapping changes over broader time frames (Fig. 7).

Figure 6. Different tools of visual synthesis picture in a single figure both quantitative and qualitative data per year

Figure 6. Different tools of visual synthesis picture in a single figure both quantitative and qualitative data per year

Cuadernos de Arquitectura 1959-1969, by the students Mafalda Aguillo, Sara Carner, Mireia Faus, Guillem Rojo, Aina Valens.

Figure 7. A diachronic reading of the relevance of the themes linked to ‘interior design’ places the most significant articles over a timeline, visually conveying how pages were structured

Figure 7. A diachronic reading of the relevance of the themes linked to ‘interior design’ places the most significant articles over a timeline, visually conveying how pages were structured

Progressive Architecture 1950-1954, by the students Marta De Blas Errasti, Giulia Tosarello, Marina Vasileva, Matilde Villa, Lara Zentilomo.

  • 16 Petra Ceferin and Cvetka Pozar (eds.), Architectural Epicentres: Inventing Architecture, Intervenin (...)
  • 17 See the International Symposium Exploring Digital Humanities. Mapping Visions, Discourses, Theories (...)

28Such graphic syntheses contribute to decoding a journal’s cultural and professional milieu, serving as an opportunity to rethink consolidated or simplistic readings. By identifying both seasons and epicenters of cultural and professional discourse and documenting the journal’s ever evolving attention towards specific themes, figures, projects, and geographies,16 they problematize the association to particular genres or over-explored biographies, groups, institutions, places, and cultural projects. Yet, they also thematize the socio-cultural, professional, historical, and intellectual dimensions of publications, suggesting new methodological approaches for the quantitative analysis of the text, along with its interpretation and communication. These narrative solutions challenge conventional forms of teaching and researching architectural history, providing an additional layer to its canonical register. Besides, this teaching experience underscores the potential for further contaminations within the practices, methodologies, and instruments of data collection and visualization belonging to the digital humanities.17

29On the whole, writing and representing what has been defined as the DNA of a journal provides valuable quantitative data for developing a grounded qualitative interpretive appraisal. Dissecting a journal’s biography was indeed instrumental in the students’ recognition of particularly relevant aspects or meaningful debates over the considered time frame. Their critical interpretation identifies, selects, and places in dialogue the materials and evidence characterized by various registers and critical stances from a diachronic perspective (Fig. 8), reflecting multiple narrations and producing different readings of the same journal in relation to its distinctive milieu.

Figure 8. The thematic anthology provides a consciously built repository of articles that can be read according to different interpretative categories while providing visual evidence of the journal layout and iconography

Figure 8. The thematic anthology provides a consciously built repository of articles that can be read according to different interpretative categories while providing visual evidence of the journal layout and iconography

Progressive Architecture 1955-1965, by the students Cao Xuechen, Chen Ting, Wang Jingxian, Zhu Chendi, Zhou Shu.

30The exploration of periodicals as complex knowledge systems was a central proposition mirroring the seminar’s intent to surpass monographic and locally limited interpretations of architectural history. Single editorial histories and journal biographies represented a fertile research field, particularly for periodicals associated with less-investigated editorial panoramas, such as Asia or the Middle East. However, the pedagogical project offered a valuable opportunity to reflect on the processes of knowledge transfer and to question diverse translation phenomena, prompting the formulation of cross-cultural, comparative, and multi-situated readings. The adoption of transnational perspectives expressed and supported students’ interest in the different forms and practices of mobility. Furthermore, these premises enter into dialogue with the shaping of emerging transnational discourses, looking at the interferences between local and global dialectical forces within and through architecture periodicals.

31Students critically investigated journals as catalysts of contaminations crossing different geographic, cultural, and disciplinary contexts. Analyses observed the migration of architectural and urban knowledge in its technical, theoretical, commercial, and visual dimensions. To this end, they looked at the elements acting as vectors across different editorial projects, such as biographies, institutions, programs, events, publications, discourses and ideas, design typologies, and other forms of mediation. This inherent potential is hinted at, for instance, in the appearance of multilingual translations in non-anglophone journals and, since the 1930s, by international press reviews. Comparative studies focused on the various definitions and illustrations of this informative and often eccentric column, aimed at showing and briefly reviewing projects and reporting articles published in international architecture journals. For example, the cross-perspective examined multiple translations such as “Dergilerden” (“From magazines”) in the Turkish Mimarlik, as “Rivista delle Riviste” and “Revista de Revistas” (both meaning “magazine of magazines”) in the Italian Metron and the Catalan Cuadernos, while for the North American Architectural Forum it was “Recent foreign periodicals”.

  • 18 On the journal see Maristella Casciato, “Scienza e arte dell’architettura: due riviste nell’india d (...)

32In this framework, the above-mentionned “mapping” operations represent a valuable research and teaching tool, as they graphically visualize these trajectories of transfer (of people, notions, and ideas) through interpretative and thematic maps, offering immediate insight into how quantitative data can translate into qualitative narratives. As an example, the research works addressing the Indian magazine Marg documented the encounter between global and local instances,18 going beyond its interpretation as a bridge between Indian architectural and artistic cultures. Mapping operations identified collaborations between domestic practices and foreign experts, tracing the circulation of knowledge within the journal and conveying how these elements acted as vectors of transculturation (Fig. 9). Therefore, mapping and disclosing unexpected and untold international networks and trajectories nuance the idea of periodicals as products of site-specific cultural and intellectual environments (Fig. 10).

Figure 9. Reflections on the involvement of UN consultants Maciej Nowicki, Otto Königsberger, or Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, among others, exemplified how the journal Marg contributed to the acceleration of the disciplinary discussion in post-war independent India between 1946 and 1957

Figure 9. Reflections on the involvement of UN consultants Maciej Nowicki, Otto Königsberger, or Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, among others, exemplified how the journal Marg contributed to the acceleration of the disciplinary discussion in post-war independent India between 1946 and 1957

Marg 1946-1957, by the students Francesca Da Pozzo, Paolo De Biase, Maria Lucrezia De Marco, Annalisa Di Carlo, Elisa Fiscon.

Figure 10. The international incoming and outgoing circulation of references is mapped through projects and events in relation to the protagonists of the exchange, providing visual samples of the inherent iconography

Figure 10. The international incoming and outgoing circulation of references is mapped through projects and events in relation to the protagonists of the exchange, providing visual samples of the inherent iconography

JA Japan Architect 1962-1966, by the students Bianca Gentili, Elia Fontani, Dafni Riga, Amrita Matharu, Yasmine Sabba.

33Similarly, thematic maps explored the migration of certain notions and their critical fortune over time, documenting appropriation processes and investigating the inherent limits embedded in their translation across different cultural, linguistic, institutional, and professional contexts. The inquiry conducted on the fortune of North American planning concepts in post-war Italy constitutes an example of this approach. Investigations carried out on the pages of Metron and Urbanistica show, in fact, how terms like “neighborhood” and “neighborhood unit”, regional planning, or garden city values underwent a process of reconceptualization in their translations, becoming “quartiere” or “unità di vicinato” in post-war Italy (Fig. 11).

Figure 11. Thematic map representing featured international planning experiences and theories through which post-war Italian architectural and planning culture had the chance to open-up to European and International horizons

Figure 11. Thematic map representing featured international planning experiences and theories through which post-war Italian architectural and planning culture had the chance to open-up to European and International horizons

Metron 1945-1954, by the students Valeria Casali, Sharon Piccolo, Giulia Repossi, Luca Rizzo, Marco Villa.

  • 19 Tom Avermaete and Maristella Casciato (eds.), Casablanca Chandigarh: A Report on Modernization, Zür (...)

34Besides, the seminar encouraged cross-readings exploring the circulation of architectural culture within strongly connoted or compromised geopolitical frameworks, questioning the implications of conflicts, revolutions, and crises on architecture and its published discourses. Some investigations successfully linked reflections on the migration of professional knowledge associated with planning and technical culture into the geopolitical framework of the Cold War. This was done through journals referring to heterogeneous cultural and professional milieux like the Polish Projekt or the Hungarian Új Építészet, the Turkish Mimarlik, or the Chinese Jian Zhu Xue Bao. This angle is also well exemplified within a set of works by students interested in the renewed scholarly attention devoted to the building and planning actions in French African colonies through the printed discussions in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui between 1940 and 1950.19

  • 20 Jean-Louis Cohen and Hubert Damisch (eds.), Américanisme et modernité. L’idéal américain dans l’arc (...)
  • 21 David F. Travers, Arts&Architecture 1945-49. How A&A paved the way in post-war Construction and Cul (...)

35Consolidated trajectories expressed by the paradigms of Americanism and Americanization,20 among others, were nuanced by research works that aimed at showing how transnational forces influenced the international fortune of certain national architecture cultures through the lens of periodicals. Among the many investigated trajectories and directions, some studies mapped the dissemination of Italian architecture abroad. These unveiled, for example, the fortune of Italian housing reconstruction programs in the post-war issues of the Iranian journal Architect. Others documented the exchange between Milan and Barcelona in the 1960s, mapping projects, conferences, publications, and exhibitions that expressed the presence of Milanese architectural culture on the Catalan Cuadernos de Arquitectura. Also, inquiries looked at the Californian Arts&Architecture, traditionally investigated in strict relation to the figure of its editor John Entenza,21 interpreting the journal’s attention and interest for visually compelling images as channels for communicating Italian professional post-war culture. In these analyses, both the words of historians and the photographs of professionals shifted the epicenter of the North American reception and critical circulation of Italian architecture from the East to the West coast (Fig. 12). These works conveyed how knowledge of distant objects was often mediated by the journal’s directorship, local interpretative categories, and aesthetic mystification.

Figure 12. The research focuses on Arts & Architecture’s attention and interest for visually compelling images, representing Italian professional cultures at the crossroads between modernity and tradition through the work of historians and professional photographers, including George Everard Kidder Smith, Myron Goldfinger, Esther McCoy, and Giorgio Casali, figures engaged at different extents and through diverse professional networks in the cultural and disciplinary exchange between Italy and the United States

Figure 12. The research focuses on Arts & Architecture’s attention and interest for visually compelling images, representing Italian professional cultures at the crossroads between modernity and tradition through the work of historians and professional photographers, including George Everard Kidder Smith, Myron Goldfinger, Esther McCoy, and Giorgio Casali, figures engaged at different extents and through diverse professional networks in the cultural and disciplinary exchange between Italy and the United States

Arts & Architecture 1956-1967, by the students Chiara Castellano, Diletta Ciuffi, Giorgia Concato, Martina Massacesi, Chiara Milella.

  • 22 Gaia Caramellino, “The Shelter Project and the multiple itineraries of American modernism”, in Beat (...)

36Transnational and cross-cultural perspectives comprise just some of the outlooks elaborated upon and proposed by the students. For instance, The Journal of the American Institute of Architects was observed as a fundamental platform for the introduction and codification of urban design as a discipline in North American practice. Conversely, Progressive Architecture, among others, became a lens to document the circulation of foreign technological innovations in North American post-war building culture and industry. Other original contributions presented, for example, a transversal reading of Italian radical counter-culture magazines between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, through the international references they featured (Fig. 13) or a more complex reading of Shelter, enriching its consolidated understanding as the official platform for the New York vanguards.22 These addressed the publication, inquiring into the ever-evolving academic, technocratic, professional, and institutional milieux it refers to.

Figure 13. The construction of a thematic anthology can result in original forms of visual synthesis. The represented selection of articles deals with new perspectives on the city and the related iconography

Figure 13. The construction of a thematic anthology can result in original forms of visual synthesis. The represented selection of articles deals with new perspectives on the city and the related iconography

Italian counterculture radical magazines 1964-1975, by the students Luca Benassi, Lorenzo Benzoni, Alex Beretta, Matteo Ornato, Giuseppe Rivatta

  • 23 Jacques Gubler, Cara signora Tosoni: le cartoline di Casabella, 1982-1995. Dear Signora Tosoni: pos (...)
  • 24 David F. Travers, Arts&Architecture 1945-49. How A&A paved the way in post-war Construction and Cul (...)

37Some research works analyzed the role and significance of under-explored sections, secondary columns, or advertisements. In this case, students scrutinized heterogeneous documents combining texts and images, such as publicity, photographs, drawings, and vignettes. The special narrative devices and different registers characterizing these sections highlight the underlying mediation and dialogue between the diverse interests and actors involved in magazine production. In this sense, the analysis of the critical echo of Casabella’s section devoted to Jacques Gubler’s postcards, which gained its autonomy in the magazine’s reading, offered an emblematic example.23 These investigations reveal how these parts often enjoyed relative critical independence from the rest of the journal, thus helping to nuance the positioning of a periodical within the broader disciplinary debate, as in the case, for instance, of the critical discourse framed by the collection of editorials signed by Bruno Zevi in L’Architettura. Cronache e Storia (Fig .14). Investigations focusing on the circulation of technical culture across different parts of the magazine exemplify how peripheral columns sometimes bring out narratives, concerns, and interests conflicting with other central sections. Also, a rich corpus of ad hoc advertising displaying the achievements of technological research, value systems, and economic interests of the building industry intertwine with the contents presented through project reviews and columns dedicated to technical updates or surveying the fortune of specific design programs, such as residential, recreational, or educational buildings (Fig. 15)24

Figure 14. A visual synthesis of the contribution and references emerging from the collection of editorials by Bruno Zevi

Figure 14. A visual synthesis of the contribution and references emerging from the collection of editorials by Bruno Zevi

L’Architettura. Cronache e Storia 1958-1959, by the students Margherita Furia Bonanomi, Gloria Mariotti, Chiara Mautone.

Figure 15. The analysis of the specific section dedicated to the PA Awards provides a selection of project reviews to be read through multiple lenses, such as author profiles, scale, localization, and intervention typology

Figure 15. The analysis of the specific section dedicated to the PA Awards provides a selection of project reviews to be read through multiple lenses, such as author profiles, scale, localization, and intervention typology

Progressive Architecture 1955-1965, by the students Cao Xuechen, Chen Ting, Wang Jingxian, Zhu Chendi, Zhou Shu.

  • 25 B. Colomina et al. (eds.), Las revistas de arquitectura (1900-1975), op. cit.; Ioanna Theocharopoul (...)

38Other significant attempts to position each editorial product in dialogue with advertising culture underscored how and to what extent the narrative logics and modes of specialized publishing appropriated, at varying degrees and for different purposes, the techniques and rules of promotion derived from publicity.25 For instance, advertisements, listed and classified according to product sectors, were used to reflect on reference readers of Casabella Continuità (Fig. 16). Conversely, commercials appearing on the pages of Progressive Architecture offered students a level of critically autonomous storytelling to reflect on models, practices, home culture, and lifestyle (Fig. 17). In this sense, investigations on publicity proposed a valid paradigm to question the mediation between property, the publisher’s interests, and the intellectual position of the editors.

Figure 16. An analysis of advertisements in relation to the categories of proposed products accompanies the construction of an anthology of images

Figure 16. An analysis of advertisements in relation to the categories of proposed products accompanies the construction of an anthology of images

Casabella-Continuità 1953-1962, by the students Federica Ferrari, Federico Finazzi, Marco Guarany, Diego Oberti, Daya Vismara.

Figure 17. A thematic reading of Progressive Architecture adopted the lens of advertisement culture

Figure 17. A thematic reading of Progressive Architecture adopted the lens of advertisement culture

Progressive Architecture 1950-1954, by the students Marta De Blas Errasti, Giulia Tosarello, Marina Vasileva, Matilde Villa, Lara Zentilomo.

  • 26 Eve Blau, Edward Kaufman and Robin Evans (eds.), Architecture and its Image: Four Centuries of Arch (...)
  • 27 On this research approach, see Michela Rosso, Laughing at Architecture: Architectural Histories of (...)

39Furthermore, thematic investigations highlighted the potential for diverse sets of images circulating on the illustrated press to contribute to the teaching of architectural history. Traditional technical drawings and vistas are often combined with other less conventional representation formulas, such as competition drawings, travel sketches, vignettes, and collages, establishing distinctive practices of serial architectural narration.26 Students reflected on caricatures and parody as an underexplored terrain for architectural history. For instance, they analyzed the collection of cartoons published in Architectural Record to delve into the use of graphic and descriptive humor in expressing the critical reception of projects, events, and planning trends (Fig. 18). With the same aim, the vignettes published on the pages of Mimarlik were read in relation to the primary interests of the journal (Fig. 19). Their analysis highlighted the journal’s positioning in the contemporary criticism of planning culture and urban growth and the socio-cultural impact of architecture through visual and textual humor. 27

Figure 18. A selection of cartoons introduces a discussion on the critical messages of Architectural Record

Figure 18. A selection of cartoons introduces a discussion on the critical messages of Architectural Record

Architectural Record 1950-1959, by the students Tamara Akhrameeva, Andrea Brambilla, Olga Buravkova, Elena Casini, Alberto Ceriotti.

Figure 19. Cartoons express and exemplify the socio-cultural impacts of architecture in the Turkish journal Mimarlik

Figure 19. Cartoons express and exemplify the socio-cultural impacts of architecture in the Turkish journal Mimarlik

Mimarlik 1963-1972, by the students Tulay Seray, Uyeturk Didem, Vural Tuana.

Beyond the Canon: Multiple modernities, hidden narratives, chronologies and trajectories in the teaching of architectural history (some conclusive remarks)

40The pedagogical project proposed by the seminar raises new questions on the role of periodicals as instruments and methods for the teaching and learning of 20th century architectural history.

41The study of the broad spectrum of publications inspected as “complex social objects” and observed in their entanglements reveals the logic and hidden mechanisms behind their production. With this in mind, journals become a common terrain for the encounter and stratification of divergent voices, rationalities, strategies, and positions of the agents involved in their construction, such as editors, publishers, owners, institutions, and different audiences. Moreover, the cross-cultural and comparative perspective adopted to address this printed network uncovers many interconnections in the disciplinary discourses and practices across assorted editorial projects, cultures, and genres.

  • 28 Jacques Gubler (ed.), “I dispacci dell’avanguardia”, Rassegna, IV, n°12, 1982, pp. 5-11; Alexis Sor (...)

42This approach has manifold implications when reflecting upon methods and tools of teaching architectural history. First, the analysis of a network of periodicals and its multi-layered scrutiny allows us to question the fragilities of periodization and classifications centered on the history of specific journals or national editorial cultures. Also, it prompts reconsidering the notion of genre, as introduced by Jacques Gubler to delineate an etymology of avant-garde journals, and re-framed by Hélène Jannière and France Vanlaethem to advance a first classification in the history of European architectural periodicals.28 In fact, activities challenged the universal applicability of genre as a monolithic concept in relation to publishing culture.

43Inquiries helped to reconfigure the very notion of intellectual milieu, which often crystallizes around circumscribed moments in the editorial histories of architecture periodicals. The writing of diachronic “journal biographies” is proposed by the pedagogical project to recast systematic identifications with specific genres and scrutinize the long-term evolution of editorial projects. This approach interrogates the production of a periodical, starting from its moments of rupture and change. Besides, it challenges interpretations that define journal histories according to synchronic assessments of the positions, aspirations, and cultural networks of their editors.

44Further considerations are generated through the cross-study of architecture periodicals as “systems of knowledge” referring to broader under-explored cultural geographies and the proposed cross-cultural perspective. This methodological standpoint contributes to questioning the legitimacy and validity of the chronologies and the spectrum of analytical tools and categories adopted to study and teach European and North American architecture. Consequently, such cross-readings resulted in mitigated ideas of modernity and narratives that could significantly contribute to the recent efforts to decenter European and North American discourses by engaging with particular, local, and peripheral instances. Adopting architecture periodicals as learning platforms and teaching tools discloses the blurred boundaries and the interrelated nature of architectural narratives, outlining more nuanced portraits of the forms and times of 20th century architectural culture production.

  • 29 Amongst others see Lukasz Stanek, “Cold War Transfer: architecture and planning from socialist coun (...)
  • 30 Tom Avermaete and Michelangelo Sabatino, The Global Turn: Six Journeys of Architecture and the City (...)

45The “multiple modernities”, portrayed by the panorama of research outputs produced in the framework of the course, documented the possibility of rethinking canonic accounts, challenging and questioning monographic and locally based perspectives through architecture journals. At the same time, attention devoted to their marginal sections, as well as interest for extended under-explored geographies, contribute to rethinking narratives that are still centered on the personality and agency of leading architects and the linear trajectories of circulation of figures, projects, models, and ideas. Instead, the course brings to light the construction processes of a system of knowledge rooted in exchange processes, intended in turn as transfer, import/export, interference, and dialogue29. The analysis of the publishing prism’s role in the formation of shared practices and cultures is anchored in a growing interest in the global history of architecture and planning, overcoming approaches still dominated by national boundaries.30

46Furthermore, tacit narratives, voices, and events unveiled by the students’ explorations highlight the potential of investigations looking at periodicals as primary sources, offering the opportunity to learn by experiencing the methods, instruments, and practices of historical research.

  • 31 Petra Ceferin and Cvetka Pozar (eds.), Architectural Epicentres: Inventing Architecture, Intervenin (...)

47On the other hand, the course provided a fertile ground to reflect on the apparatus of narrative devices traditionally used for the writing and teaching of architectural histories. Activities in fact prompted the testing of experimental and unconventional data collection, visualization, and communication forms: graphic based syntheses identified seasons and epicenters of architectural discourse and documented growing attention towards specific themes, figures, projects, and geographies.31 Also, visualizations thematized the socio-cultural, professional, historical, and intellectual dimensions of the journal. Overall, they suggested new research methods of inquiry, mediating between quantitative analysis and critical interpretations.

48These experiences can provide an additional layer to the canonical histories of architecture, planning, and urban design, enriching and revising traditional agendas and modes of teaching, communicating, and researching 20th-century architectural history.

Richard Wittman, Architecture, Print Culture, and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century France, New York/London, Routledge (The Classical Tradition in Architecture), 2007.

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Tom Avermaete and Michelangelo Sabatino, The Global Turn: Six Journeys of Architecture and the City, 1945-1989, Rotterdam, nai010 publishers, 2021.

Tom Avermaete and Maristella Casciato (eds.), Casablanca Chandigarh: A Report on Modernization, Zürich, Park Books, 2014.

Chiara Baglione, Casabella, 1928-2008: una rivista, molte storie, Milano, Mondadori Electa (Electaarchitettura), 2008.

Eve Blau, Edward Kaufman and Robin Evans (eds.), Architecture and its Image: Four Centuries of Architectural Representation: Works from the Collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Montreal/Cambridge, Centre canadien d’architecture/MIT Press, 1989.

Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: The (s)Crypts of Joyce and Piranesi, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993.

Jean Manuel Bonet and Antonio Pizza (eds.), A.C. La Revista del GATEPAC, Madrid, Museo Reina Sofia, 2008.

Guido Canella, Maurizio Meriggi, SA: Sovremennaja Arkhitektura, 1926-1930, Bari, Dedalo, 2007.

Gaia Caramellino, “The Shelter Project and the multiple itineraries of American modernism”, in Beatriz Colomina et al(eds.), Las revistas de arquitectura (1900-1975): crónicas, manifiestos, propaganda, Pamplona, 2012, pp. 137-146.

Maristella Casciato, “Scienza e arte dell’architettura: due riviste nell’india di Nehru”, in Colomina Beatriz et al. (eds.), Las revistas de arquitectura (1900-1975): crónicas, manifiestos, propaganda, Pamplona, 2012, pp. 35-40.

Petra Ceferin and Cvetka Pozar (eds.), Architectural Epicentres: Inventing Architecture, Intervening in Reality, Ljubljana, Architecture Museum of Ljubljana, 2008.

Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, Casablanca. Colonial Myths and Architectural Ventures, New York, The Monacelli Press, 2002.

Jean-Louis Cohen and Hubert Damisch (eds.), Américanisme et modernité. L’idéal américain dans l’architecture, Paris, Flammarion, 1993.

Jean-Louis Cohen, Architecture in Uniform. Designing and Building for the Second World War, Paris, Éditions Hazan, 2011.

Jean-Louis Cohen, “Les Revues de l’Architecture moderne: une épopée de papier”, in Sébastien Charlier (ed.), L’Equerre. Réédition intégrale-The Complete Edition 1928-1939, Liège, Éditions Fourre-Tout, 2012.

Robin Cohen, “Diasporas, Their Types and Their Future”, in Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction, London, Routledge, 1997, pp. 177–196.

Beatriz Colomina and Joan Ockman (eds.), Architectureproduction, New York, Princeton Architectural Press (Revisions, Papers on Architectural Theory and Criticism), 1988.

Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1994.

Beatriz Colomina and Craig Buckley (eds.), Clip Stamp Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X to 197X, Barcelona, M + M Books/Actar, 2010.

Beatriz Colomina, Juan José Lahuerta, Juan Otxotorena, José Manuel Pozo, Jorge Tárrago, Wilfried Wang (eds.), Las Revistas de Arquitectura (1900-1975): Crónicas, Manifiestos, Propaganda, Conference Proceedings, Pamplona, May 3-4, 2012, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Universidad de Navarra, “Congreso Internacional Las Revistas de Arquitectura (1900-1975), Crónicas, Manifiestos, Propaganda”, Pamplona, 2012.

Maurizio Ferraris, Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciar tracce, Bari, Laterza, 2009.

Roberto Gabetti and Carlo Olmo, Le Corbusier e L’Esprit Nouveau, Torino, Einaudi (Saggi 555), 1988.

Jacques Gubler (ed.), “I dispacci dell’avanguardia”, Rassegna, IV, n°12, 1982, pp. 7-10.

Jacques Gubler, ABC 1924-1928: Avanguardia e Architettura Radicale, Milano, Electa, 1983.

Jacques Gubler, Cara signora Tosoni: le cartoline di Casabella, 1982-1995. Dear Signora Tosoni: postcards to Casabella, 1982-1995, Milano, Skira, 2005.

George Hartman, Pencil Points Reader: Selected Readings from a Journal for the Drafting Room, 1920-1943, Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.

Mari Hvattum and Anne Hultzsch (eds.), The Printed and the Built. Architecture, Print Culture and Public Debate in the Nineteenth Century, New York, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018.

Hélène Jannière, Politiques éditoriales et &rchitecture moderne: L’émergence des nouvelles revues en France et en Italie, 1923-1939, Paris, Editions Arguments, 2002.

Hélène Lipstadt, “Architecture and Its Image: Notes Towards the Definition of Architectural Publication”, Architectural Design, Vol. 59, n° 3/4, 1989, pp. 13-23.

Hélène Lipstadt, “Architectural publications, competitions, and exhibitions”, in Eve Blau, Edward Kaufman and Robin Evans (eds.), Architecture and its Image: Four Centuries of Architectural Representation: Works from the Collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal/Cambridge, Centre canadien d’architecture, MIT Press, 1989, pp. 109-137.

Hélène Lipstadt and Harvey Mendelsohn, “Architectes et ingénieur dans la presse: polémique, débat, con it, rapport de recherche 0120/80, Institut d’études et de recherches architecturales et urbaines (IERAU), Comité de la recherche et du développement en architecture (CORDA), 1980.

Caroline Maniaque-Benton, French Encounters with the American Counterculture 1960-1980 (Ashgate Studies in Architecture), Farnham, Ashgate, 2011.

Joan Ockman, Architecture Culture 1943-1968: A Documentary Anthology, New York, Rizzoli (Columbia Book of Architecture), 1993.

José Parra-Martínez and John Crosse, “Editorial Policies and Politics of Design in the Pre-Case Study House Program Decade: The Visual Construction of California Arts & Architecture (193X–194X)”, in Marcos L. Carlos (ed.), Graphic Imprints. The Influence of Representation and Ideation Tools in Architecture, Cham, Springer, 2019, pp. 657-671.

Kester Rattenbury, This Is Not Architecture: Media Constructions, London/New York, Routledge, 2002.

Geoffrey Rockwell and Stéfan Sinclair, Hermeneutica: Computer-Assisted Interpretation in the Humanities, Cambridge/London, The MIT Press, 2016.

Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Andrew Peckham (eds.), Modernism and the Professional Architecture Journal: Reporting, Editing and Reconstructing in Postwar Europe, New York, Routledge, 2018.

Jeffrey Schnapp and Adam Michaels, The Electric Information Age Book: Mcluhan/Agel/Fiore and the Experimental, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2011.

Andrew Shanken, 194X: Architecture, Planning, and Consumer Culture on the American Home Front, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

Alexis Sornin, Hélène Jannière and France Vanlaethem, Architectural Periodicals in the 1960s and 1970s: Towards a Factual, Intellectual and Material History, Montréal, IRHA Institut de recherche en histoire de l’architecture, 2008.

Léa-Catherine Szacka and Véronique Patteeuw (eds.), Mediated Messages: Periodicals, Exhibitions and the Shaping of Postmodern Architecture, New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

André Tavares, The Anatomy of the Architectural Book, Montréal/Zurich, Centre canadien d’architecture/Lars Müller Publishers, 2016.

Ioanna Theocharopoulou, “Architecture and Advertising: Terms of Exchange? Arts & Architecture 1944-1950”, Thresholds, n° 18 “Design and Money”, 1999, pp. 6-11.

David F. Travers, Arts&Architecture 1945-49. How A&A paved the way in post-war Construction and Culture, Köln, Taschen, 2004.

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Notes

1 This kaleidoscope also comprises websites like Designboom, Dezeen, and other recent collections like Atlas of Places and KooZA/rch.

2 Hélène Jannière and France Vanlaethem, “Architectural Magazines as Historical Source or Object? A Methodological Essay”, in Alexis Sornin, Hélène Jannière and France Vanlaethem (eds.), Architectural Periodicals in the 1960s and 1970s: Towards a Factual, Intellectual and Material History, Montréal, IRHA, 2008, pp. 41-61.

3 Recent scholarship includes, among others, Richard Wittman, Architecture, Print Culture, and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century France, New York/London, Routledge (The Classical Tradition in Architecture), 2007; Mari Hvattum and Anne Hultzsch (eds.), The Printed and the Built. Architecture, Print Culture and Public Debate in the Nineteenth Century, New York, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018; Léa-Catherine Szacka and Véronique Patteeuw (eds.), Mediated Messages: Periodicals, Exhibitions and the Shaping of Postmodern Architecture, New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018; Beatriz Colomina, Juan José Lahuerta, Juan Otxotorena et al(eds.), Las Revistas de Arquitectura (1900-1975): Crónicas, Manifiestos, Propaganda, Pamplona, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Universidad de Navarra, 2012.

4 Beatriz Colomina and Joan Ockman (eds.), Architectureproduction, New York/Princeton Architectural Press, 1988; Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, Cambridge, Mass MIT Press, 1994; Hélène Lipstadt, “Architecture and Its Image: Notes Towards the Definition of Architectural Publication”, Architectural Design, Vol. 59, n° 3/4, 1989, pp. 13-23; Hélène Lipstadt, “Architectural publications, competitions, and exhibitions”, in Eve Blau, Edward Kaufman, and Robin Evans (eds.), Architecture and its Image: Four Centuries of Architectural Representation: Works from the Collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal/Cambridge, CCA/MIT Press, 1989, pp. 109-137; Hélène Lipstadt and Harvey Mendelsohn, “Architectes et ingénieur dans la presse: polémique, débat, conflit”, rapport de recherche 0120/80, Institut d’études et de recherches architecturales et urbaines (IERAU), CORDA, 1980.

5 Scholarship comprises the studies dedicated to periodicals such as Casabella, SA: Sovremennaja Arkhitektura, Arts & Architecture, or La Revista del Gatepac, alongside the reprints of magazines such as Domus, L’Equerre, or Pencil Points. For studies focusing on specific journal types or particular publishing seasons, see, among others, Jacques Gubler (ed.), Rassegna: Architettura nelle Riviste d’Avangaurdia/Architecture in the Avant-Garde Magazines, 12, Bologna, C.I.P.I.A., 1982; Hélène Jannière, Politiques éditoriales et érchitecture moderne: l'émergence des nouvelles revues en France et en Italie, 1923-1939, Paris, Éditions Arguments, 2002; Beatriz Colomina and Craig Buckley (eds.), Clip Stamp Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X to 197X, Barcelona, Actar/M+M Books, 2010; Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Andrew Peckham (eds.), Modernism and the Professional Architecture Journal: Reporting, Editing and Reconstructing in Postwar Europe, New York, Routledge, 2018.

6 Roberto Gabetti and Carlo Olmo, Le Corbusier e L’Esprit Nouveau, Torino, Einaudi (Saggi 555), 1988; Jacques Gubler, ABC 1924-1928: Avanguardia e Architettura Radicale, Milano, Electa, 1983.

7 National campaigns of digitalization responded to the urgent need to collect and preserve this fragmented and perishable corpus of knowledge. Digitized collections belong to, for example, The New York Public Library, the Bibliothèque de la Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, the ACNP National Catalogue of Periodical Publications, or the RIBA British Architectural Library. Students exploited their sending institutions’ physical and digital repositories, such as the COAM digital collection of Spanish magazines and E-periodica, the ETH-affiliated collection of German periodicals including Das Werk, Werk-Archithese, Bauen und Wohnen, Tracés, Tec21, Schweizer Ingenieur und Architekt. Others used independent databases such as US Modernist, Delpher, or the independent websites dedicated to the Brazilian Acropole or the Turkish reviews Arkitekt and Mimarlik.

8 The boundaries of the selected reference chronology correspond to two moments of shift and transition in architecture publishing. The late 1920s marked a progressive institutionalization of independent editorial cultures and saw an increasing appropriation of avant-garde publishing practices and techniques by journals established in the second half of the decade. The 1970s make up instead a chronological frontier, as the growing intellectualization and politicization of certain specialized magazines after 1968 emphasized the divorce between commercial or professional journals and academic publications, increasingly diverging from previous and subsequent editorial experiences. Among the several works on the first-time frame, see Jacques Gubler, ABC 1924-1928: Avanguardia e Architettura Radicale, op. cit.; Jean Manuel Bonet and Antonio Pizza (eds.), A.C. La Revista del GATEPAC, Madrid, Museo Reina Sofia, 2008; Guido Canella and Maurizio Meriggi, SA: Sovremennaja Arkhitektura, 1926-1930, Bari, Dedalo, 2007. On the 1960s-1970s, see, for instance, Alexis Sornin, Hélène Jannière and France Vanlaethem (eds.), Architectural Periodicals in the 1960s and 1970s…, op. cit.; Beatriz Colomina and Craig Buckley (eds.), Clip Stamp Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X to 197X, op. cit.

9 For instance, the scrutinized corpus of Italian periodicals mirrors the attempt to cross and compare divergent editorial cultures, milieux and genres: Abitare (1962-1967), Architetti: Rassegna Bimestrale di Architettura, Urbanistica e Arredamento (1952-1953), Architettura-Sindacato Nazionale Fascista Architetti (1932-1942), Casabella (1933-1962), Domus (1942-1956), Edilizia Moderna (1950-1960), Edilizia Popolare (1954-1964), In (1971-1973), L’Architettura (1956-1964), Lo Stile (1941-1947), Marcatré (1964-1969), Metron (1945-1954), Progettare Inpiù (1973-1975), Quadrante (1933-1936), Spazio (1950-1953), Urbanistica (1942-1944, 1950-1965), Zodiac (1957-1967).

10 Hereafter, in brackets, the text cites the years examined by the students.

11 Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Andrew Peckham (eds.), Modernism and the Professional Architecture Journal…, op. cit.; Chiara Baglione, Casabella, 1928-2008: una rivista, molte storie, Milano, Mondadori Electa (Electaarchitettura), 2008.

12 Beatriz Colomina and Craig Buckley (eds.), Clip Stamp Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X to 197X, op. cit.

13 Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, op. cit. Kenneth Frampton, “On the Road: an AD Memoir”, in Craig Buckley and Pollyanna Rhee (eds.), Architects’ Journeys: Building, Travelling, Thinking, New York/Pamplona, GSAPP Books/T6 Ediciones, Universidad de Navarra, 2011, pp. 50-71.

14 André Tavares, The Anatomy of the Architectural Book, Montréal/Zurich, Centre canadien d’architecture/Lars Müller Publishers, 2016.

15 The study of the graphic dimension of the magazine materializes in the design, composition, and layout of the final booklet submitted by the students.

16 Petra Ceferin and Cvetka Pozar (eds.), Architectural Epicentres: Inventing Architecture, Intervening in Reality, Ljubljana, Architecture Museum of Ljubljana, 2008.

17 See the International Symposium Exploring Digital Humanities. Mapping Visions, Discourses, Theories. Journals as Platform for Architecture and Urban Knowledge. A network of projects, organized by the authors at Politecnico di Milano in 2017 in collaboration with Ivo Covic. The research projects presented, as ArchiteXt Mining. Arquitectura Moderna española a través de sus Textos (1939-1975) (A. Esteban Maluenda, ETSAM) – taking advantage of periodicals as an architectural database to be interrogated through text mining tools –, Artnet_HRZZ (L. Kolesnik, Institute of Art History, Zagreb) – exploring the organization and communication models embedded into artist networks and collaborative practices –, Mapping Architectural Criticism (H. Jannière, université Rennes 2), The Sites of Discourse (R. Figueiredo, IHA Instituto de História da Arte/FCSH - Universidade Nova de Lisboa), offered important methodological references for the students’ research work. See also Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Adam Michaels, The Electric Information Age Book: McLuhan / Agel / Fiore and the Experimental, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2011; Geoffrey Rockwell and Stéfan Sinclair, Hermeneutica: Computer-Assisted Interpretation in the Humanities, Cambridge/London, The MIT Press, 2016.

18 On the journal see Maristella Casciato, “Scienza e arte dell’architettura: due riviste nell’india di Nehru”, in B. Colomina et al. (eds.), Las revistas de arquitectura (1900-1975), op. cit., 2012, pp. 35-40.

19 Tom Avermaete and Maristella Casciato (eds.), Casablanca Chandigarh: A Report on Modernization, Zürich, Park Books, 2014; Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, Casablanca. Colonial Myths and Architectural Ventures, New York, The Monacelli Press, 2002.

20 Jean-Louis Cohen and Hubert Damisch (eds.), Américanisme et modernité. L’idéal américain dans l’architecture, Paris, Flammarion, 1993.

21 David F. Travers, Arts&Architecture 1945-49. How A&A paved the way in post-war Construction and Culture, Köln, Taschen, 2004.

22 Gaia Caramellino, “The Shelter Project and the multiple itineraries of American modernism”, in Beatriz Colomina et al. (eds.), Las revistas de arquitectura (1900-1975), op. cit., pp. 137-146.

23 Jacques Gubler, Cara signora Tosoni: le cartoline di Casabella, 1982-1995. Dear Signora Tosoni: postcards to Casabella, 1982-1995, Milano, Skira, 2005.

24 David F. Travers, Arts&Architecture 1945-49. How A&A paved the way in post-war Construction and Culture, op. cit.; Ioanna Theocharopoulou, “Architecture and Advertising: Terms of Exchange? Arts & Architecture 1944-1950”, Thresholds, n° 18 “Design and Money”, 1999, pp. 6-11. On the role of advertising published during World War II, acting as conduits of divergent visions of post-war architectural discourses and practices and as interfaces between different milieux, see Andrew Shanken, 194X: Architecture, Planning, and Consumer Culture on the American Home Front, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2009; Beatriz Colomina, Domesticity at War, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2008.

25 B. Colomina et al. (eds.), Las revistas de arquitectura (1900-1975), op. cit.; Ioanna Theocharopoulou, “Architecture and Advertising: Terms of Exchange? Arts & Architecture 1944-1950”, op. cit., p. 8; Andrew Shanken, 194X: Architecture, Planning, and Consumer Culture on the American Home Front, op. cit.; Pierre Alain Croset, “The Narration of Architecture”, in Beatriz Colomina and Joan Ockman (eds.), Architectureproduction, op. cit., pp. 200-211.

26 Eve Blau, Edward Kaufman and Robin Evans (eds.), Architecture and its Image: Four Centuries of Architectural Representation: Works from the Collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal/Cambridge, Centre canadien d’architecture, MIT Press, 1989, pp. 109-137.

27 On this research approach, see Michela Rosso, Laughing at Architecture: Architectural Histories of Humour, Satire, and Wit, Bloomsbury, 2018; G. Neri, Caricature architettoniche. Satira e critica del progetto moderno, Quodlibet, 2015.

28 Jacques Gubler (ed.), “I dispacci dell’avanguardia”, Rassegna, IV, n°12, 1982, pp. 5-11; Alexis Sornin, Hélène Jannière and France Vanlaethem (eds.), Architectural Periodicals in the 1960s and 1970s..., op. cit. See also Hélène  Jannière, “Architectural Magazines in/for History”, talk held in the framework of the Mapping the Discourse seminar, at Politecnico di Milano, in 2016.

29 Amongst others see Lukasz Stanek, “Cold War Transfer: architecture and planning from socialist countries in the ‘Third World’”, The Journal of Architecture, 17, 3, 2012; Jeffrey W. Cody, Exporting American Architecture 1870-2000, New York, Routledge, 2002; Joe Nasr, Mercedes Volait (eds.), Urbanism Imported or Exported? Native Aspirations and Foreign Plans, Chichester, Wiley Academy, 2003; Jean-Louis Cohen and Hartmut Frank (eds.), Interférences/Interferenzen. Architecture, Allemagne-France, 1800-2000, Strasbourg, Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg, 2013; Paolo Scrivano, Building Transatlantic Italy: Architectural Dialogues with Postwar America, London, Routledge, 2013.

30 Tom Avermaete and Michelangelo Sabatino, The Global Turn: Six Journeys of Architecture and the City, 1945-1989, Rotterdam, nai010 publishers, 2021.

31 Petra Ceferin and Cvetka Pozar (eds.), Architectural Epicentres: Inventing Architecture, Intervening in Reality, op. cit.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1. A multi-layered timeline provides a visual synthesis of the relationship between Hungarian cultural and political life and the five journals structuring the national disciplinary debate in the period between 1945 and 1960
Crédits Architecture and politics: Hungary 1945-1960, by the student Fanni Szarva
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 338k
Titre Figure 2. Annual maps relate subjects and type of articles, as well as their localizations and authors for the Polish journal Projekt
Crédits Projekt 1956-1960, by the students Feng Borui, Qui Danni, Stanislaw Gulkowski, Kacper Kuczynski, Pan Siy.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 189k
Titre Figure 3. Timeline tracking the changing involvement of the journal’s protagonists in their different roles and positions through Metron’s colophons
Crédits Metron 1945-1954, by the students Valeria Casali, Sharon Piccolo, Giulia Repossi, Luca Rizzo, Marco Villa.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 189k
Titre Figure 4. A focus on the protagonists of the journal intertwines their role in the publication with their biographies
Crédits Mimarlik 1963-1972, by the students Tulay Seray, Uyeturk Didem, Vural Tuana.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 225k
Titre Figure 5. The analysis of covers highlights the relationship with the contents of each issue, as well as the authorship behind the visual project
Crédits The Architectural Forum 1950-1959, by the students Asrin Sanguanwongwan, Huwen Hao, Irem Karabulut, Maria Ekhina.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 293k
Titre Figure 6. Different tools of visual synthesis picture in a single figure both quantitative and qualitative data per year
Crédits Cuadernos de Arquitectura 1959-1969, by the students Mafalda Aguillo, Sara Carner, Mireia Faus, Guillem Rojo, Aina Valens.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 313k
Titre Figure 7. A diachronic reading of the relevance of the themes linked to ‘interior design’ places the most significant articles over a timeline, visually conveying how pages were structured
Crédits Progressive Architecture 1950-1954, by the students Marta De Blas Errasti, Giulia Tosarello, Marina Vasileva, Matilde Villa, Lara Zentilomo.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 293k
Titre Figure 8. The thematic anthology provides a consciously built repository of articles that can be read according to different interpretative categories while providing visual evidence of the journal layout and iconography
Crédits Progressive Architecture 1955-1965, by the students Cao Xuechen, Chen Ting, Wang Jingxian, Zhu Chendi, Zhou Shu.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 243k
Titre Figure 9. Reflections on the involvement of UN consultants Maciej Nowicki, Otto Königsberger, or Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, among others, exemplified how the journal Marg contributed to the acceleration of the disciplinary discussion in post-war independent India between 1946 and 1957
Crédits Marg 1946-1957, by the students Francesca Da Pozzo, Paolo De Biase, Maria Lucrezia De Marco, Annalisa Di Carlo, Elisa Fiscon.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 364k
Titre Figure 10. The international incoming and outgoing circulation of references is mapped through projects and events in relation to the protagonists of the exchange, providing visual samples of the inherent iconography
Crédits JA Japan Architect 1962-1966, by the students Bianca Gentili, Elia Fontani, Dafni Riga, Amrita Matharu, Yasmine Sabba.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 232k
Titre Figure 11. Thematic map representing featured international planning experiences and theories through which post-war Italian architectural and planning culture had the chance to open-up to European and International horizons
Crédits Metron 1945-1954, by the students Valeria Casali, Sharon Piccolo, Giulia Repossi, Luca Rizzo, Marco Villa.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-11.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 180k
Titre Figure 12. The research focuses on Arts & Architecture’s attention and interest for visually compelling images, representing Italian professional cultures at the crossroads between modernity and tradition through the work of historians and professional photographers, including George Everard Kidder Smith, Myron Goldfinger, Esther McCoy, and Giorgio Casali, figures engaged at different extents and through diverse professional networks in the cultural and disciplinary exchange between Italy and the United States
Crédits Arts & Architecture 1956-1967, by the students Chiara Castellano, Diletta Ciuffi, Giorgia Concato, Martina Massacesi, Chiara Milella.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-12.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 276k
Titre Figure 13. The construction of a thematic anthology can result in original forms of visual synthesis. The represented selection of articles deals with new perspectives on the city and the related iconography
Crédits Italian counterculture radical magazines 1964-1975, by the students Luca Benassi, Lorenzo Benzoni, Alex Beretta, Matteo Ornato, Giuseppe Rivatta
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-13.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 334k
Titre Figure 14. A visual synthesis of the contribution and references emerging from the collection of editorials by Bruno Zevi
Crédits L’Architettura. Cronache e Storia 1958-1959, by the students Margherita Furia Bonanomi, Gloria Mariotti, Chiara Mautone.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-14.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 380k
Titre Figure 15. The analysis of the specific section dedicated to the PA Awards provides a selection of project reviews to be read through multiple lenses, such as author profiles, scale, localization, and intervention typology
Crédits Progressive Architecture 1955-1965, by the students Cao Xuechen, Chen Ting, Wang Jingxian, Zhu Chendi, Zhou Shu.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-15.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 358k
Titre Figure 16. An analysis of advertisements in relation to the categories of proposed products accompanies the construction of an anthology of images
Crédits Casabella-Continuità 1953-1962, by the students Federica Ferrari, Federico Finazzi, Marco Guarany, Diego Oberti, Daya Vismara.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-16.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 311k
Titre Figure 17. A thematic reading of Progressive Architecture adopted the lens of advertisement culture
Crédits Progressive Architecture 1950-1954, by the students Marta De Blas Errasti, Giulia Tosarello, Marina Vasileva, Matilde Villa, Lara Zentilomo.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-17.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 336k
Titre Figure 18. A selection of cartoons introduces a discussion on the critical messages of Architectural Record
Crédits Architectural Record 1950-1959, by the students Tamara Akhrameeva, Andrea Brambilla, Olga Buravkova, Elena Casini, Alberto Ceriotti.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-18.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 523k
Titre Figure 19. Cartoons express and exemplify the socio-cultural impacts of architecture in the Turkish journal Mimarlik
Crédits Mimarlik 1963-1972, by the students Tulay Seray, Uyeturk Didem, Vural Tuana.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/craup/docannexe/image/9370/img-19.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 113k
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Référence électronique

Gaia Caramellino, Valeria Casali et Nicole De Togni, « Mapping the Discourse. Architecture Periodicals in/for the Teaching of Architecture History »Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère [En ligne], 13 | 2021, mis en ligne le 24 décembre 2021, consulté le 12 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/craup/9370 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/craup.9370

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Auteurs

Gaia Caramellino

Gaia Caramellino is Assistant Professor of History of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and member of the PhD supervisory board in “Architecture. History and Project” of the Politecnico di Torino. Her research interests focus on the transatlantic transfer of architectural and urban knowledge; the history of post-war housing practices, cultures, forms and theories; the study of housing terminology. She has held several visiting fellowships (at the CCA, the Kyoto University, the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies) and research grants (amongst others the Graham Foundation). She is the author of Europe meets America. William Lescaze Architect of Modern Housing (2016) and editor of The Housing Project. Discourses, Ideals, Models, and Politics in the 20th-centruy Exhibitions (2020, with S. Dadour) and Post-war Middle-Class Housing (2015, with F. Zanfi).

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Valeria Casali

Valeria Casali is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program “Architecture. History and Project” at Politecnico di Torino, after an educational path at the crossroads between Politecnico di Milano, RWTH Aachen (Germany), and McGill University (Canada). Her research interests stand at the crossroads between the transatlantic transfer of cultural and disciplinary knowledge, cold war confrontations, and the relationship between architecture, media, and public opinion. Her ongoing research on Ada Louise Huxtable’s overseas architecture reportages has been discussed recently at the Buell Dissertation Colloquium at Columbia University. She has been involved as a teaching assistant in the architecture history courses of Prof. Gaia Caramellino at Politecnico di Milano, and is part of the research hub TT – Transatlantic Transfers: The Italian Presence in Post-War America.

Nicole De Togni

Nicole De Togni is research fellow at Politecnico di Milano in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. Her research deals with the narratives related to the city, considered from a diachronic perspective. In the context of a long-term historiographic and interpretative reading of the urban context, narratives are intended as a privileged lens to investigate the circulation, hybridization, or institutionalization of political, strategic, urban, and architectural models. She explored the intense postwar debate about tasks, limits, tools and references of architecture and planning which shaped the concrete reconstruction and expansion of cities while influencing the urban imaginaries and modeling the role and self-perception of professionals, technicians and bureaucracies. From 2010 she is teaching assistant in several architecture history and theory courses at Politecnico di Milano.

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