PS19 Graduate Student Lightning Talks 12:30 - 2:40pm Thursday, 15th April, 2021 Category Paper Session - Track 5 Session Chair(s) Aslihan Gunhan, Leslie Lodwick, Vyta Pivo, Chelsea Wait, Hongyan Yang
12:35 - 12:40pm
Architecture for the XI Pan-American Conference of Quito, 1960
Ernesto Bilbao University of Texas at Austin, USA
Abstract
This paper will demonstrate the symbolic power behind the conception and construction of four critical buildings designed and built for the never-realized XI Inter-American Conference of Chancellors of Quito, Ecuador of 1960, and how this action consolidated Ecuador’s national aspirations of modernity and concealed substantial cross-national geopolitical interests. This crucial infrastructure—the new Airport Terminal, Hotel Quito, University Residence, and Legislative Palace, intended to receive, host, accommodate and gather the Pan-American ministers of foreign affairs and their delegations—unveil Ecuador’s domestic reality, but also the complexity of the international relations between the American nations at the peak of the Cold War. Although these buildings are nowadays icons of Quito’s modern architecture, this study, rather than idealizing their formal attributes and aesthetics, focuses on bringing light on how cross-border agendas and their different ranges of action impacted Quito’s built environment and architecture. This paper explores the different methods and design practices used by local architects, in charge of the Legislative Palace and University Residence, and international corporations commissioned to design the Airport Terminal and Hotel Quito. The different types of building programs and distinct architectural offices—local atelier-based studios reviving European paradigms of modern architecture, versus global corporations basing their work on corporate efficiency and capacity to intersect projects worldwide—show the various levels of expertise and geographical action. They also expose the cultural interexchange across the Atlantic and between North and South America. Although several factors motivated the cancellation of the conference before its inauguration, the organization and materialized work of architecture offer an exceptional case study to call attention to how national and international agendas intersected at the eve of the never-realized XI Inter-American Conference of Quito of 1960. This paper aims to contribute to the history of Ecuador’s modern architecture, practically unknown internationally.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 12:40 - 12:45pm
The Filipina Mestiza and Her American Dream House
Kimberly Gultia McGill University, Canada
Abstract
In 1946, after over three centuries of Spanish and American colonization, the Philippines gained its independence, resulting in a stronger search for a cultural identity distinct from its colonizers. This development, however, did not happen immediately after liberation. Cultural identity, specifically middle-class Filipina identity, remained tied to American ways of being. This paper highlights this phenomenon and examines the social construction of the model Filipina and her dream house in a society that had just gained its freedom from American colonial rule. I argue that as the ideal postwar Filipina tried to imitate her white American counterpart, so did Philippine homes attempt to emulate American modern postwar houses. To better understand this attempt at imitation, I ask: How did representations of Filipinas and postwar homes mimic the American ideal in terms of gender identity and architectural design?; and how did these representations of women and houses embody the negotiation of foreign and local influences through hybridity? I articulate how the perceived identity of middle-class Filipinas translates into home design by analyzing its style, space planning, and furnishings. By examining Philippine-published women’s and architectural magazines—through which modernist ideas were disseminated—I provide a nuanced analysis of domestic architecture during the Philippine postcolonial period, essentially telling the story of the Filipino modern home through the aspirations of middle-class Filipinas in a changing society. Through a reading of imitation and negotiation specific to Philippine postwar houses, this research contributes to the larger discourse of global modernism in architecture, providing a better understanding of gender and architecture in the postcolonial context, not only in the Philippines but also in other postcolonial nations in the process of decolonization.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 12:45 - 12:50pm
Imagining the Modern Romanian Nation: Architect Nicolae Ghika-Budesti and the Museum of National Art
Ciprian Buzila Brown University, USA
Abstract
Despite its remarkable richness of invention, neo-Romanian architecture remains an under-researched topic, especially internationally. The theme of a “national spirit” in European architecture has often been viewed through the prism of Western styles. For example, the revival of Gothic style has been examined extensively in England and France through the lenses of Augustus W. N. Pugin and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Yet, the revivalist architecture of South-Eastern Europe in the 20th century still remains to be explored in the larger context of modernism. Neo-Romanian architects faced the challenge of unifying the modern needs of Romanian life with nation-specific forms able to recall a past common to the historic principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, after these territories united and gained their independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877.
In this paper, I focus on the creation of the Romanian Museum of National Art (1912-1941) to show that neo- Romanian style had both symbolic and architectural values. The building itself is positioned strategically at Victory Square in Bucharest, commanding power and attention with its symmetric monumentality. Its creators were architect Nicolae Ghika-Budesti (1969-1943), one of the most important Romanian revivalists of the first half of the 20th century, and art historian Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcas (1872-1952), the patron of the building and founder of the art history department in Romania. In this research, I demonstrate that the attitude toward the past was progressive rather than merely nostalgic, and that the architecture of the museum reflected the collections which were gathered by Samurcas himself and were part of the national ideology. Furthermore, I explore how Ghika-Budesti’s design of the museum, based on the principles of eclecticism, was able to synthesize and revive local post-Byzantine architectural sources from Wallachia and Moldavia, in terms of space, forms, and decoration, in order to express a national style.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 1:05 - 1:10pm
Rise of a Mercantile Class and Colonial Influences in Dwelling: A Case of Panam Nagar, Bangladesh
Enam Rabbi Adnan Pennsylvania State University, USA
Abstract
In the Colonial period, Bengal witnessed the rise of a neo-elite Merchant class during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century who was involved in the money-lending and textile, mostly in Calcutta, the capital of British India. Consequently, most of these merchants built houses replicating the Indo-Saracenic architectural style around Bengal imitating the neo-classical architectural style of Calcutta, widely known as colonial style. Panam Nagar is one of these colonial settlements located in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. This settlement was also developed at the same time with the growth of the textile business in Bengal. However, after the partition of India-Pakistan in 1947 and the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971, most of the dwellers left the settlement due to their minority status. Meanwhile, local people encroached at the houses and modified them according to their needs destroying significant architectural features. Eventually, Bangladesh Government realized the importance of the settlement and marked it as National Heritage in 2004. Currently, Panam Nagar stands dilapidated along a five-meter road and surrounded by water-bodies, endures significant testimony of urban development in the realm of dwelling architecture within the rural-urban context. Previous scholarships addressed mainly the ornamentation and advocated for preservation but there is a need to study the living pattern and lifestyles of the mercantile class. To bridge this gap, this study investigates the dwellings of Panam Nagar with the understanding of colonial influence and their translation on the spatial planning of the settlement. Though these street-front houses imitated the Indo-Saracenic motifs in exterior façades, they followed the traditional spatial zones in the planning and layout at interiors by adapting transitional and flexible plans merging the duality of the exterior and interior. This study also contributes to the understanding the history, lifestyle, and living patterns inscribed in the built spaces and establishes the ground for preserving Panam Nagar.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 1:10 - 1:15pm
A New Deal for the American Immigrant: The Rehabilitation of Ellis and Angel Islands, 1934-42
James Fortuna University of St Andrews, United Kingdom
Abstract
This paper considers the New Deal’s interaction with two of the United States’ most significant maritime ports of entry. Conservative estimates figure that no less than eight million immigrants passed through Ellis Island in New York City and Angel Island in San Francisco between 1900-1933. Albeit to varying degrees, both would go on to be afforded considerable nationwide attention throughout the interwar years and received valuable federal funding from agencies such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Public Works Administration (PWA). As arms of what Ira Katznelson has called “the procedural and crusading face” of “the new nation-state,” the support of these agencies was intended to rehabilitate the islands’ role within the national public consciousness and superficially reconfigure the Roosevelt Administration’s disposition toward a diverse immigrant population. This reintegration of the American immigration narrative into mainstream socio- cultural discourse facilitated the federal government’s attempts to mobilize broad cross-sections of the population to combat the Great Depression and prepare for impending war even after the introduction of immigration quotas and hard borders.
In comparing the New Deal structures either erected or refurbished on both islands, this paper will investigate their individual and combined role in the New Deal’s efforts to reinforce, or even forge, a sense of transcultural national identity in the years preceding the Second World War. Using these two sites as case studies, it will offer a unique contribution to a slowly expanding body of scholarship concerned with the culturally-oriented reclamation of public and historic space across the New Deal United States and advance our understanding of the ways in which these once-functional ports maintained relevance as monumental sites of inclusivity.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 1:15 - 1:20pm
The Persistent Ruin: Negotiation of the Past within Colonial Bungalows and Mansions of Ceylon
Pamudu Tennakoon Brown University, USA
Abstract
Over the past two decades in Colombo, Sri Lanka, there has been a visible increase in the revival of colonial structures—from derelict publicly owned spaces that were converted into high-end entertainment hubs to privately owned residential dwellings that have taken commercial forms. Some of these repurposed dwellings, of similar style, form, neighborhood, history, and ownership have often taken very distinct paths in reaching an identical overarching goal: the boutique hotel. Maniumpathy Boutique Hotel and Tintagel Colombo are paragons of such journeys. The present iterations of these two dwellings, as boutique hotels, are not completely removed from their pasts; they are legacies of their colonial origins. As they were revived and refashioned in the twenty-first century, the colonial pasts—uses, forms, spatial practices, and family narratives—presented themselves in diverse lights. The boutique hotel, specifically set within the colonial dwelling, appropriates these colonial spatial and cultural relationships as it furthers a desirable narrative of ‘exclusivity’ and uniqueness, for tourists and local patrons alike. This exclusivity is rooted in the simultaneous portrayal of ‘power’ and ‘worthiness’ that originated during colonial rule; elements of the colonial dwelling are both solidified and erased while the space of the boutique hotel is highly curated. To explore these boutique hotels, this lighting talk will begin by situating the colonial dwellings of Colombo. Then, building on the specific histories of Maniumpathy Boutique Hotel and Tintagel Colombo, it will analyze the contemporary iterations of these two colonial dwellings as boutique hotels, through the lenses of continuity and legacy, while drawing upon the theoretical notions of ‘ruins’ and ‘ruination.’ How do the revival processes of these dwellings negotiate their colonial pasts? How are colonial pasts present in the boutique hotels and what configurations do these pasts take as they are curated to mask and reveal histories?
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 1:20 - 1:25pm
Flames of Atashbehram: Exploring the Architectural History of Fire Temples in Udvada
Delnaaz Kharadi University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Abstract
Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest practiced religions in the world, having possible roots dating back to the second millennium BCE, entering recorded history in the 5th century BCE, founded by the religious prophet Zoroaster in the ancient land of Persia. Zoroastrians are also known as fire-worshippers and their temples as fire temples, as fire-worshipping is at the center of their cultural practice. In this paper, I am going to discuss the architectural evolution of ‘Atashbehram’ (fire temple), through a comparative study of two fire temples in Udvada, India, which is one of the very few Parsi-Zoroastrian towns in South Asia. First, I look at Iranshah, which was the first fire temple consecrated in India following the Persian architectural principles in 1742. It is the oldest fire temple in India, the fire burning in the urn dates back to the eight CE, and represents the historical, cultural and religious links with Iran. Second, I look at the Pandol Fire temple, located near Iranshah, but designed in neoclassical style during the late 1990s. I will discuss the influence of religious traditions, beliefs, values, rituals, and time-period manifesting in their corresponding architectural forms, and how they speak to Udvada’s pilgrim heritage. These fire temples are not accessible to outsiders, but as I belong to the Zoroastrian community, I get a distinct advantage that informs my ethnographic case study. By carefully reading the architectural forms of the fire temple structures, I reflect upon their symbolic characteristics and how they evolved following the same core principles but expressed through different architectural styles. Lost in space and time Zoroastrianism was the first monotheistic religion historically preceding many of its kind in the world. This study provides a deeper insight into the remaining sacred spaces of this almost extinguished religion.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 1:40 - 1:45pm
The Built Environment of 18th Century Crete Through Travelogues
Sophia Triantafyllopoulos University of Cincinnati School of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, USA
Abstract
The early to mid-1800’s brought considerable changes to the island of Crete due to significant geopolitical events that impacted the island, the Greek mainland, and the Ottoman Empire. Accurate sources of information regarding the state of the built environment in the island are scarce and often biased despite their origin. Useful information including details such as sketches or measurements is often available in travelogues made by Western travelers who often spent months in the area and provided detailed accounts of their journey. This inquiry will focus on common buildings and their use and not a on singular architecture or building typology; it is generally ordinary structures that facilitate the understanding of urban forms within the continuum of the building process as opposed to an architecture of a singular event or built environment artifact. Building adaptions and new construction – whether monumentality-scoped, utility-focused, religious, or community focused – provide an improved understanding of not only the built environment but its relationship to culture and civilization, thereby contributing to a greater understanding of the physical and social dimensions of a place. Crete was selected because of its lack of a biological continuum. Its development was sporadic, utilitarian and preserved local ethno-construction paradigms already in Crete such as the use of local building materials and local construction techniques, cultural or religious motifs, and symbology and representation in exteriors and interiors. Socioeconomic conditions will be considered because they provide valuable information about the availability of resources, geography, materiality, construction types, building types, and even spolia. The geography of Crete will be studied in terms of urban versus rural areas for patterns of use. Three travelogues will be considered, and building related references and usage patterns will be compared for consistency to arrive at a more accurate description of Crete’s built environment.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 1:45 - 1:50pm
Mapping Chinese Architectural Criticism in the People’s Daily and Architectural Journal from 1949 to 1966
Xiaohan Chen Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China
Abstract
Initially when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, Chinese architectural discourse in the public domain was foregrounded by discussions concerned with "National style," the "Socialist new style" and radical ideological transformation, with architectural criticism being backgrounded. Overall, the subject of Chinese architectural criticism is an area that has not been given detailed attention in China or abroad. Current historical research on Chinese architectural criticism is still limited to the pioneering studies done by the Chinese scholars, such as Zheng Shiling, Wang Kai and Zhu Jianfei. This research therefore makes an original contribution by focusing on architectural history and criticism from 1949 to 1966 i.e. from the founding of new China to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, so as to undertake the important task of constructing an historical overview of Chinese architectural criticism in architectural theory, building knowledge for Chinese and worldwide audiences. The research focuses on print mass media in China and examines architectural rhetoric in the context of Chinese political history and architectural historiography. After a survey of magazines and journals published in the period of study, the research has been limited to a detailed survey of all the articles, editorials and editorial responses in every issue in the period to locate the dominant architecture debates/ discourses/keywords and forms of criticism that appear in the People’s Daily (PD)–the mainstream national newspaper in China– and the Architectural Journal (AJ)–the authoritative architectural magazine in China. After detailed content surveying, an innovative method of diagramming dominant architectural discourses – inspired by Charles Jencks’s methodology– has been devised to respond to the question: How can a deeper understanding of Chinese architectural criticisms found in magazines published between 1949 and1966 inform our understanding of architectural criticism in China today?
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 1:50 - 1:55pm
The Women’s Empowerment Network: Housing Redefined
Teonna Cooksey Columbia University, USA
Abstract
Abstract: In Milwaukee County, over 1 in 5 Black women who are renters report enduring an eviction in their adult life—compared to 1 in 12 Hispanic women and 1 in 15 white women, according to the Milwaukee renters study (2009-2011). The community analyzed is located on the Northwest side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin—in a neighborhood known as Center Peace. Vacant homes are abundant, consuming over 30% of the housing stock within the 2-block radius examined. While these vacancies continue to contribute to the declining property value of the entire community, there is a lack of access to housing stock that accommodates the needs of single-mothers, specifically. This research presents a concept called the Women's Empowerment Network (WEN), which formed from stories of Black women who are also single mothers struggling to sustain their livelihoods after being evicted. The current housing typology needs to be re-imagined. WEN housing relates to race, gender, and family size. It operates as an adaptive re-use design strategy that promotes a safe and productive housing typology for single mothers to connect, own and build wealth. Vacant duplexes get transformed into a series of compartmentalized, shared spaces. The expansion of the original structure promotes a more stable environment for young children—and for the single-mothers who raise them. It encourages a new kind of community culture. After bringing the right stakeholders and partners to the table, zoning is essential. The Women's Empowerment Network will be embedded within existing residential areas and understanding how to zone the properties so that multiple, unrelated people can share ownership is imperative. The challenge is to create a model that ensures the safety of single mothers, given the fact that parts of her home are accessible to others, be cost-effective, and legal.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 2:05 - 2:10pm
Redefining the hospital for the Welfare State in Scotland
Harriet Richardson Blakeman University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Abstract
“It would be futile for medical science to progress and leave in its wake a dull, unimaginative architecture.” Thus declaimed a Scottish public sector architect in 1951, encapsulating the mood of excitement and perceived opportunities in the realm of hospital design in the new National Health Service. How justified was that optimism? Building on advances in design before the Second World War, a new generation of architects schooled in the methodologies of modernism set out to redefine hospital architecture to embody the aims and ideals of the Welfare State. Research-based design, reflecting user requirements, promised effective planning for new medical practices and therapies. Built in 1951-5, Vale of Leven Hospital, to the north-west of Glasgow, was the very first entirely new hospital to be built by the NHS in Britain; and it was a shining example of the best that modernism could do. Its architect, Joe Gleave, strove to produce a future-proof building that could be replicated quickly and economically throughout the country. The design married elements of traditional layout and construction, with lightweight modular units designed for maximum flexibility of use, as well as ease and speed of construction. Its use of prefabrication and modular construction foreshadowed hospital building in the later 60s and 70s. This paper will give a brief account of the design and ideals behind this model hospital, in the context of both national and regional demands for a more equitable health service. It will examine how the collaborative process of design struck a balance between top-down Cold War Civil Defence Policy and bottom-up requirements of staff and patients. And finally, how successful was it was, and what impact did it have on the development of hospital architecture in Scotland?
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 2:10 - 2:15pm
Sexton v. Chicago and the Mutability of Architectural Drawings
Jonathan Duval Brown University, USA
Abstract
This paper examines the 1883 Illinois Supreme Court case of Sexton v. City of Chicago and considers the role of the case in the formation and solidification of new legal and technological standards in architectural drawing and practice. Sexton, a contractor, submitted the lowest bid for a city construction project and was awarded the job. It was soon discovered that while some contractors had examined original drawings, Sexton and several others had examined slightly different hand-drawn tracings of the originals in preparing their bids. While the legal battle that ensued was ostensibly over which party should pay for iron beams, it was the status of handmade copies of architectural drawings that was ultimately at stake. I look beyond the boundaries of the case itself and argue that it can be understood as a catalyzing factor in the adoption of photochemical copying by architects at the end of the nineteenth century. Processes for making photochemical copies of drawings had been known since the 1840s, but they were not widely used by architects or engineers until the 1880s, after cases such as Sexton v. Chicago proved the legal and financial importance of exact copies. Photochemical copies of drawings, such as cyanotype blueprints, were instrumental in the concurrent transformation of architecture into a legitimate profession. These quick, inexpensive duplicates circumvented the persistent fallibility of the human copyist. The power of a photochemical copy ultimately lies in its assumed ontological status as an immutable copy of an architect’s original drawing. The immutability of these copies, unlike the copies in question in Sexton v. Chicago, accounts for their emerging authority and evidentiary value and explains in part their crucial role in the establishment of the architectural profession in the United States.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 2:15 - 2:20pm
The Techniques of Continuous Form
Lorena Quintana Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina
Abstract
At the end of the 20th century, avant-garde architects engaged continuous form as a practice and a theory rooted in a materialistic understanding of culture, relying strongly on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Recognizing the potential of newly available modelling software required a morphogenetic approach to form- making, breaking with the hylomorphic model prevalent in much of the Modern and Postmodern architectural production. While the move toward morphogenesis as a concern at the time has been widely documented, the precise role played by design software has been less explored. This paper investigates the debates around the usage of Spline Modeling, Particle Dynamics, and Genetic Algorithms software, regarded as material media for architecture, and the theories of continuous form that emerged contemporaneously. Deleuze illustrates the process of morphogenesis in the work of a metallurgist as the agency of material-forces in continuous variation, guided by the constraints of a technical medium. The late 20th century architect and his software can be regarded as Deleuze’s metallurgist whose know-how of metals, drawn from direct experience, brings the metals’ life to light. Yet, when the medium for form-making is no longer a smith’s workshop, but a digital environment that imposes different constraints, the problem must be reframed. In architecture, Manuel De Landa provides a framework to understand the relationship and translations between Deleuzian philosophy, morphogenesis and software that transformed architectural discourse during the 1990s. Selected architectural drawings for the Yokohama Port Terminal competition (1995) will be the research site of affiliations between theoretical propositions and digital form-generating tools. Sources include interviews with architects involved in the design of the case studies, review of primary and secondary literature, and reference to technical documentation of the software used. Such an analysis recognizes the centrality of philosophical, scientific and technical adjacencies to understand recent architectural history.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks 2:20 - 2:25pm
Villa Aeolia as an Embodiment of Renaissance Ideals
Annie Vitale University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, USA
Abstract
Located in the hills of Costozza, Italy, Villa Aeolia is one of the region’s six Renaissance villas naturally ventilated by cave-cooled air. Pressurized air travels from a nearby cave through a system of ducts to the Prigione dei Venti (Prison of the Winds), an octagonal chamber directly beneath Villa Aeolia, where it is then forced upwards through a vent. The cave-cooled air sweeps through the villa’s Apollian Hall, providing natural ventilation and inspiring the intellectual conversations that occurred there throughout the Renaissance. The ventilation system of Villa Aeolia, engineered by the villa’s architect, Francesco Trento, not only impacted the internal climate of the building, but also influenced its architectural scheme and iconography. Through formal and iconographic analyses, I argue that Villa Aeolia serves as an embodiment of Renaissance ideals as it exists at the intersection of humanism and science. The Renaissance is defined by a rebirth in Classical ideals of the ancient past while stimulating forward thinking scientific thought and discovery. Villa Aeolia’s architecture and iconographic scheme draw upon the art, architecture, and literature of Classical antiquity while the ventilation system incorporates innovative engineering strategies to cool the villa. Although the scholarship on Villa Aeolia is limited, my research combines an analysis of contemporary and historical scholarship in the fields of science and the humanities to investigate the form and function of the villa. I employ historical sources including the epic poetry of Ovid, Homer, and Virgil along with the architectural treatises of Vitruvius and Palladio to investigate the Classical concepts of winds and caves and how they were conveyed in art, architecture, and literature during the Renaissance. In addition to a humanist approach, I draw upon scientific sources incorporating the work of engineers who have studied the ventilation systems of Villa Aeolia.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks