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Picturesque ModernitiesArchitectural Regionalism as a Global Process (1890-1950)

International ConferenceNovember 30th - Décember 2nd 2016

Location German Center for Art History Paris45, rue des Petits Champs75001 Paris

Organized byGerman Center for Art History Paris

Cluster of excellence „Asia and Europe in a Global Context“ Heidelberg University (Global Art History)

Centre André Chastel (University Paris-Sorbonne)

University of Poitiers (Departement of Art History)

Association française des Historiens de l‘Architecture (A.H.A.)

The conference is open to the publicFor more information:www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalismwww.dfk-paris.org

ABSTRACTS RÉSUMÉS

Cave coopérative de Bassan (Hérault). Architecte René Villeneuve. Date de construction: 1948.

PICTURESQUE MODERNITIES ARCHITECTURAL REGIONALISM AS A GLOBAL PROCESS (1890-1950)

International Conference

(Paris, 30 November – 2 December 2016)

German Center for Art History Paris Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”, Heidelberg University

Centre André Chastel (University Paris-Sorbonne) CRIHAM (University of Poitiers)

Association française des Historiens de l’Architecture (A.H.A.)

La coopération vinicole du languedoc-méditerranéen face au régionalisme architectural

Dominique Ganibenc

Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine

Résumé L’application du régionalisme architectural aux constructions de la coopération vinicole languedocienne par quelques-uns de ses architectes, relève principalement de l’effet produit par l’Exposition Universelle de 1937 : « Art et Techniques dans la vie Moderne » ; ceci grâce à la création de son Centre Régional composé de Pavillons dédiés aux différents caractères régionaux. Les préceptes prônés par l’Assemblée Générale du Comité Régional concernant la participation du Languedoc-Méditerranéen quant à son projet, sont en faveur d’un régionalisme moderne. Cette volonté stylistique va être plus ou moins suivie sur le réseau coopératif des caves languedociennes : si certains architectes plaident pour un régionalisme de conception moderne ; d’autres reproduisent les attributs architectoniques dans une facture traditionnelle. Entre 1937 et 1950, près de deux cents caves coopératives sont édifiées ; parmi elles on observe un corpus de moins d’une quarantaine d’unités y faisant référence. La première unité de style résolument régionaliste est créée en 1937, à Tavel, dans le Gard. Elle arbore tous les éléments architectoniques du régionalisme provençal traditionnel. La société coopérative vinicole est un organisme communautaire dont le champ d’activités est essentiellement le territoire communal. Issue d’une démarche sociale concentrique aux résonances politiques et plus rarement religieuses, la conception de ses bâtiments et leur aspect architectural relèvent plus d’une nécessité sociale que d’un besoin de représenter. Néanmoins, quelques-unes de ces constructions, par leur aspect, vont fédérer à une démarche plus globale. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism

http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism

Villa Les Pins, Le Canadel (Var), René Darde architecte, vers 1925.







Existe-t-il une architectonique régionaliste trans-régionale? Les traits communs des diverses expressions néo-régionales

en France durant le premier XXe siècle

Claude Laroche Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel, Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine

Résumé Le régionalisme architectural français a fait ces dernières décennies l’objet de nombreuses études, permettant notamment de comprendre l’émergence du phénomène, son développement grâce à d’importants réservoirs de commande et à des événements à fort retentissement (expositions internationales de 1925 et 1937) et permettant de le situer dans le contexte social et politique. Toutefois, la question strictement architectonique du phénomène n’a encore été que relativement peu abordée. Si la recherche des différents modèles vernaculaires a été entreprise pour les principales régions d’exercice du phénomène, il reste encore d’importants chantiers d’études à mener. La communication se propose d’esquisser quelques pistes de recherche, notamment celle qui verrait dans le régionalisme architectural, au-delà du phénomène identitaire qu’il paraît être prioritairement, un mode d’expression parfaitement en phase avec les programmes du moment, avec le mode de composition utilisé par les architectes et avec les attentes de la clientèle. Le corpus régionaliste est peut-être celui qui démontre le mieux le fait que ses acteurs – le plus souvent excellents praticiens, très actifs, notamment durant l’Entre-deux-guerres, mais peu engagés dans les débats théoriques de premier plan – sont dans une situation de très forte communauté de formation et de culture architecturales. Il montre notamment une étonnante similitude de traits d’écriture d’une région à l’autre, transcendant des identités régionales pourtant fortement différenciées. La communication se proposerait entre autres de pointer quelques-uns de ces traits et de suggérer quelques explications au phénomène : la présence des mêmes architectes dans les chantiers de reconstruction des régions dévastées par le premier conflit mondial, puis, la commande s’amenuisant, dans les terrains de villégiature méridionaux. Mais aussi, au-delà de cet aspect factuel, le poids des institutions ou de l’esprit du temps. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Dar Nejma Ezzahra (Sidi Bou Saïd, Tunisie), propriété du Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger, architecte inconnu, 1912-1922.







Léandre Vaillat et le baron d’Erlanger, leur réseau international et la pollinisation du régionalisme architectural au Sud de la Méditerranée

Charlotte Jelidi

Université de Tours Résumé Cette communication propose d’étudier les rôles respectifs, dans la circulation de la doctrine régionaliste au Sud de la Méditerranée, de Léandre Vaillat, écrivain, critique d’art et journaliste, et de son ami et mécène l’artiste Rodolphe d’Erlanger, parangon de l'esthète promoteur du patrimoine (architectural, artisanal et musical). Insérés dans un réseau social international composé d’artistes, de membres éminents des administrations coloniales maghrébines, des élites européennes et indigènes, Vaillat et d’Erlanger vont parvenir, à partir de 1915, à imposer en Tunisie un régionalisme architectural comme corollaire de la politique patrimoniale qu’ils promeuvent sur le modèle de celle engagée au Maroc deux ans auparavant par le Résident Lyautey. À leur initiative sont officiellement prescrits dans plusieurs médinas tunisiennes des styles architecturaux qualifiés de « pittoresques », respectueux de l’environnement bâti préexistant, les architectures nouvelles devant respecter les gabarits des anciennes et emprunter à leur vocabulaire décoratif. Ce transfert intra-impérial, du Maroc en Tunisie, du régionalisme, qui s'opère sans passage administratif par la métropole – mais il existe des relais métropolitains (presse, institutions culturelles) – dépasse le contexte de colonisation et l’aire maghrébine. La Tunisie n’est qu’une étape de la pollinisation du régionalisme, pollinisation faisant référence à un système d’itinérances non linéaires qui peuvent être simultanées ou non . Ainsi, en marge de la préparation du Congrès de Musique arabe du Caire (1932), d'Erlanger fournit au roi d'Égypte de nombreux renseignements sur le régionalisme imposé dans les villes anciennes en Tunisie et au Maroc puis le met en contact avec l’urbaniste Henri Prost afin que celui-ci, fort de son expérience marocaine, aide à définir une politique patrimoniale et architecturale cairote. Cette communication s’inscrit dans un courant de recherches amorcé à la toute fin des années 1990 qui, grâce à la consultation de sources archivistiques inédites, a entrepris de dépasser l’analyse strictement politique des architectures régionalistes maghrébines du moment colonial . La spécificité de ce travail est de s’intéresser aux rôles des acteurs privés dans l’expansion du régionalisme et vise à esquisser une partie du réseau tentaculaire, labile et international qui œuvre à la pollinisation du régionalisme architectural, un réseau mu par des objectifs variés, parfois contradictoires d’ordre politique et identitaire, économique (en lien avec le développement du tourisme et l’artisanat), patrimonial voire purement esthétique. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Musée Louis Finot in Hanoi (1926-1932) by the architects Hébrard/Batteur







The multiple voices of the « Indochinese » Style

Caroline Herbelin Visiting assistant professor, Wesleyan University

Maître de conférences à l’Université de Toulouse Jean-Jaurès Abstract The so-called " Indochinese" style, created by Ernest Hébrard is often considered one of the avatars of successful regional style in the French empire. Designed between 1921 and 1926, this style seemed to be the natural corollary to the Franco- indigenous political association, which was being established at the same time. This style was adapted climatically, technically, and culturally to the country and was inspired by vernacular architecture: it could have been the ideal expression of the politic of mise en valeur of indigenous culture desired by Albert Sarraut. In reality, the Indochinese style was far from embodying the aims of the colonial government. Although Hébrard’s aim was indeed to create a "local" style for the colony, his style was a syncretism of several Asian models, from which he took his inspiration more structurally than formally. The aesthetic of his work did not evoke a specific vernacular style existing in the Indochinese peninsula. This functionalist approach was distinct from to the culturalist view of the politic of the association’s supporters. They wanted instead to mark clearly the cultures existing in the French colony as France was presenting itself as the essential connection between the five countries of the French Union. From an architectural point of view, the search of a regionalist style was therefore less about representing a French "local" identity in the colony, than it was about finding a specific style for indigenous buildings, with the idea to "renew" the "traditions" of the colonized. Therefore Hébrard encountered many difficulties with the colonial authorities, who were reluctant to complete his projects. This divergence of views must be considered within the context of other attempts to search for a regionalist style that took place in Indochina around the same time: namely, that of George Groslier in Cambodia as weel as that of the Vietnamese scholars of the AFIMA in Hanoi. This comparative approach allows us to understand the different agendas at stake in the search for a regionalist style and how different actors can use the vernacular reference with different meanings in colonial context. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism








Renegotiating the Boundaries of Architectural History (Keynote I)

Dana Arnold

University of East Anglia, UK Abstract Architecture remains one of the most potent symbols of western civilization and culture. In terms of architectural history this has led to the establishing of canonical histories and narratives that privilege western traditions of thinking. There is no doubt, however, that over recent years architectural history and its historiography have been transformed as fields of academic enquiry. The frameworks, subjects and objects, themes and methods of the discipline have expanded beyond its traditional boundaries. This dynamic interaction with other disciplines continues to produce fresh perspectives and conceptual groundings for how we think about architecture and formulate its histories.

In this paper I aim to renegotiate of the boundaries of architectural history; to critically engage with past and present histories and disclose latent assumptions about ‘east’ and ‘west’ through the biases and absences in the writing of architectural and cultural histories. This work has developed from my recent engagements with architectural history and its historiography across a broad territory including the Middle East and China. Together, these combine to produce an archive of systems of regulation and resistance in a colonial and postcolonial context that help us understand the dynamics of flow across geographical and intellectual regions. Of particular interest here is the study of architecture produced in ‘distant’ and ‘different’ geographies that have been put under the totalising rubric of the ‘non-west’. The ambivalence I seek to interrogate lies as much in the intellectual as in the historiographical geographies of the discipline, and it is here that the notions of transculturation and decolonialisation come to the fore as a means of repositioning the west within these. Biographical Information Dana Arnold is Professor of Art History at the University of East Anglia, UK. Her research focuses on the ways in which cultural theory informs our understanding of urban space and spatiality and more broadly the historiographical nuances of architectural history. This work has taken on a global dimension with research projects on the architectural dialogues between London and Paris, and those between Britain and China, and Europe and the Middle East.

Professor Arnold’s interest in how architecture, space and cities combine is explored in her three books on London, the most recent of which is The Spaces of the Hospital: Spatiality and urban change in London 1680-1820 (2013). Her work on architectural historiography and theory includes Reading Architectural History (2002) and the edited volumes: Biographies and Space (2007) and Rethinking Architectural Historiography (2006), which was shortlisted for the Nikolaus Pevsner Prize.

She has held research fellowships at The Getty Research Institute, Yale University and the University of Cambridge. She is Guest Professor, International Research Centre for Chinese Cultural Heritage Conservation, Tianjin University, China and has held an Honorary Professorship in the Faculty of Architecture at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Above: H.P. Berlage, Drawing of a house in Batavia (1923); Below: H.P. Berlage, De Nederlanden van 1845 (The Hague, 1924/1927)







‘The centre cannot hold.’ Dutch architectural culture and the Dutch Indies around 1923

Herman van Bergeijk

Technical University of Delft Abstract Point of departure of this contribution is the trip that the famous Dutch architect H.P. Berlage made to the Dutch Indies in 1923. In the colony he had already built two projects in the colony which he had never seen in person before but in his account he does not talk about these. His trip has a different importance. He is more interested in the local culture and especially the various temple complexes in the country. Special attention is therefore given to the way that he reads and absorbs this foreign culture through media like writing, drawing and photographs and how he engages with the divergent opinions of other western architects in the colony. Due to his international fame he was well respected and met almost all main protagonists. He became familiar with their views and their work but chose not to take a position for either the one or the other. As always he tends to strife for a compromise. With his perceptive eye he notices that modernization is unavoidable but is also aware of the danger that ‘westernization’ embodies for the local cultures. The account of his trip, that he was able to publish in 1931 with the subtitle ‘Thoughts on Culture and Art’ is beyond any doubt an important for understanding the complexity of a different colonial culture. The trip had a special impact on the ideas of Berlage on the use of ornament, an issue that was highly debated in his homeland. He would clearly favour the expressionism of the Amsterdam School, instead of the functionalism of the more radical modernists. For this reason he was criticised by the members of the heroic avant-garde. Not that Berlage started working in the manner of the Amsterdam School but he did dedicate more attention to the texture of the facades and the changing relationship between the structure and the cladding. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Indisch: Polytechnic in Bandung (1920)

Art Deco: Hotel Savoy Homann in Bandung (1939)

Jengki: House in Jakarta (c.1950)





Centre André Chastel (University Paris-Sorbonne) CRIHAM (University of Poitiers


From 'Indisch' and 'Art Deco' to 'Jengki': Re-thinking 'colonial' architecture of the Dutch East Indies in a globalising world

Pauline K.M. van Roosmalen

PKMvR heritage research consultancy, Amsterdam Research fellow at Delft University of Technology

Abstract With attention for non-European/non-Western architecture and town planning on the rise, buildings and town plans in former European colonies that attest of European presence are increasingly of interest: indeed, buildings and town plans that often share formal and technical characteristics with buildings and town plans in Europe while simultaneously applying/introducing different, locally inspired features.

The ambiguous natures of buildings and town plans in former European colonies are as confusing as it

is intriguing. What generated their design and what do we actually see? What is the significance of these buildings and town plans, and how is this assessed and by whom?

To discuss just three of the many issues involved when dealing with ‘so-called’ non-European/non-Western architecture ( stylistic characteristics, denomination, significance) I will present the Dutch East Indies as a case study. By means of this case study, my paper will demonstrate some of the challenges inherent in a globalising world when analysing, interpreting and assessing buildings and town plans that emerged from and were implemented within a colonial context.

My paper will begin with an overview of the kaleidoscope of buildings and town plans in the Dutch East Indies. Next it will present designers and their (possible) sources of inspiration within the colony and beyond: stylistically, technically, and culturally, etc. The final section of the paper will discuss the accuracy and relevance of stylistic denominations in view of three, generally recognised and applied architecture styles in Indonesia: Indisch, Art Deco, and Jengki. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Villa of Dr. G. Fock, ca. 1912, Okahandja, Namibia (2014)

Illustration from Paul Fischer, Ansiedlungsbauten in den Provinzen Posen und Westpreußen (1904).







Heimatstil Architecture between Namibia and Eastern Prussia

Kenny Cupers University of Basel

Abstract This paper focuses on the development of Heimatstil (literally “homeland style”) architecture between circa 1890 and 1910 in two different, but interrelated spheres of action: the construction of new agricultural villages by the Prussian Settlement Commission, and the planning of colonial settlements in Namibia, then Deutsch-Südwestafrika (German Southwest Africa). Despite crucial differences and discordances, both spheres were shaped by similar building styles and settlement strategies. Between its establishment in 1886 and 1909, the Prussian Settlement Commission settled more than 120,000 Germans in farming villages, mostly in the eastern provinces bordering Russia. These projects would counter the depopulation of the countryside, increase agricultural productivity, strengthen the rural middle classes, and, perhaps most importantly, re-Germanize lands inhabited by Polish peasants. Heimatstil architecture played a central role here. Building elements such as half-timbering and clipped-gable roofs were deemed to instill German culture and local rootedness (Bodenständigkeit), and thus make new settlers feel at home in their new environment. This approach also shaped overseas colonial architecture and planning in Namibia, where the buildings and landscape interventions of settlers and the colonial state in the region’s highlands and deserts legitimized colonization by aesthetic means. The paper focuses on the actors and institutions that promoted the Heimatstil and the closely related discourse of Heimatschutz in Germany and its foremost settler colony. Beyond well-known architects such as Paul Schultze-Naumburg, these include scientists and academics, colonial administrators, local builders, and state engineers. As such, the paper traces hitherto unexplored relations between German colonialism, agricultural modernization, and the development of modern architecture. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Above: "Arabicized" German East African architecture at the Berlin Trade Exhibition, 1896. Below: Origins of flat-roofed, rectilinear East African architecture, Wanyamesi Tembe, from Hermann Frobenius' Afrikanische Bautypen (1894)







The Debate on Rectilinear, Flat-Roofed African Architectural Traditions and the Development of an Arabicized German Colonial Style in East Africa

Itohan Osayimwese

Brown University Abstract In 1894, Hermann Frobenius published the first study of African buildings written by a professional architect in Germany, African Building Types: An Ethnographic- Architectural Study. In this and subsequent texts, Frobenius synthesized three centuries of European architectural descriptions of Africa and attempted to generate an overview of what, why, and how Africans built throughout history. One of his pressing concerns was whether Africans had autochthonous traditions of building rectilinear, flat-roofed, multistory buildings or whether such forms were the result of exogenous influences. East Africa, with its history of early Arab and Portuguese activity and long-standing southerly migration of African ethnic groups was a particularly salient site for evaluating this question. Frobenius concluded that while such forms could be attributed in part to Arab presence, various African ethnic groups such as the Maasai also evolved flat-roofed, right-angled buildings. Frobenius posited multiple, overlapping cultural streams combining to produce what we now understand as a distinctive Swahili architecture.

In this paper, I re-read the development of an Arabicized German colonial style in East Africa in relation to Frobenius’ re-evaluation of the origins of flatroofed buildings. The German colonial administration used this Arabicized architecture to create large official structures in the colony. It also became the architectural language of choice for representing German colonialism at exhibitions at home and abroad. There is evidence that colonial architects choose to celebrate this architectural tradition because it was most familiar and because it represented,to them, a culture and society (Arab) that were superior to those indigenous to East Africa. Based on Frobenius’ arguments, however, it is possible to develop a different reading of the German use of this architectural language—one in which, despite the colonial ideology of these designers, agency is restored to the original and multifarious inventors of this architecture. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Dominikus Böhm: Hospital for an island in the German-colonial Oceania (1914)







Between Alsace and Pacific Ocean: Regionalist Heimatschutz architecture in the late Bismarck Empire and in it’s peripheric territories 1900-1918

Wolfgang Voigt

Frankfurt Abstract In the late Bismarck Empire the German version of regionalist architecture found it’s first manifests in the pamphlet Heimatschutz (1897) by Ernst Rudorff and the very influential book series Kulturarbeiten (1901-1907) by Paul Schultze-Naumburg, who acted as the first president of the Deutscher Bund Heimatschutz (founded in 1904). Rudorff’s identity construction in order to defend and preserve German Heimat included nationalist and völkisch elements. It did not aim against industry in general, but against their effects of mutilation, disfiguration, and homogenization in landscape and architecture. Regional branches of the movement and their architects collected forms of traditional vernacular architecture and proposed Bavarian, Silesian, Saxonian, North German etc. versions of Heimatschutzarchitektur. The bund became the operative framework of the powerful Heimatschutzbewegung, active in site preservation, protection of historical monuments and subtle integration of new construction. The turn to regionalism was supported by reputated protagonists of the early modern movement like Theodor Fischer and Fritz Schumacher, who were also founding members of the Werkbund (1907). A centrifugal regionalism did arise at the south west periphery of the Reich, where a parallel regionalist movement developed in the province of Alsace with it’s capital Strassburg. This landscape had been a German territory until Louis XIV, but was annexed from France and integrated into the Reich after the French-German war of 1870/71. In this place, régionalisme not only pushed traditional local Heimatkunst and architecture, it sometimes expressed nostalgia to french culture and was linked to a political regionalism, which opposed the centralist and integrating strategies from Berlin and aimed at cultural and political autonomy. When after WW I Alsace was returned to France, the regionalist movement turned into an autonomy movement then fighting French centralism. A third focus will be directed at a specific colonial center-periphery situation in Deutsch-Neuguinea. The south German regionalist architect Dominikus Böhm, who had never traveled to this most far-flung territory of the Reich, in 1914 proposed a hospital building in an regionalist style which imagined the tropical climate of a pacific island. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Above: Moisej Ginzburg, « L'architecture nationale des peuples de l'URSS » (Sovremennaja arkhitektura / L'architecture contemporaine, nos 5-6, 1926); Below : Viktor Kalmykov, Logements pour les nomades kirghizes en voie de sédentarisation, 1933-1934.







« Orient vif » et « Orient mort »: croisées du modernisme et de l'orientalisme en Asie centrale soviétique dans les années 1920 et 1930

Boris Chukhovich

Université de Montréal Résumé Dans le cadre des études postcoloniales, l'orientalisme figure comme instrument de domination coloniale. Toutefois dans l'Union soviétique, pays où le partage du monde par les puissances impériales a été constamment critiqué, les clichés orientalistes ont été malgré tout exploités au cours de la construction du soi-disant l'« Orient soviétique ». Il s'agit surtout de l'Asie centrale dont le rôle idéologique consistait, entre autres choses, à servir de « vitrine du socialisme » aux yeux des pays en voie de développement. Par le biais de cette vitrine, les pouvoirs soviétiques cherchaient à souligner non seulement les avantages du nouvel ordre social, mais aussi la compatibilité de celui-ci avec les modes de vie dans les pays dits « orientaux ». Des leaders du constructivisme, du fonctionnalisme et d'autres tendances du mouvement moderne, tels que Mossej Ginzburg, Konstantin Melnikov, Aleksej Shhusev, autant que leurs disciples, ont contribué au transfert de l'avant-garde russe vers la périphérie orientale de l'État soviétique. Ils ont su proposer des solutions architecturales au problème d'adaptation de l'architecture moderne au climat et au contexte culturel de l'Asie centrale, même si la plupart d'eux ne connaissaient cette région que de manière superficielle, sinon ne la connaissaient pas du tout. Dans les circonstances, le recours du modernisme local aux discours de l'orientalisme global était presque inévitable. Dans notre exposé, nous proposerons une typologie de démarches poursuivies par les architectes qui visaient à adapter les nouvelles constructions aux conditions locales, sinon à remodeler le contexte local conformément à l'esprit de l'architecture moderne. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


British Concession – European modern style house with Chinese-style garden pavilion on roof (LaCouture)







Regionalism and Domestic Architecture in Treaty-port Tianjin, China

Elizabeth LaCouture Colby College, Waterville, ME USA

Abstract The northern Chinese city Tianjin became a treaty-port in 1860 and was home to nine foreign concessions until the end of World War II. Concessions were established to the south of the late imperial era Chinese city, and each concession had its own municipal government that planned roads, established neighborhoods, and set building regulations. By the 1930s, a Chinese person living in the northern city Tianjin could view a late imperial Chinese government office, an Italian revival Consular building, a Japanese Shinto shrine, a French Beaux Arts bank, or the British Gothic municipal building in a single day, simply by taking a walk. While competing nationalisms defined Tianjin municipal architecture, a regional Tianjin style emerged in domestic architecture. A Chinese industrialist in the British Concession, for example, built a modernist brick house with a Chinese pavilion affixed to the roof, while a Chinese resident of the old Chinese city built a new courtyard house that included a two-story European-style villa as one of its bays.

This paper explores how and why a regional architectural style developed in Tianjin housing during the first half of the twentieth-century. The material conditions of the city and its architecture informed a palate that inspired the deliberate mixing of so-called Chinese tradition with Western modern. Not only did Tianjin have more foreign concessions than any other Chinese city, but it is located only 140 kilometers from the imperial capital Beijing, and had been a local administrative center under the Qing. Tianjin regionalism was also as Harwell Hamilton Harris defines it “a state of mind.” Thus, this paper will explore how Tianjin writers in women’s magazines described a Tianjin regionalism when discussing interior design. Finally, this paper will consider regionalism in Tianjin housing as a form of local Chinese resistance against the multiple nationalisms of foreign colonialisms, the Euro-universalisms of modernity and the collectivism of a new Chinese nationalism. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Above : Première municipalité moderne sous mandat britannique: immeuble de la “baladiya” (1931) ; Below : Eclectisme et métissage architectural. Maison al-Zahir, 1930.







Entre hybridation, culturalisme et traditions locales: stratégies urbaines et architecturales à Bagdad sous mandat britannique (1920-1932)

Caecilia Pieri

Institut français du Proche-Orient, Beirut Résumé Cette communication entend porter sur les stratégies urbaines et architecturales conçues par les Britanniques pour faire de l’Irak une nouvelle marche de leur Empire, « royaume indépendant sous assistance » dans le cadre d’un mandat localement contesté (1920 à 1932). Auparavant chef-lieu de province, Bagdad se transforme selon certains critères attendus pour une capitale soumise à un processus de colonisation, où l’espace construit devient simultanément facteur et vecteur d’une modernisation (W. Benjamin).

A travers plusieurs exemples issus de treize ans de travail de terrain et de recherches en archives, nous aborderons d’abord l’inscription du politique dans l’espace urbain à travers les liens entre spatialisation d’une part, et représentation du pouvoir, réorganisation administrative et contrôle social d’autre part. Du fait d’une configuration socio-politique particulière, l’Irak fournit un cas intéressant de dérivation des modèles d’urbanisme « exporté » (Nasr-Volait) préalablement testés en Inde. Nous décrirons ensuite comment l’identité architecturale néo-vernaculaire témoigne d’une circulation transnationale des savoir-faire et d’une hybridation des modèles à la fois locaux, régionaux et internationaux, dans un processus complexe de croisement des références (A. King) et d’options culturalistes : citations de la tradition mésopotamienne, reprise de la volumétrie propre aux bâtiments publics ottomans, métissage du vocabulaire décoratif par l’emprunt à la tradition islamique et aux « néos » européens, enfin exportations en provenance de Grande-Bretagne, pour laquelle l’Irak constituait un marché captif. La production bâtie anglo-irakienne sous mandat britannique a finalement servi de socle à un éclectisme qui, loin des principes naissants du moderne international tels qu’ils émergeaient en territoire colonial français ou italien, constitue un cas significatif d’hybridation entre constantes et particularités, longtemps resté hors des études coloniales britanniques (King, Crinson, Home). Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism








De l’éclectisme au pittoresque régionaliste de l’architecture balnéaire

Visite guidée à la Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris 1 place du Trocadéro, 75116 Paris

Bernard Toulier Conservateur général du patrimoine, Paris

Résumé La villégiature des bords de mer, variante tardive de la villégiature des stations thermales, apparaît sensiblement à la même époque que l’architecture régionaliste . Conséquences de l’industrialisation et de l’urbanisation, les deux mondes du régionalisme et de la villégiature possèdent de nombreux points communs ; ils se recoupent selon des schémas d’évolution différenciés dans des espaces géographiques et culturels offrant eux-mêmes de nombreuses analogies. Le développement des activités touristiques attire en effet sur les côtes françaises une clientèle aisée qui se regroupe en “ colonies ”. Les nouveaux explorateurs des « colonies » balnéaires, avides d’exotisme et de pittoresque, attirés par les cultures rurales autochtones contribuent à la création et à la diffusion des styles régionaux.

La tradition de la construction pittoresque en bois, des chalets et des cottages, est largement antérieure à l’apparition du néo-normand sur les côtes normandes. Aux Etats-Unis, dès le milieu du XIXe siècle, les côtes fleurissent de constructions en bois, du Stick Style au Shingle Style. Sur les côtes normandes, le pan de bois est au carrefour avec les modèles anglo-normands, le style gothique des maisons urbaines de Rouen ou de Lisieux et les gentilhommières des XVIe et XVIIe siècles de l’arrière pays. A l’exception des côtes normandes, les premières manifestations du régionalisme moderne n’apparaissent qu’aux alentours de 1900 sur l’ensemble des côtes du littoral français et se développent avec un certain retard pour le néo-provençal.

L’argumentation géographique du rattachement au terroir est également ambiguë. Le territoire de référence est lui-même simplifié. La référence du régionalisme normand se limite à la maison cauchoise et le style basque prend sa source d’inspiration dans le modèle de la métairie du Labourd, une des provinces du Pays basque. Sur la côte d’Emeraude, pour sa villa La Brèche (1929) à Saint-Lunaire, Pierre Laloy emprunte de nombreux éléments typologiques à l’architecture vernaculaire des maisons traditionnelles du Léon comme les rampants de pignons découverts ou l’avancée couverte par le toit principal.

Eugène-Maurice Vincent, gare automobile à Trouville (1933-1934), élévations, plans des niveaux, plan d’ensemble, coupe et perspective, n.d. (© SIAF/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle)

Toutefois, ces références au terroir sont rarement “ pures ” : elles sont élargies à un vaste “ bassin ” régional d’invention. Au Touquet, Louis Quételard cherche ses références dans l‘Artois, la Picardie, le Boulonnais, la Flandre pour inventer son “ style touquetois moderne ” qui se substitue au style néo-normand alliant aux formules régionales, des formes et des matériaux modernes.

Le pittoresque régionaliste apparaît comme un des ultimes avatars de l’éclectisme qui s’adapte à tous les programmes de la ville balnéaire, de la maison aux équipements publics. Le développement de la villégiature multiplie les occasions de diffusion des modèles à l’extérieur de leurs aires d’invention, hors des frontières de leur pays originaire. L’enjeu identitaire du régionalisme architectural répond à la demande d’images touristiques distinctives à travers le bric à brac de catalogue de l’architecture de villégiature et de bords de mer. Les dualités doctrinales du régionalisme tout à la fois vernaculaire et savante, traditionaliste et moderniste, contestataire ou intégré, se plient aux exigences de l’architecture balnéaire. Dans l’architecture située aux franges du territoire national comme dans les colonies, le “ local ”, importé, prend une valeur de référence.

Mais qu’il soit basque ou breton, le régionalisme n’est local que de nom, quelques détails hautement symboliques individualisant chacun des styles par assimilation ou allusion. Le paradoxe du régionalisme est d’être international. Mais le régionalisme aux multiples facettes est aussi assimilé à l’architecture balnéaire. La recherche doit donc se poursuivre pour établir une histoire européenne comparée de cette architecture de la villégiature. Visite guidée à la Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris : Tous à la plage ! Villes balnéaires du 18e siècle à nos jours L'exposition "Tous à la plage !" raconte l'histoire des villes balnéaires en France, au regard des pratiques internationales. Elle présente la singularité de l'architecture et de l'urbanisme des bords de mer, ainsi que l'évolution de la société et de son rapport au littoral. Celui-ci, d'abord perçu comme hostile voire dangereux, va devenir, au XIXe slècle, le lieu privilégié des villégiatures d'été et d'hiver, puis, au XXe siècle, la destination préférée d'un tourisme de masse. De nos jours, à l'heure de la mondialisation, la ville balnéaire préfigure la ville de demain. Beside the seaside / album of the exhibitio. Seaside resorts from the 18th century to nowadays The exhibition "Beside the seaside" tells the fascinating story of France's seaside resorts, complete with intriguing references to their many equivalents abroad. It details the distinctive architectural and town planning styles these resorts gave rise to, as well as the changing social and ecological attitudes they embodied. Once perceived as hostile, if not downright dangerous, the coast became the place for summer and winter holidays in the 19th century - and the focal point of mass tourism in the 20th. In our globalising age the seaside resort foreshadows the city of tomorrow. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism

http://www.citechaillot.fr/fr/expositions/expositions_temporaires/26319-tous_a_la_plage.html

http://www.citechaillot.fr/fr/publications/autour_des_expositions/26389-tous_a_la_plage_lalbum.html


Juan Talavera, Villa Enrique & Villa Pilar, Seville, Spain, 1922-23.







Regionalist Pavilions in San Diego and Seville: International Expositions as Global Platforms of Exchange (1915-1929)

Eric Storm

Leiden University Abstract At the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego (1915) and the Exposición Ibero-Americano in Seville (1929) regionalism was made the official architectural style of the entire exposition. The organizers in San Diego argued that the American South-West had a very rich cultural heritage that could compete with New England. Actually the Spanish colonial heritage and the patrimony of the Native Americans were even much older than the earliest remains of the first British settlers on the East Coast. As a consequence all buildings of the exposition were constructed in the new Spanish Colonial Revival Style. At about the same time, a small group of activists active at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, who had close contacts with the organizers of the San Diego Fair, developed the Pueblo and Santa Fe Style in the South-West, which were inspired by indigenous and Mexican predecessors.

At the Ibero-American exhibition in Seville similar trends could be found. The Spanish pavilions, masterpieces of Anibal González Álvarez, the country’s most influential regionalist architect, were inspired by the neo-vernacular Spanish and Moorish heritage. The Spanish regions and colonies (Morocco and Equatorial Guinea) had their own characteristic pavilions, while most American countries built an impressive pavilion in a regionalist style. They found inspiration in the Spanish colonial legacy and the indigenous heritage, which until then had been largely disregarded. Thus, Mexico built a neo-indigenista pavilion inspired by pre-Colombian remains in Yucatan, Peru chose a Mestizo Style in which Spanish colonial and indigenous elements were fused, while Argentina and the United States used the Spanish Colonial Revival Style for their pavilion. Very influential among the Latin American architects were the ‘indigenista” philosophy of the Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos. Many of the architects of these pavilions held a lecture at the Ateneo of Seville, which became the main platform for the exchange of ideas during the exhibition.

This paper aims to provide a comparative perspective by combining views from architectural journals and more theoretical treatises from both Spain and the Americas with the practical results in the form of the regionalist pavilions at both international expositions. Finally, I will reflect on the impact of both imperialist ideas and nationalist ideologies on these architectural debates. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Samples of regionalist pavilions during the 1937 Exhibition: above Bretagne, below Indochina







The International Exhibition of Paris 1937: Regionalism on a Global Scale

Michael Falser

Heidelberg University Abstract Using Mary Louise Pratt’s term ‘contact zone’ to conceptualize spaces of colonial encounters in which geographically and politically separated experts come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, we focus on the most influential exchange platforms of (in our case architectural, both aesthetical and normative) concepts and trends in the second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th century: World and Colonial Exhibitions. During these events as temporary contact zones, as we would like to argue, colonial and metropolitan agents alike theoretically negotiated and temporarily even materialized and tested regionalist architectural trends for both sides of the ‘colonizer-colonized divide’. Our first case concerns the proceedings of the Congrès international de l’urbanisme aux colonies et dans les pays de latitudes intertropicale which took place during the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition at Paris. During this event, the art critic in favour of regionalism in France, Léandre Vaillat, discussed “the aesthetics in the colonies” during the same event for which Ernest Hébrard, one of the most important localist architects in the French colonies presented his thoughts and analyses on his own projects in Indochina. The second case concerns the France’s last universal exhibition, the Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne in Paris of 1937 for which the French Centre Colonial in the Seine river and the neighbouring Centre Régional for France’s own provinces were both staged in astonishingly similar regionalist styles. Never before and after did the stylistic visions of colonial and metropolitan peripheries come that close together and facilitated a combined, truly transcultural perception of regionalist style building processes on a global scale. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Above: Cover and examples of monastic boundary markers from an early 20th-century manual produced by the Thai state for unskilled migrant workers in building monastic complexes in the central regional idiom. Below: Gates to the “City of Willows,” from an early 20th-c. secret society manual impounded by Bangkok police.







Manuals and Models of Utopia: Intersecting Transregionalism and the Reorganization of the Building Trades in early 20th-century Bangkok/Siam

Lawrence Chua

Syracuse University Abstract This paper compares the utopian cityscapes produced by two powerful and conflicting homosocial institutions in early 20th-century Bangkok: the “City of Willows” of Chinese migrant secret societies and Dusit Thani, the miniature democratic city of the royal court. As the court sought to exert its authority over a growing urban population, these two models of utopia revealed much about the reorganization of the building trades as new trans-regional migrations of construction labor (between the southern coast of China and Bangkok) and architectural expertise (from Turin to Bangkok by way of Moscow and Istanbul) intersected in early 20th-century Bangkok. While the City of Willows served as the model for the secret lodges of the all-male labor force that dominated the building trades, Dusit Thani was a highly-detailed utopian landscape built by King Rama VI and his courtiers in the gardens of Dusit Palace. An eclectic collection of over 300 miniature structures that borrowed liberally from European, colonial, and regional precedents, Dusit Thani included fully electrified private houses, theaters, cinemas, banks, palaces, a regularly convened bi-cameral parliament, as well as a constitution, a police force, fire department, a tax system, and three

newspapers. Juxtaposing clandestinely-circulated secret society manuals against the mediated landscape of Dusit Thani and the state’s first official building manuals that reformatted regional forms into a “national style,” opens up an aperture into the role of regional actors in the development of modern architecture across diverse and uneven geographies. Turning not only to the architects and draughtsmen but laborers, craftsmen, engineers, speculators, and compradors embedded within the trans-regional circulation of forms, materials, and ideas produces a more nuanced picture of the relationships between “center” and “periphery” in the growth of the built environment in Asia. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Above: Wilfried Stedman, sketch for an adobe house with parking space, 1936. Below: Iachen U. Könz: house for the painter Turo Pedretti in Crasta (Celerina), Graubünden, 1951. Detail of the entrance.







The Survey of the Homeland and the Production of Regionalist Modernism. Switzerland and the USA 1930–1950

Andreas Putz

ETH Zurich Abstract By the turn of the 20th century images of the rustic houses of the Engadin in Switzerland and the adobe constructions of the indigenous Pueblos of New Mexico in the USA both became transformed into distinct architectural styles representing romantic notions of these remote regions. It was not until the 1930s, when these regions’ earthbound vernacular architecture became the basis of a new tradition of regionalist modernism, synthesizing the qualities of simple traditional construction and material use and modern ideals of informal living comfort.

The paper looks on shared and divergent features and the hidden lines of transatlantic interdependency in the respective rationalistic production of regional tradition. The simultaneous change in notion and reception can be linked to parallel nation-wide surveys institutionalised as make-work programmes in response to the Great Depression. Each survey resulted in highly formalised drawings and standardised records, which facilitated the comprehensive dissemination of the extensive findings, but also resulted in a constricted modernising perspective. In the result, the new and more thorough understanding of these regions vernacular heritage and their integration into topical architectural thinking eased the way for a modern adaptation of its architectural and constructive principles beyond formal attributes. This is clearly illustrated by the architectural work of John Gaw Meem, but also by the designs of Myrtle & Wilfried Stedman in New Mexico. Similarly, in the Engadin, the anewed understanding gained in the 1930s was the basis for the modern regionalism of Iachen Ulrich Könz or Rudolf Olgiati. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Above : Spread from Hendrik Christian Andersen and Ernest Hébrard, Creation of a World Center of Communication, 1913 [Harvard University Library]. Below: Le Corbusier, Plan for Buenos Aires, 1929 [Fondation Le Corbusier]



(Paris, 30 November – 2 December 2016) PhD-Workshop (INHA)

German Center for Art History Paris

Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”, Heidelberg University Centre André Chastel (University Paris-Sorbonne)

CRIHAM (University of Poitiers Association française des Historiens de l’Architecture (A.H.A.)

Beaux-Arts Design and the International Imaginary, 1867-1932

David Sadighian Harvard University/German Center for Art History Paris

Abstract This dissertation examines the transatlantic dissemination of Beaux-Arts architecture amid the rise of liberal internationalism during the long fin-de-siècle. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the École des Beaux-Arts became a hub of international activity as architects from the United States and Latin America flocked to the school for its famed pedagogy and for the urban spectacle of Haussmann’s Paris. At the same time, the school hosted international professional conferences and exhibitions at Paris World’s Fairs to standardize architectural training and practice across national boundaries. This project asks: To what extent did Beaux-Arts design intersect with other emerging international standards and systems? And how did the use of Beaux-Arts methods and forms shape the built environment to the will of internationalist ideologies, from free trade to imperialism to world peace? The École’s drawing-based methods conceived of architectural design as a process of planning, an idea that acquired new political agency and urban potential in the rapidly developing cities of the Americas. Analyzing case studies ranging from Buenos Aires to colonial Baguio, this research explores how Beaux-Arts design methods allowed architects to telescope between the scales of building, city, and environment to construct regional urban polities within a larger, international order. Furthermore, I argue that the Beaux-Arts city created a spatial network for global connectivity and exchange that paved the way for later modernism. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism







CRIHAM (University of Poitiers) Association française des Historiens de l’Architecture (A.H.A.)

L’oeuvre Art Déco de l’architecte métropolitain Georges Louis Wolff : une architecture entre le local et l’exogène

Nabila Metair

University Paris-Sorbonne Résumé Le Régionalisme architectural qui est apparu en Europe au siècle dernier n’a pas livré toutes ses facettes, particulièrement au sein des colonies où les expressions régionales varient d’une ville à l’autre. C’est le cas de l’Algérie où le style d’État instauré par Jonnart en 1910, communément appelé « le néo-mauresque » a occulté par sa forte présence des formes architecturales naissantes au même moment, qu’elles soient « importées » ou « réinventées ». Ainsi, nous souhaiterions aborder une autre expression régionale de l’Algérie coloniale, en l’occurrence : l’architecture Art Déco à Oran dans la période de l’entre-deux-guerres. Plus particulièrement, nous nous focaliserons sur deux édifices majeurs construits à l’occasion du centenaire de la colonisation(1930) et réalisés par l’architecte métropolitain Georges Louis Wolff (1873-1970), qui oeuvra dans la ville entre1926 et 1961. Cette étude s’insère plus largement dans notre recherche doctorale qui tente d’éclairer un champ de production propre à la ville d’Oran par le biais de la trajectoire et des réalisations de cet architecte, dont le nom a été oublié, mais qui a fortement marqué le paysage urbain oranais par les nombreuses commandes publiques qu’il reçut.

Nos questionnements sont les suivants : En quoi le vocabulaire « régionaliste » de l’Art Déco à Oran est-il à la fois le reflet d’une réalité locale et d’un choix formel importé ? Plus encore, face au style Jonnart et à travers sa carrière internationale, Georges Wolff cherchait-il à mettre en place à Oran une forme de « méditerranéisme » d’emprunts ornementaux divers ? Ainsi, nous tenterons de questionner le régionalisme architectural dans une échelle plus globale, et ce, en situant la commande publique de cet architecte parmi d’autres productions hybrides et affranchies du seul rapport de la colonie à la métropole. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism

La maison du colon, 1929-1930, Architecte : Georges Louis Wolff. Entreprise de construction : Pedotti.


Architecture and decoration in the work of Le Corbusier







Primitivism and Contemporary in the Works of Le Corbusier

Maria Paola Sabella University of Cagliari, Italy

Abstract My contribution is focused on the concept of ‘picturesque’. For such concept it is natural to remark the central importance of the architectural movement 'Arts and Crafts'. Contemplating to the most recent past is possible to turn the attention to the interest of Le Corbusier for the aspects 'picturesque' and 'modernism'. In the specific one importance will be given to the experience of the architect done during its trips to Greece, that gave a very careful observations of the place. The first one was that related to the residences 'Mediterranean' (of the people of the Mediterranean), the second was that inherent to the manufactured articles of such populations. From this Le Corbusier drew numerous considerations: the most important was the conception of the so-called human scale that declined then in various ways, for then to reach the Modulor. Besides, this attention for the 'Mediterranean' it was fundamental to deepen and begin his studies on Algiers and the relative urbanistic plan. This reflexion puts some questions, that the paper tries to resolve: as the 'picturesque' has been the essential base for the future concept of minimal. How and how much the preclassical and primitive cultures have defined the essence of the architecture of Le Corbusier, before with Villa Savoye and then with the Unitè d’habitation. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Sigfried Giedion and Cornelis Van Eesteren, in Moscow to prepare for CIAM 4 “The Functional City, here photographed at a construction site, 1932 (ETH Zürich Archives, Sigfried Giedion Papers)







“Non-Soviet” Modern: How CIAM 4 Shaped Socialist Architecture

Christianna Bonin Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)

Abstract While the effects of CIAM-inspired, regional planning during the postwar decades (1950-70) are well known, the role played by CIAM in producing an earlier regional approach around political consensus—socialist architecture and urban planning—has not been fully explored. This paper examines the CIAM 4 “Functional City” Congress, first set for Moscow in 1932, but relocated to the ship Patris II in 1933 after several postponements. This study challenges the received view of the congress as a failure because it did not realize “universal” modernism within the Soviet Union. Architectural briefs and meeting protocols reveal instead a discursive space that allowed architects in the USSR and Europe to contend with a key issue at that time: Socialism carried an expectation of difference; the built environment should operate differently under socialism than other systems of economic governance. Could modernism express such difference? This paper investigates the strategies of architect-interlocutors Hans Schmidt, Nikolai Milyutin, Ernst May, and Margaret Wyss—CIAM affiliates who worked in the USSR—to contend with that expectation of difference. They used CIAM’s “functional” zone approach to plan distinct cultural and social services areas as unique qualities of socialist cities. They coined linguistic conjunctions such as “modern non-Soviet architecture” and the “socialist functional city” to describe their proposals. These maneuvers reveal that USSR-based CIAM architects struggled to join the center of a discourse rather than be European modernism’s designated periphery. Yet the moment such conjunctions appeared to support an international system of values among modernist architects, the forces of cultural and political difference began to pull them apart. When the conference was cancelled in 1933, a split had emerged. Skirting political polarities, CIAM leaders declared themselves “neutral” technicians, while their leftist contemporaries came into view as “politician-architects” for a socialist region.

Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Un exemple de l’architecture domestique du XIXe siècle à Alger (Ph. Asma Hadjilah).






CRIHAM (University of Poitiers) Association française des Historiens de l’Architecture (A.H.A.)

Historicisme et esthétique locale dans l’architecture coloniale d’Alger. Les prémices du régionalisme

Asma Hadjilah

Polytechnical School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Algiers/Algeria Résumé La communication proposée s’intéresse aux premières productions architecturales d’Alger en situation coloniale. Il s’agit d’édifices formant des quartiers entiers, intégrés dans le continuum urbain hérité de la période ottomane, constituant le premier noyau de la ville coloniale et ayant été construits à partir de 1830. Peut-on y entrevoir un métissage culturel ou une importation unilatérale de modèles architecturaux européens ?

Les récents travaux, notamment ceux de Nabila Oulebsir, définissent un régionalisme architectural maghrébin, le néo-mauresque, apparu à la fin du XIXe siècle. Il résulte de l’usage de références vernaculaires, tant dans l’architecture publique que dans l’architecture privée. Des investigations de terrain ainsi qu’un dépouillement de documents d’archives laissent entrevoir, dans le cas d’Alger, une autre forme de régionalisme architectural qui est issue de la transformation des constructions mauresques en maisons européennes.

L’étude de l’architecture privée des premières décennies de la présence française a révélé le rôle des migrants européens dans sa constitution : leur désir de conserver leurs modes de vies natifs est à l’origine de l’introduction de nouvelles références collectives, de traits culturels et sociaux propres à une population européenne. Ainsi, des concepteurs à la main d’œuvre souvent d’origine française, espagnole ou encore italienne, tous contribuèrent à l’importation de techniques constructives, de styles et de modèles d’habitat, cependant non sans une adaptation au contexte local. Il en résulta un ensemble polymorphe mêlant souvent historicisme et esthétique locale. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Lucien Roy, photographe : Moulin à vent (Bretagne, 1901), Marabout (Tunisie, 1923) [Archives Photographiques de la MAP]







L’invention du local dans la photographie d’architecture. Lucien Roy, une culture du regard

Camille Conte

Laboratoire CRIHAM – Université de Poitiers Résumé Au cours du XIXe siècle, l’architecture se voit doter d’une nouvelle forme de représentation avec la création de la photographie. Ce nouveau procédé est très rapidement utilisé pour ses qualités dites d’ « objectivité » et devient un outil servant les arts et les sciences . Ainsi, au cours du XIXe siècle, la photographie sert à créer un répertoire d’informations et de modèles architecturaux ; on pense alors à la mission héliographique de 1851 . Identifier, connaître, regrouper et recenser les types architecturaux en France comme à l’étranger devient une manière de s’approprier la culture d’un pays, d’une région ou même d’une ville. On retrouve cette soif de capturer ce qui est « autre » chez certains architectes français tels qu’Alfred-Nicolas Normand, Georges Nitsch, Jules Antoine ou encore Lucien Roy.

À travers le grand nombre de clichés réalisés par ces architectes et notamment par Lucien Roy , se dessine alors un répertoire de localités aux paysages architecturaux et urbanistiques différents. On peut donc se demander en quoi l’image photographique est un révélateur de l’architecture dite locale. Comment interfère-t-elle dans l’invention du local ? Enfin, par la diffusion de ces images, on peut également s’interroger sur leur influence dans la création de l’idée générale, globale, voire imaginaire d’une ville, de sa représentation et de ses architectures, qui deviennent alors symboles d’un local. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Paul Tournon - Dessin de recherche (Documents IFA)







L’architecture cultuelle de Paul Tournon (1881-1964). Composition classique, modernité constructive et cultures du site.

Stéphanie Dietre

École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Grenoble Résumé Nous proposons d’interroger la pensée du projet d’architecture cultuelle de Paul Tournon. Nous souhaitons comprendre comment, grâce au dessin et au travail collaboratif entre architecte, artiste et artisan, les grands édifices de même esprit et d’ordre donné, révèlent l’individualité territoriale du site dans lequel ils sont installés. Les édifices religieux que l’architecte réalise lors de la première moitié du XXe siècle dans des lieux très différents – en Bretagne, au Maroc alors sous protectorat français, dans la couronne, dans le centre de Paris, etc. – conduit à réfléchir aux procédés de conception architecturale coordonnant les cultures locales et la modernité constructive, dans un système de composition classique - ici selon le sens de l’enseignement de l’architecture des Beaux-Arts de Paris à la toute fin du XIXe siècle.

Tournon pense la modernité selon la culture architecturale classique et selon celles fondées sur les traditions locales, en respect du site comme des progrès et des inventions techniques. L’architecte parvient à une communication intellectuelle entre les savoir-faire et les idées, entre les échelles d’espace et de temps, grâce au travail du dessin et à sa maîtrise de la science classique du plan (Ecoles des Beaux Arts de Provence puis de Paris). Pour son métier et dans son métier, il acquiert un regard transversal issu convoquant la réunion des arts graphiques et l’inter-dépendance des trois arts du dessins : architecture, peinture, sculpture. La recherche conceptuelle et graphique est une entreprise collaborative (mesure, composition) conjuguant l’idéal d’universalité des principes aux caractères multiples des caractéristiques architecturales locales. Tournon définit et conçoit différents programmes architecturaux catholiques de culture typologique universelle au sein de contextes variés et de forte substance. Les arts sont intégrés en parfaite harmonie. Le projet signifie ici pour l’architecte, penser dans une tradition renouvelée.

Le régionalisme architectural français a fait ces dernières décennies l’objet de nombreuses études, permettant notamment de comprendre l’émergence du phénomène, son développement grâce à d’importants réservoirs de commande et à des événements à fort retentissement (expositions internationales de 1925 et 1937) et permettant de le situer dans le contexte social et politique. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


Duilio Torres, Ponte delle Guglie, Riva dell’Impero, Venice, 1937 (author, 2014)






CRIHAM (University of Poitiers Association française des Historiens de l’Architecture (A.H.A.)

Ambientamento: Neo-vernacular Architecture as Solution to the Question of the Conservation of the Urban Heritage in the Writings and Practice of the

Venetian architect Duilio Torres (1882-1972)

Antonio David Fiore Open University, Milton Keynes/UK

Abstract Duilio Torres (1882-1972), one of the most active and influent architects in the Veneto region during the interwar period, is now largely forgotten, arguably because of his eclectic approach, which ranged from functionalist to neo-vernacular designs. Yet, the pragmatism with which Torres resolved the formal problems of his buildings is nothing but the prevalent attitude that dominates Italian architectural practice before World War II. The theoretical reflection associated to his activity reveals the array of problems and pressures to which Italian architects were exposed, as well as the source of some of the solutions provided. In particular, Torres’ main preoccupation was the historical city: Venice, in his case. When not commissioned with spaces located in the outskirts of metropolitan areas designed for modern activities such as heliotherapy (Solarium in Lido, 1922-23) or flying (Hangar of Linate airport, 1936), he had to face an impending question: how to interfere with a living built environment that architectural history had sanctioned as valuable testimony of history and civilization? Drawing on concepts developed within the Roman School of Architecture by Gustavo Giovannoni (1873-1947) and Marcello Piacentini (1881-1960), his solution was the ‘ambientamento’, which consisted in recurring to a neo-vernacular language able to merge the new buildings within the existent fabric of the city. Torres responded to a debate, entirely modern, that acknowledged that the historic centres were less and less the places where contemporary citizens normally lived, to become instead locus of symbolical, aesthetic and cultural values; in a word: heritage. Such shift had been originated from the destructions of the Great War, the pressure of urbanization and industrialization, and, crucially, the need to fix a still uncertain Italian national identity. The phenomenon was enhanced by Fascism, but also, significantly, put aside when exigencies of self-representation needed modern architecture to express visually and symbolically the new authority (via dell’Impero, Rome, 1932). Torres’ picturesque modernism, evident in the design for the Riva dell’Impero in Venice (1937), was carried out with the aim of disguising the new for the sake of the past, while preserving, with careful interventions, both the landmark and the humble pre-existence. It provided also a viable answer to the ambiguous patronage of Fascism, satisfying both its poses as allegedly revolutionary movement and defender of Italian traditions. Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism


45, rue des Petits Champs75001 ParisTél. : 01 42 60 67 82

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ContactMichael S. FalserCluster of Excellence „Asia and Europe in a Global Context“ (Global Art History, Project Picturesque Modernities)Heidelberg Center of Transcultural Studies, Voßstrasse 2/4400, D-69115 Heidelberg, GermanyEmail: [email protected]

Website for the 2015 Conference: www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/the-picturesque-eye Website for the 2016 Conference: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/global_regionalism