Final conference of the COST Action IS0904 ‘Crossing boundaries: Rethinking European architecture beyond Europe’ (Palermo, 13-16 April 2014)

Convened by Mercedes Volait and Johan Lagae, Chair and
Vice-Chair of the Action
Local organizing by Ettore Sessa, with the support of the Department of Architecture of the Università degli Studi di Palermo

Venue : Rettorato dell’Università degli Studi di Palermo, Palazzo Chiaramonte Steri, Piazza Marina, 61 – 90133 Palermo

Contact : Ettore Sessa (+39 338 3276148)

Day 1 – Sunday 13 April 2014

13:30–14:00: Registration

14:00 – 17:00: Presentation of collaborative work achieved during the Action:

  • General introduction (Mercedes Volait and Johan Lagae)
  • Researching 19th c. Algiers on site and in archives (Claudine Piaton, Juliette Hueber, Thierry Lochard,  Boussad Aiche)
  • Building digital platforms (Juliette Hueber, Antonio Mendes da Silva, Pauline van Roosmalen)
  • Going digital: a personnal view (Rachel Lee)
  • ABE journal (official launch of the journal) : presentation of structure, content and workflow (Mercedes Volait, Johan Lagae, Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Alex Bremner, Juliette Hueber, Leila el-Wakil, Eduard Kögel, Lukasz Stanek, Robert Home, Rachel Lee)
  • Publications: in preparation and projected (Johan Lagae, Juliette Hueber, Antonio Mendes da Silva)
  • Other spin-offs (Rachel Lee, Regina Göckede, Ralph Bodenstein, Claudine Piaton, Ezio Godoli, Antonio Bravo Nieto)
  • Action’s website: statistics and archiving (Antonio Mendes da Silva)

17:00 – 17:30 : Coffee break (Portico al piano nobile dell’Aula Magna)

17:30 – 18:00 : Film screening (program proposed by Rachel Lee and Iain Jackson)

18:00 – 19:00: Keynote speech by Dr. Sibel Zandi-Sayek (The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA) : Remapping the Geographies of Industrial Enterprise: Ottoman-British Networks and the Architectural Canon

Technical practicalities

Room managed by EUROSERVICE, Giampaolo Mazzola, tel : + 39 347 4870540  Technical assistance for projections in Aula Magna provided by Teaching assistants in the Department of Architecture:

Virginia Bonura  (+39 320 8056607); Vincenza Maggiore (+39 333 3306644) ;  Patrizia Miceli (+39 327 2988647); Livia Realmuto (+39 329 2577943)

and collaborators of Ettore Sessa :

Federica Cattafi (+39 327 0146693); Maria Antonietta Calì (+39 320 0742336);  Miriam Garifo (+39 366 5257583) ; Davide Borzoee (+39 388 1604128) ;  Marina La Corte  (+39 333 3141203)

Day 2 – Monday 14 April 2014

8:30 – 9:00: Welcome speeches (Prof. Roberto Lagalla, Magnifico Rettore dell’Un. di Palermo; Prof. Marcella Aprile, Direttore del Dipartimento di Architettura dell’Università degli Studi di Palermo; Dott.ssa Maria Elena Volpes, Soprintendente dei Beni Culturali e Ambientali di Palermo della Regione Siciliana)

9:00 – 12:00 : Session 1. Methods and methodologies: Writing the histories of European imperial/colonial architecture

Chaired by Alex Bremner (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, UK) and JoAnne Mancini (National University of Ireland Maynooth)

  • June Komisar (Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada): Analyzing colonial architecture through the lens of creativity research
  • Tim Livsey (Birkbeck College, University of London, UK): Rethinking the colonial modern
  • Michael Falser (Chair of Global Art History, Heidelberg University, Germany): Picturesque modernities: a transcultural enquiry into the formation of the “colonial style” in architecture between Europe and Asia. Methodological considerations
  • Lara Eggleton (University of Manchester and University of Leeds, UK): A Profusion of Moorish Remains: Victorian encounters with Islamic architecture in the West
  • Robert Home (Anglia Ruskin University, UK): British colonial architecture with or without architects? A methodological challenge

12:00 – 13:00: Lunch (androne del pianterreno, Palazzina Neoclassica :ex Regio Lotto, Complesso di Palazzo Chiaramonte)

13:00 – 16:00: Session 2. Architectures of exile: Visions and re-Visions of the global modern in the age of the refugee

Chaired by Regina Göckede (Brandenburgische Technische Universität, Cottbus, Germany) and Rachel Lee (TU Berlin, Germany)

  • Ron Fuchs (Art History Department, University of Haifa, Israel): Rudolf Wittkower and His “Architectural Principles”: An Exiled Humanist Scholar in an Age of Anti-Humanism
  • Anat Falbel (University of Campinas, Institute of Philosophy and Humanities (UNICAMP/IFCH), Brazil): The national and the foreigner in Brazilian architecture historiography
  • Bryleigh Morsink (University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria): Henry Kulka and the tradition of Adolf Loos in the South Pacific
  • Veronica Bremer (Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany): Emigré Experiences: Frederick Romberg and German Modernism in Australia
  • Stefano Poli (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Italy): Eugenio Giacomo Faludi (Budapest 1896-Toronto 1981), Architect in Italy, Planner in Canada
  • Eduard Kögel (University of Technology, Berlin, Germany): Walter Gropius and China

16:30 – 18:00 Session 3. Looking eastward, building identities: The architecture of European diplomacy beyond the Mediterranean in the age of Empire

Chaired by Paolo Girardelli (Boğaziçi University, Instanbul, Turkey) and Mercedes Volait (InVisu, (CNRS/INHA), Paris, France)

  • Cristina Pallini (Dipartimento di progettazione dell’architettura, Politecnico di Milano, Italy) and Armando Scaramuzzi (Italy): The project by Paolo Caccia Dominioni for the Italian Embassy in Ankara
  • Vilma Fasoli and Michela Rosso (Dipartimento di Architettura e Design, Politecnico di Torino, Italy): Rome/Kabul/Rome: trans-cultural exchanges and the project of an embassy
  • Emmanuel Georgi (Università degli studi di Pavia, Italy): Cultural Transfer and Architecture: The Buildings of European Diplomacy in Modern Shanghai (1843-1949)

18:30 – 19:00: Film screening (program proposed by Rachel Lee and Iain Jackson)

19:00 – 20:00: Invited Lecture by Lukasz Stanek (Manchester Architecture Research Centre, School of Environment & Development, University of Manchester, UK): Architects from Socialist Countries in Ghana (1957-1967): Architecture and Mondialization

Day 3 – Tuesday 15 April 2014

8:00 – 18:00: Architectural visits guided by Ettore Sessa, Eliana Mauro, Vincenza Maggiore, Livia Realmuto. Contact : Eliana Mauro (334 6476419)

Departure: The bus will depart from Palazzo Chiaramonte, piazza Marina no. 61, at 8 :00 am.

Sites to be visited : Monreale (including the Dome and the Cloister); the Cuba, the Zisa, the Palazzo dei Normanni, San Giovanni degli Eremiti, Church di San Cataldo, Church di Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, Casina Cinese in park of Real Favorita, Oratorio di Santa Cita

Free entrance to the monuments for the participants in the conference, by courtesy of the Soprintendenza ai Beni Culturali e Ambientali di Palermo della Regione Siciliana

Return : at 18 :00 pm, in piazza Marina no. 61.

18:30 20:30: Evaluation meeting (WGs coordinators and co-coordinators, Action’s rapporteur, external evaluator, COST Science Officer, MC members present at the conference)

Venue: Chiesa di Sant’Antonio Abate – Complesso di Palazzo Chiaramonte, piazza Marina no. 61.

Day 4 – Wednesday 16 April 2014

9:00 – 12:00: Session 4. Transnational studies and cultural transfers

Chaired by Kathleen James-Chakraborty (University College Dublin, Ireland)

  • Thibault Bechini (École normale supérieure de Lyon, France): Building Buenos Aires: cultural and technical transfers (1880-1960)
  • Ricardo Agarez (London, UK): Migration currents and building practice exchanges in the Portuguese diaspora
  • Itohan Osayimwese (Brown University, Providence, USA): Architecture, Ethnography, and the “Irresistible Call” of Adventure: German Architects’ Engagement with World Cultures c. 1900
  • Clelia Pozzi (Princeton University, USA): Latin America Made in Italy. The Architecture of the South Through the Eyes of Postwar Italian Magazines
  • Neta Feniger (Architecture Department at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel): Israeli architects in Iran:  a case of changing transnational practices (video-conferencing)

12:00 – 13:00: Lunch (androne del pianterreno, Palazzina Neoclassica :ex Regio Lotto, Complesso di Palazzo Chiaramonte)

13:00 – 16:00: Session 5. Architecture as development aid. Actors, networks and mechanisms in the design of institutional buildings in the postcolonial global South

Chaired by Kim De Raedt (Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Ghent University, Belgium) and Tom Avermaete (Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands)

  • Ayala Levin,  (Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation,Columbia University, New York, USA): Scales of Engagement: ZalmanEnav’s Institutional Networking in Ethiopia, 1959-1965
  • Elke Beyer (ETH Zürich, Switzerland / Leibniz-Institut für Regionalentwicklung und Strukturplanung e.V. (IRS), Erkner/Berlin, Germany): Building Institutions in Kabul in the 1960s. Sites, spaces and architectures  of developmentcooperation
  • Ezio Godoli and Nazila Khaghani (Universita degli studi di Firenze, Italy): The work of Luigi Moretti and Roman architectural firms for Algeria
  • Luce Beekmans (Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Ghent University, Belgium): The architecture of nation-building in newly independent states: the case of Senegal (Dakar), Tanzania (Dodoma) and Congo (Kinshasa)

16:30 – 19:00: Session 6. Examining Tropical Architecture: in different international contexts

Chaired by Ola Uduku (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, UK) and Iain Jackson (The Liverpool School of Architecture, UK)

  • Deborah van der Plaat (University of Queensland, Australia): Crossing the Tropic of Capricorn. Disciplinarity, Architecture and the Tropics
  • Jacopo Galli (Università IUAV di Venezia, Italy): From tropical medicine to tropical architecture
  • Anna Magrin (Università IUAV di Venezia, Italy) and Monica Coralli (ENSA Paris La Villette, Paris, France): Linkages between villes nouvelles and West Africa: the case of HLM Dakar
  • Nuno Grancho (Universidade de Coimbra, Instituto de Investigação Interdisciplinar  / CES – Centro de Estudos Sociais, Portugal): Architecture, Agency and Empire: a portuguese colonial settlement in a global context
  • Miki Desai (CEPT University Ahmedabad, India): The Cultural Expression of the Bungalow in India: The Colonial Legacy and its Post-Colonial Manifestation
  • Britta Schilling (University of Cambridge, UK): The House as a Contact Zone? Colonial Domestic Architecture in East Africa and the History of Everyday Life

Other relevant contacts:

- Ufficio Cerimoniale del Rettorato di Palermo
- Director Dr. Augusta Troccoli, tel. 091 23893888 – 091 23893715 cerimoniale(at)uinpa.it
- Dipartimento di Architettura dell’Università degli Studi di Palermo
- Director Prof. Arch. Marcella Aprile marcella.aprile(at)unipa.it
- Administrative Officer : Benedetto Romano benedetto.romano(at)unipa.it
- Prof. Ettore Sessa : ettore.sessa(at)unipa.it  mobile : +39 338 3276148

Annexes:

Annex 1 – Impact of networking

Annex 2 – Dissemination