Symposium

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

The international symposium Architectural History and International Organizations: Reflecting on Sources and Methods aims at intersecting transnational and international studies and architectural historiography. The main goal is to share research experiences while approaching archives of International Organizations and Associations. The event is organized within the framework of the seminar “UNESCO making architecture culture,” and whose discussions with the seminar participants also included an online talk and conversation with Anat Falbel (Independent Scholar from Brazil) that took place on May 25, 2022.

Program [update!]

29 June

16h15 – 17h45: Corinne Geering (Leibniz–Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe) <The Architecture of Diplomacy: Conducting Archival Research
on International Cooperation during the Cold War>

30 June

9h45: Visit to the DAM Archives. Conversations with Oliver Elser (DAM/CCSA) and Frederike Lausch (TU Darmstadt/CCSA) [Morning program for speakers only]

14h15: Welcome

14h20: Andreas Kalpakci (gta Institut/ETH Zurich), <The “Gentlemen’s Agreement” between CIAM and UIA: Organizational Approaches to the History of Postwar Modernism>

15h20: Rute Figueiredo (Escola Superior Artística do Porto), <The Bird’s Eye view of the Biennale Culture: looking from the archival “impulse”>

16h20: Break
16h40: Daniela Ortiz dos Santos (CCSA/Goethe University Frankfurt), <UNESCO Making Latin American Architecture Culture>

17h20: Discussions

17h50: Closure

Speakers:

Rute Figueiredois an architect and architectural historian (M.A. in Art History), who has long been studying the interplay between architecture and the institutions of critical mediation and discursive construction. She received her PhD in Architecture from ETH Zurich (2018) and was Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Rennes 2 University. Author of the book Architecture and Critical Discourse in Portugal (Prize José Figueiredo 2008), she set up and coordinated the funded project ‚The Site of Discourse‘ (FCT 2012-15). She is currently FCT Researcher at the CEAA/ Escola Superior Artística do Porto, working in the international project MODSCAPES-Modernist Reinventions of the Rural Landscape (HERA 2016-2019) and co-coordinating the research axis Strong Relations: Studies on Architecture History, Theory and Criticism. She is also a Lecturer at Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa and is responsible for the Doctoral curricular unit Curatorial Practices.

Corinne Geering currently leads a junior research group on comparative studies of Eastern Europe at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig. She received her PhD in history from the University of Giessen in 2018 where she was a doctoral fellow at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC). Her research interests include material culture, the history of international cooperation, and the use of the past in rural and urban development. She is the author of Building a Common Past: World Heritage in Russia under Transformation, 1965–2000.

Hélène Jannière, Architect and architectural historian, she is mainly a specialist of the history  of architectural criticism. Her current research focuses more particularly on architectural and urban criticism in France in the 1950s-1980s.  With Paolo Scrivano (Politecnico di Milano), she recently co-edited a special number of CLARA / Architecture + Recherche, devoted to “Architectural Criticism and Public Debate” as well as, more recently, an issue of the journal Histories of Postwar Architecture entitled: “Committed, Politicized, or Operative: Figures of Engagement in Criticism from 1945 to Today”. Her interest in criticism intersects with another of her research fields, the history of urban planning in France since 1945 and the urban landscape, particularly from the 1950s to the end of the 1970s. She is currently the scientific coordinator, together with Paolo Scrivano, of the international research program and network Mapping Architectural Criticism. Hélène Jannière’s talk Architecture in
 the meetings of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) was postponed for Autumn 2022.

Andreas Kalpakci is a lecturer at the Chair of the Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich. His work focuses on the relations between architecture, media, and the field of international organizations. He completed his doctoral dissertation titled “Making CIAM: The Organizational Techniques of the Moderns, 1928-1959” at the ETH Zurich Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) in 2017 with distinction, and he is currently editing it into a forthcoming book (gta Verlag). His postdoctoral research on building documentation at the United Nations from 1945 to 1978 was awarded the 2022 MSCA Seal of Excellence.

Daniela Ortiz dos Santos is Assistant Professor at the Goethe University Frankfurt, scientific coordinator of the CCSA and fellow of the Johanna Quandt Young Academy at Goethe (JQYA). She studied architecture in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires and received her doctorate from ETH Zurich. Her research, teaching, and curatorial activities focus on the intersection between transatlantic architectural history and historiography. Her current research examines Latin America as a category in architectural historiography and was awarded the 2022 JQYA Sabbatical Fellowship. Recent publication on the subject includes „Italian Roots in Latin American Architectural History.“ In: Denise Costanzo and Andrew Leach, editors. Italian Imprints on twentieth-century architecture. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. p.265-277.

Conceived by Daniela Ortiz dos Santos, both seminar and symposium are carried out at the Center for Critical Studies in Architecture of the Goethe University Frankfurt and has received funding and support from the Goethe Research Academy for Early Career Researchers (GRADE).

This symposium is open to the public but the number of seats is limited. All those who are interested in attending should contact ortiz@kunst.uni-frankfurt.de.

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