Across Space and Time : Architecture and the Politics of Modernity

"Modernity tends to be considered a mostly Western, chronologically recent concept. Looking at locations in Brazil, Java, India, Georgia, and Yugoslavia, among others, Across Space and Time provides architectural and cultural evidence that modernity has had an impact across the globe and for much longer than previously conceived. This volume moves through space and time to illustrate the way global modernity has been negotiated through architecture, urban planning, design pedagogies, preservation, and art history in diverse locations around the world. Bringing together emerging and established architecture and art history scholars, each chapter focuses on a particular site where modernity was defined, challenged, or reinterpreted. The contributors examine how architectures, landscapes, and design thinking influence and are influenced by conflicts between cultural, economic, technological, and political forces. By invoking well-researched histories to ground their work in a post-colonial critique, they closely examine many prevailing myths of modernity. Notable topics include emerging architectural history in the Indian subcontinent and the connection between climate change and architecture. Ultimately, Across Space and Time contributes to the ongoing critique of architecture and its history, both as a discipline and within the academy. The authors insist that architecture is more than a style. It is a powerful expression of representational power that reveals how a society negotiates its progress."--Provided by publisher Modernity tends to be considered a mostly Western, chronologically recent concept. Looking at locations in Brazil, Java, India, Georgia, and Yugoslavia, among others, this book provides architectural and cultural evidence that modernity has had an impact across the globe and for much longer than previously conceived. Modernity tends to be considered a mostly Western, chronologically recent concept. Looking at locations in Brazil, Java, India, Georgia, and Yugoslavia, among others, Across Space and Time provides architectural and cultural evidence that modernity has had an impact across the globe and for much longer than previously conceived. This volume moves through space and time to illustrate the way global modernity has been negotiated through architecture, urban planning, design pedagogies, preservation, and art history in diverse locations around the world. Bringing together emerging and established architecture and art history scholars, each chapter focuses on a particular site where modernity was defined, challenged, or reinterpreted. The contributors examine how architectures, landscapes, and design thinking influence and are influenced by conflicts between cultural, economic, technological, and political forces. By invoking well-researched histories to ground their work in a post-colonial critique, they closely examine many prevailing myths of modernity. Notable topics include emerging architectural history in the Indian subcontinent and the connection between climate change and architecture Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 10 1 Identity Tectonics: Contested Modernities of Java and Bali 28 2 Carceral Capital: The Prison Industrial Complex in Colonial India 46 3 The City as Business Plan: Ba?a from Batangar to the Calcutta Riverside 74 4 Sir John Summerson and the Art of Modern Storytelling: Radio, Architecture, and Democratic Culture 106 5 Drawing Out a Modern Point of View: Projecting Architecture through Simultaneity, Abstraction, Dissection, and Montage 134 6 A Found “Desert” and an Imagined “Garden”: Modernity, Landscapes, and Architecture in Southern Georgia’s Longleaf Pine Forest, 1865–1920 150 7 “Houses Will Be Built Everywhere”: Modernity and Urban Space in the Press, Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1884–1914 170 8 Le Corbusier, Architecture, and Eugenics: From France to Brazil and Back 186 9 Expressions of Political Power: Case del fascio, Modernism, and Vernacular Traditions 202 10 Zoning and the Controlled Space of Modernity 220 11 Held in Suspension: Competing Discourses on Urban Modernity in 1960s Slovenia, Yugoslavia 234 12 The Triconch and Stibadium in Late Roman and Early Christian Architecture: A Consideration of Assertions of Modernity 260 13 When Art History Was Global: Helen Gardner’s Art through the Ages in 1948 280 14 The Politics of Architecture and History in the Anthropocene 296 Contributors 318 Index 324 Modernity tends to be considered a mostly Western, chronologically recent concept. Looking at locations in Brazil, Java, India, Georgia, and Yugoslavia, among others, 'Across Space and Time' provides architectural and cultural evidence that modernity has had an impact across the globe and for much longer than previously conceived. This volume moves through space and time to illustrate the way global modernity has been negotiated through architecture, urban planning, design pedagogies, preservation, and art history in diverse locations around the world. Bringing together emerging and established architecture and art history scholars, each chapter focuses on a particular site where modernity was defined, challenged, or reinterpreted. The contributors examine how architectures, landscapes, and design thinking influence and are influenced by conflicts between cultural, economic, technological, and political forces. By invoking well-researched histories to ground their work in a post-colonial critique, they closely examine many prevailing myths of modernity.0