An increasingly global understanding of architecture and architectural history is providing us with new frameworks for research and education on interconnected transcontinental and transnational geographies of architecture; a methodological orientation explored in this, the second issue of Fabrications for this year. These frameworks have the potential to re-frame architectural cultures through the exploration of regional legacies of colonialism and internationalism across the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries – ongoing concerns of architectural historians in Australia and New Zealand. Although much work has been done largely within historiographical boundaries inscribed by nationalist and regionalist frameworks, the webs of connection that operate within and between Australia and New Zealand, the Asia-Pacific and globally continue to present opportunities for further research in understanding architecture in Australasia and its agency beyond the Antipodes.
For this issue on “Networks and Flows,” Fabrications invited new perspectives on the interconnected and multi-directional flows of influence that have established and maintain relationships between geographically distant architectural cultures. The four papers presented variously construct transnational frameworks for architectural history. Three articles are written from the perspective of Australia and New Zealand, each exploring new connections for architecture in the region. These involve mapping cultural and professional geographies attending the migration of communities and individuals. The flows of cultural and professional knowledge between Asia and Europe are examined in the fourth.
Scriver, Bartsch, and Rashid’s opening article on “The Space of Citizenship: Drifting and Dwelling in ‘Imperial’ Australia” is focused on the built legacies of “Afghan” cameleers that played a crucial role in the exploration and settlement of Australia’s interior from the 1860s to the 1930s. The paper situates the cameleers, the transcontinental infrastructure that they helped to build, and the architecture – mosques and homes – that supported their communities within imperial networks of labour, commerce, and community. The authors argue that an intention to dwell embodied in these buildings connects Australian cities and remote towns of the continent’s interior via the British Empire to India and Afghanistan, and reflect on the interconnected spaces and cultures of Australia’s settlement history.
Networks of the architectural profession within the British Empire are discussed in Julie Willis’ essay “Architectural Movements: Journeys of an Inter-colonial Profession.” Willis documents the professional migrations of individual architects who practised in multiple colonies and concessions of the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These were often opportunistic migrations that connected architectural practice in the Australian colonies, New Zealand, South Africa, and Asia pointing to an opportunity to rethink geographies of practice from the Antipodes.
Tracing networks and movements through personal and professional biographies is a method used across this issue. Tanja Popplereuter’s article “Before 1939: Refugee Architects to New Zealand” examines the backgrounds of refugee architects who arrived in New Zealand at the time of the Second World War. These architects, including Fritz Feuer (from 1940 Frederick Farrar), Richard Fuchs, Ernst Gerson, Heinrich Kulka, Friedrich Hugo Neumann, and Ernst Anton Plischke, have often been associated with the development of modernism in New Zealand. However, as Popplereuter observes, the ideas brought by individual émigré architects and their impact on the local architectural culture are difficult to determine. She approaches this problem by documenting and discussing the diverse backgrounds and experiences of this heterogeneous group of architects to better understand their contributions to the development of twentieth-century architecture in New Zealand.
Transnational networks and knowledge transfers are explored by Vandana Baweja through a biographical case study. Her essay “Otto Koenigsberger and Modernist Historiography” uses the career of the mobile German-born architect and educator to discuss the significance of international networks for understanding architecture in South Asia and its place within wider histories of modernism. Koenigsberger was trained in Germany; he practised in India from 1939 to 1951, with key works in the state of Mysore, in southern India, and New Delhi, before returning to Europe where he established the School of Tropical Architecture at the Architectural Association (AA) in London. Baweja argues the influence of Koenigsberger’s experience in India on stances developed at the AA and in the writing of the influential Manual of Tropical Housing and Building, co-authored with T. G. Ingersoll, Alan Mayhew, and Steven V. Szokolay and published in 1974. As such, Koengisberger provides a link between practice and projects in India and the development of discourses on tropical architecture in London.
Following the four articles is a report on the activities of “European Architecture Beyond Europe,” written by G.A. Bremner, Johan Lagae, and Merecedes Volait, that turns its attention to networks in the practice of research. “European Architecture Beyond Europe” represents a network of academic researchers with shared interests in histories of imperial, colonial, and transnational architectures. It was established in 2010 as an “Action” funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology program (COST) for five years with a legacy that includes a scholarly journal dedicated to the field, ABE Journal (Architecture Beyond Europe), to continue the group’s agenda and to sustain the research networks established. This report provides an account and rationale of the Action’s formation, activities, and perspectives, reflecting on the importance of networks and their consequences in the content and practices of architectural scholarship.
The issue includes two book reviews: Miles Glendinning reviews Julia Gatley and Paul Walker’s, Vertical Living: The Architectural Centre and the Remaking of Wellington (Auckland, Auckland University Press, 2014); and David Rowe reviews John J. Taylor, Between Duty and Design: The Architect-Soldier Sir J.J. Talbot Hobbs (Crawley Western Australia, UWA Publishing, 2014).
The final issue of Fabrications volume 26 will be guest edited by Julia Gatley and Andrew Leach on “The Architectural History of the Pacific Basin.” Volume 27 will commence with an open issue to be published in February 2017.
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April 2016