Conference venue
Harpa
Austurbakka 2, 101 Reykjavík
Dates
October 11-13, 2023
Optional tours October 14th
About the conference
The effects of the anthropogenic climate crisis have compelled a resurgence in scholarship about the often fraught relationship between the built and the natural environment. The connection between the building sector and the disruption of the physical systems of the planet are not merely coincidental, but causal. Currently, global building activity produces nearly 40% of the world’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions, making architecture, broadly, one of the most polluting activities in human history. That a new “climatic turn” appears to be taking shape in architecture history is no surprise, but does the changing climate also require new methodologies for writing architecture history? If historians now know that architecture is causing ecological harm, how should the field of architecture history respond? Seen through the lens of environmental justice, does the climate crisis impel architectural histories of the environment to address decolonization and anti-racism?
Learn more and register for the upcoming conference. Registration is now open.
House a colleague
The Iceland University of the Arts, in collaboration with the Association of Architects in Iceland, has conceived a need-based “house a colleague” program to foster relationships with the local community and enable architectural historians to experience capital-area neighborhoods. To be considered for the “house a colleague” program, please email [email protected] using the subject “House a Colleague Program.”
The host commits to the following:
- A bed, mattress, or sofa in a private room
- A table or desk space
- Wi-fi
- Towel, bedding
- Access to, at minimum, a kitchen and bathroom shared with inhabitants
Upon approval of an application, host and guest will be put in direct email contact to make further arrangements. Although the hosts will be informally vetted by the IUA, the IUA, MoMA, and EAHN are not liable for any incidents that may occur related to the “house a colleague” program.
Visas
Iceland is a member of the Schengen Area. US citizens do not need a visa for stays less than 90 days, but their passport must be valid for at least three months beyond their planned date of departure from the Schengen area.
EU citizens can enter Iceland with a valid passport or national ID card. Non-Schengen citizens may need to apply for a Schengen visa before entering Iceland. It is recommended to check with the Icelandic Directorate of Immigration or the nearest Icelandic embassy for specific requirements.
A Schengen visa enables its holder to enter, freely travel within, and leave the Schengen Area from any of the Schengen member states, for up to 90 days within any 180-day period. Please see Applying for a Visa | Ísland.is (island.is).
Questions?
Email [email protected]
Conference Day 1 - Oct 11, 2023
Location: Foobar Management ehf., Lækjargata 2, 2nd floor, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland. (Entrance through alley from Austurstæti)
12:30 pm - 04:30 pm Pedagogy Workshop
Organizers: Dalal Musaed Alsayer (Kuwait University), and Megan Eardley (Princeton University)
Please see more information HERE
Conference Opening
Location: City Hall (Tjarnargötu 11, 101 Reykjavík)
05:00 pm - 05:30 pm Opening: Sabine Leskopf, Vice-President of Reykjavík City Council
Opening remarks:
Fríða Björk Ingvarsdóttir, Conference Chair
Massimo Santanicchia, PhD Dean, Department of Architecture, IUA
Mari Lending, President of EAHN
Carson Chan Conference Co-Chair
5:30 pm – 6:15 pm Keynote: Samia Henni
Samia Henni is a historian of the built, destroyed, and imagined environment. She is the author of the multi-award-winning Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (2017), the editor of Deserts Are Not Empty (2022) and War Zones_ (2018), and the curator of such exhibitions as Archives: Secret-Défense? (ifa Gallery, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2021), Housing Pharmacology (Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020), and Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria (Zurich, Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, Ithaca, Philadelphia, Charlottesville, 2017–22). Her upcoming book Colonial Toxicity: The French Army in the Sahara examines France’s nuclear weapons program in the Sahara in 1960–66.
6:15 pm – 7:00 pm Welcome Reception
Conference Day 2 - October 12, 2023
Location: Harpa (Austurbakka 2, 101 Reykjavík)
8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration
9:00 am - 11:00 am
Panel 1: Extraction and Consumption (Ríma)
Daniel Duarte Pereira (University of Minho)
“Seaweed Harvesting and Building Culture: The Case of Gelidium Corneum and the Portuguese Agar Industry”
Lindsey Krug (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and Sara Aziz (University of New Mexico)
“Dollar General as Hyperobject: A Hypocritical Ecology of Tchotchkes, Small-Box Buildings, and the Planet”
Giulia Scotto (Università della Svizzera Italiana)
“Agip Gas Stations and the Making of the Italian “Petroleumscape””
Maryia Rusak (ETH Zurich)
“Nordic Timber: Not So Ecological After All?”
Panel 2: Ecopolitics of the Desert (Kaldalón)
Malkit Shoshan (Harvard GSD) and Gili Merin (Technical University Vienna)
“Colonised landscape: Ecology of Inequality in the Naqab/Negev Desert”
Pamela Karimi (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)
“Survival by Design”
Paul Bouet (ETH Zürich)
“The Double Nature of Architecture: Climatic Adaptation and Fossil Fuels Extraction in the Algerian Sahara at War”
Cecilia Muzika-Minteer (University of Pittsburgh)
“A Monumental Line in the Sand: Sustainable Development and Conflict from Bou Craa to the Coast”
11:00 am - 11:30 am Coffee Break
11:30 am - 1:30 pm
Panel 3: Comfort and Control (Ríma)
Jiat-Hwee Chang (National University of Singapore)
“Thermal Governance: Built Environment, Energy and Climate in Urban Asia”
Gent Shehu (TU Delft), Georg Vrachliotis (TU Delft), and Víctor Muñoz Sanz (TU Delft)
“Architecture of Glass, Plants, and Empire: Towards a Global History of Controlled Indoor Environments”
Foivos Geralis (Princeton University)
“Imitating Jamaica: Interrogating the Spatial Origins of Climate Theory, Through Botanic Research, Colonial Ambitions, and the Emergence of Mechanical Systems of Environmental Control”
Panel 4: The Stuff of History (Kaldalón)
Kim Förster (University of Manchester)
“Toward a Global History of Cement”
Meredith TenHoor (Pratt Institute)
“Vinylaties”
Michael Faciejew (Dalhousie University)
“Who Owns the Earth: Concrete, Land, and Energy in the Global Hydroscape”
Jean Souviron (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville)
“Architecture, Environment and the Search for Transparency: Glazing from Haussmann to La Défense”
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm Lunch
2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Panel 5: Aquatic Epistemologies (Ríma)
André Tavares (University of Porto)
“From Autocad to Autocod: Interactions Between Architecture and Marine Ecosystems”
Anna Renken (University of Toronto)
“Design with Marine Ecology: The Development and Legacies of 1980s Proposals for Ocean Structures”
Marija Barović (University of Zagreb Faculty of Architecture)
“From Sardine Canneries on the Eastern Adriatic Coast To(wards) Adriatic Spatial Ecologies”
Tairan An (Princeton University)
“Incidental Artifactuality: The Case of the Zoological Station at Naples, c. 1870s”
Panel 6: First Principles (Kaldalón)
Hadas A. Steiner (University at Buffalo, SUNY)
“Three Extinctions”
Maroš Krivý (Canadian Centre for Architecture)
“Fresh Kills and the Making of an Ecological Thought Collective”
Jennifer Mack (KTH Stockholm) and Helena Mattsson (KTH Stockholm)
“Histories of the Present, Practices of Transformation: A Manifesto”
Alena Beth Rieger (Oslo School of Architecture and Design)
“Extract, Accumulate, Expel (repeat)”
4:45 pm - 5:45 pm Guided Walk: Sofia Nannini. Please see here.
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm Drinks at Tollhúsið: Hosted by IUA
If you plan on going out for dinner, we recommend you book a table on Dineout.
Conference Day 3 - October 13, 2023
Location: Harpa (Austurbakka 2, 101 Reykjavík)
9:00 am - 11:00 am
Panel 7: The Rise of Environmentalism (Ríma)
Janno Martens (KU Leuven)
“Between Synomorphy and Anarchy: Kevin Lynch and Ecological Psychology”
Meredith Gaglio (Louisiana State University)
“Developing Ark-itecture: The Emerging Solar Aesthetic of the New Alchemy Institute’s Bioshelters, 1973–1979”
Rami Kanafani (University of Pennsylvania)
“William Irwin Thompson’s Spiritual Environmentalism: Planetary Culture, the Meta-Industrial Village, and the ‘Eco-Theology’ of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine”
Pollyanna Rhee (University of Illinois)
“Building Nature’s New Conservatism”
Panel 8: Mechanisms of Repair (Kaldalón)
Desiree Valadares (University of British Columbia)
“Architectural Salvage: Second Lives and Third Ecologies at Funter Bay in Southeast Alaska”
Douglas Robb (University of Pennsylvania) and Sarah Jacobs (University of British Columbia)
“Can Care Scale? Carbon, Landscape, and the Instrumentalization of Life”
Ondrej Hojda (Technical University of Liberec)
“Stop Building? The Radical Environmentalist Argument within the Modern Movement and the Czech ‘Necessism’”
Nkatha Gichuyia (University of Nairobi), Samantha Martin (University College Dublin), and Liana Ricchi (University College Dublin)
“In(HABITAT)ion of the Archive: Probing the Emergence of the UN Agenda on Human Settlements and the Built Environment”
11:00 am - 11:30 am Coffee Break
11:30 am - 1:30 pm
Panel 9: The Environment on Display (Ríma)
Cecília Resende Santos (Columbia University)
““The Environment Organized by Men”: Development as Environmental Transformation in the 1973 São Paulo Architecture Biennial”
Frida Rosenberg (Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design) and James Taylor-Foster (Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design)
“ARARAT – How Visual Culture Changes the Way We Think, Once Again”
Maren Koehler (University of Sydney)
““The Image of a Dynamic and Growing Industry:” The Pulp and Paper Pavilion at Expo 67”
Alison J. Clarke (University of Applied Arts Vienna)
“Architectural Damage: Pan-Scandinavian Activism and the Rise of Environmental Design”
Panel 10: Empire’s Shadow (Kaldalón)
Caitlin Blanchfield (Columbia University)
“Cold Colonialism and Environmental Knowing”
Łukasz Stanek (University of Michigan)
“Designing Acceleration: Ghana, 1951-1966”
Elena M’Bouroukounda (Columbia University)
“Colonial Force Majeure: Materiality, Colonial Scripts and the Eruption of Mount Pelée (1902-1910)”
David Franco (Clemson University)
“Displacement, Self-Reliance and Informal Spaces in the Geechee Community of Sapelo Island, Georgia”
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm Lunch
2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Panel 11: Governing Nature (Ríma)
Rafico Ruiz (Canadian Centre for Architecture)
“Thermal Exposure on Inuit Lands: Qallunaat Cold War Architectures”
Alla Vronskaya (University of Kassel)
“Norming the Environment: Soviet Architecture and Climatic Zoning”
Guillermo S. Arsuaga (Princeton University)
“Reconstructing Nature, Reconstructing Borders: The Francoist Dictatorship’s Geopolitical Interventions on Pheasant Island, 1972”
Tijana Stevanovic (University College London)
“‘Rugged Terrain’: Claude Schnaidt’s Environmental Critique and Prospects of Architectural Education”
Phoebe Springstubb (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
“Frozen-Earth Rooms, Cold Storage, and Frost Tectonics: Permafrost Environments of 20th-Century Siberia and Arctic North America”
Panel 12: Mediascapes (Kaldalón)
Alfredo Thiermann (EPFL)
“Aesthetics of Extinction: A Media-Ecology of Tierra del Fuego”
Samuel Koh (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
“From Frontier Ponds to Smart Lakes: The Prehistory of Urban-Environmental Management in China’s Hebei Province”
Daniela Fabricius (University of Pennsylvania)
“Monuments of Wismut: Environmental Activism, Surveillance, and Counter-Surveillance in East Germany”
Andy Lee (Harvard GSD)
“A Picturesque for the Third Ecology: Filmic Translations of American Landscapes in Afghanistan”
05:00 pm - “The Mountains Are Their Castles” - A Few thoughts on Architecture in Iceland: Pétur Ármannson (Introduction by Óskar Örn Arnórsson, Conference Co-Chair)
05:20 pm - Conference Closing Remarks: Daniel A. Barber (Introduction by Óskar Örn Arnórsson, Conference Co-Chair)
Daniel A. Barber is Professor of Architecture and Head of School at the University of Technology Sydney. His most recent book is Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning (Princeton, 2020), following A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War (Oxford, 2016). He co-edits the “Accumulation” series on e-flux architecture; a new e-flux series “After Comfort: A User’s Guide” will launch soon. Daniel’s current research on Architecture and Sufficiency developed at the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) at Universität Heidelberg; it is supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship and the British Academy.
7:00 pm - Optional Dinner (La Primavera - Harpa)
Conference Day 4 - October 14, 2023
Optional excursion (Please see here).
Conference organizers
Ambasz Institute at The Museum of Modern Art
Iceland University of the Arts
European Architectural History Network (EAHN)
This conference was made possible through a generous gift from Emilio Ambasz. The Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment is a platform for fostering dialogue, promoting conversation, and facilitating research about the relationship between the built and natural environment, with the aim of making the interaction between architecture and ecology visible and accessible to the wider public while highlighting the urgent need for an ecological recalibration.