Nationalism and Architecture
Raymond Quek
Darren Deane
Sarah Butler
Published December 5, 2016 by Routledge
Unlike regionalism in architecture, which has been widely discussed in recent years, nationalism in architecture has not been so well explored and understood. However, the most powerful collective representation of a nation is through its architecture and how that architecture engages the global arena by expressing, defining and sometimes negating a sense of nation in order to participate in the international world. Bringing together case studies from Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia, this book provides a truly global exploration of the relationship between architecture and nationalism, via the themes of regionalism and representation, various national building projects, ethnic and trans-national expression, national identities and histories of nationalist architecture and the philosophies and sociological studies of nationalism. It argues that nationalism needs to be trans-national as a notion to be critically understood and the geographical scope of the proposed volume reflects the continuing relevance of the topic within current architectural scholarship as an overarching notion. The interdisciplinary essays are coherently grouped together in three thematic sections: Revisiting Nationalism, Interpreting Nationalism and Questioning Nationalism. These chapters, offer vignettes of the protean appearances of nationalism across nations, and offer a basis of developing wider knowledge and critically situated understanding of the question, beyond a singular nation's limited bounds.
Contents: Nationalism and architecture: an introduction, Raymond Quek; The sources of architectural nationalism, Mitchell Schwarzer; Religion and nation: the architecture and symbolism of Irish identity in the post-war British Catholic Church, Robert Proctor; Exporting architectural national expertise: Arieh Sharon's Ife University campus in West-Nigeria (1962-1976), Ayala Levin; Lewis Mumford and the quest for Jewish architecture, Anat Falbel; Power, nationalism and national representation in modern architecture and exhibition design at Expo 58, Rika Devos; Conceptualizing national architectures: architectural histories and national ideologies among the South Slavs, Tanja D. Conley; William A. Scott (1871-1921) and Irish nationalism, James McQuillan; The building without a shadow: national identity and the international style, Mark Crinson; The Pohjola building: reconciling contradictions in Finnish architecture around 1900, Charlotte Ashby; Louis Kahn's 'fairy tales' of American institutions, Darren R. Deane; Post-colonial nation-building and symbolic structures in South Africa, Estelle Alma Maré; Looking-up: nationalism and internationalism in ceilings, 1850-2000, Manfredo di Robilant; Jørn Utzon's radical internationalism: Nordic grounding and the emulation of China, Chen-Yu, Chiu; Constructing national identity through the international style: Alvar Aalto and Finland, Eva Eylers; From nationalist to critical regionalist architecture, Alexander Tzonis; A discipline without a country: Geert Bekaert and universal architecture (in Belgium), Christophe Van Gerrewey; How national is a national canon? Questions of heritage construction in Swedish architecture, Victor Edman; Architecting the cosmos: EXPO 2010, Sarah Butler; Architectural koinè and trans-national Spanish architecture, M. Concepcion Diez-Pastor; Architecture as a medium of trans-national (post)memory, Zuzanna Dziuban; The cloak of a nation: Republic of China/Taiwan/Chinese Taipei, questions for the pu
Professor Raymond Quek, Institute of Sustainable Development and Architecture, Bond University, Australia. Professor Darren Deane, Manchester School of Architecture, UK. Dr Sarah Butler The New School for Design, New York, USA.
'Architecture is shaped by national traditions but also deployed in the pursuit of national projects of identity, modernity, power, and prestige. This terrific collection breaks new ground and will be of interest to specialists on both architecture and nationalism and indeed all who care about how we build identity as we build buildings.' Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council, USA 'Nationalism and Architecture is a very good collection of essays that covers a wide range of historical issues and geographies around the world. Not only do the essays revisit earlier discourses on nationalism and its manifestation in Architecture but also they provide new interpretations that question the meaning of nationalism today.' Nezar Alsayyad, University of California, Berkeley, USA 'Heavyweight set of essays on nationalism from many countries and across borders. My favourite: a study of the subject through four ceilings - surprisingly convincing'. RIBA