Third World Modernism, Or Just Modernism

Third World Modernism: Architecture, Development and Identity, 2011

The first volume to map multiple positions on architectural modernism across the developing world, this book offers an international perspective on the practices and consequences of modernist architecture in the mid-twentieth century. Presenting fresh case studies from Asia, South America, Africa, and the Middle East, experts in this volume challenge canonical architectural historiography which identifies the West as the sole yardstick to measure the beginning and end, success and failure, of modernism. They show that modernism in Third World nations took trajectories radically different from those in developed societies during the same historical period. The intersections between modernist architecture, globalism, developmentalism, nationalism, and postcolonialism are explored. Chapters illustrate modernism's part in the transnational development of building technologies, the construction of national and cultural identity, and the geo-historical entanglements of nations. Creating new openings for cross-cultural analysis of modernism, this provocative book has a key place in the historiography of modern architecture in non-Western societies.

SmartArt Conference Proceedings, 2022

This paper argues that the roots of present-day economic and cultural globalisation could be recognised in 20 th century modern architecture, which incorporated thoughts and forms from the Buddhist civilisation, Muslim-Arab World, Jewish/Judaic thought and experience, Black African and Pre-Columbian American cultures, and implemented them along its own Greco-Christian traditions.1 It also argues that, while modernism presented itself as the epitome of western rationalism of the Enlightenment tradition, it actually also relied on other civilisations, including their metaphysics, and thus cannot be fully considered rational. This critique argues that two most striking innovations of architectural modernism, the introduction of the flat and undecorated façade surfaces, i.e. the avoidance of the traditional façade-discourse (decoration), and the promotion of architectural space vis-à-vis building material, are related mainly to non-Western religions and to modern physics. The author is aware of the dangers that such a comprehensive subject elaborated in a relatively short paper poses, but he is willing to take the risks in order to get insight into the intercultural exchange between the West and the rest of the world in 20th century architecture.

Rethinking Global Modernism: Architectural Historiography and the Postcolonial, 2022

This introductory chapter establishes the theoretical foundations for the edited volume and explores what a postcolonized and decolonized history of global modern architecture might begin to look like. Outlining the editorial team’s framework for the collection, it provides brief introductions to global history, historical conceptions of modernism, as well as postcolonial studies in terms of their relationship to the historiography of modern architecture. It concludes with brief notes on the “post-postcolonial.” The chapter advocates for the development of a postcolonial global architectural history that emphasizes transnational entanglements and agencies while elevating marginalized voices and traditionally overlooked sites. Such a historiographical approach would produce an ever-changing narrative that would be beset by uncertainty, precarity, and incompletion.

"This book provides a comprehensive historical and theoretical overview of modern architecture in regions outside the “West” — Europe and North America. It brings together contributions from leading scholars in the interdisciplinary fields of architecture history, architecture theory, area studies, sociology and cultural studies. It interrogates Eurocentric views of modern architecture as autonomous and homogeneous and posits a heteronomous and heterogeneous understanding of modern architecture. Drawing from interdisciplinary theories, this book explores the complex relations between modernism, modernity and modernization and their entanglements with colonialism and postcolonialism, nationalism and development, globalization and regionalism. Closely examining the diverse cases of architectural modernisms in China, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Turkey, Brazil and South Africa, this book transcends the geographic division of labour in area studies to offer a broad comparative survey of modernisms beyond the West. It also covers heterogeneous temporalities of modernism today, tracing the continuities and discontinuities between the past and the present, from the proto-modern to the post-modern, from the west to the rest. This book is an essential resource for understanding architectural modernism outside its “western” regions and mindsets. Its in-depth discussion and insights will be invaluable to specialists, academics and graduate students. It is also comprehensive enough to be used as a textbook for undergraduate students, and general enough for practitioners and the curious general reader."

Theoretical Perspectives, Centre for Research on Politics; University of Dhaka, 1995

Modernism in the arts is a general term used to describe various tendencies in the first three quarters of the twentieth century. It refers mainly to a conscious attempt to break away from the artistic traditions of the nineteenth century, and also to a concern with form and the exploration of technique as opposed to content and narrative. Le Corbusier, probably the greatest proponent of Modernism, in a series of theoretical discourses on the subject laid down the ground rules which subsequent generations of architects have painstakingly followed. The structure of the artistic world, like that of the political world, reflects the nature of contemporary society . As in other fields, modernism in architecture addressed the social issues first and foremost and was aimed at providing an environment which could be enjoyed by a far wider user-group than could be imagined under the classed society of the nineteenth century. Technology and communication were given their due importance as the prime forces shaping the new world, free from the inhibitions of the nineteenth century. The theory was gradually put into practice by architects first all over the western world by the first half of the century, and with increased communication and need into the hither-to neglected third world by the sixties and seventies. Modernism through its sub-theme of internationalism proclaimed the universality and world-wide applicability of certain values of architecture and over the past 60 years, almost totally discarded all 'regional' building activity. In fact, it has been said about the architects of the time that " for them it mattered not at all whether a building bore any relation to its setting or to established cultural traditions. Indeed the less integrated it was, the more impact it would have, and the more effective it would be as an aesthetic manifesto" . This paper does not criticize the modern movement in architecture, for the 'style-lessness' of the modern movement was an indispensable necessity for its time, it was a movement for the general masses to make architecture accessible to all, rather than a chosen few. Society and values however are not static and the last quarter of the present century has seen discontent with the rigidity and plainness of previous generations. Various new movements have been born out of the residue of the modern phase. Now is the opportune moment to attempt a re-understanding of the principles behind the modern movement and to examine the reasons that alternatives to that purist movement are being sought. This paper also explores the present search that is being conducted for new directions in architecture at the thresh-hold of the new century, and comments on their validity in the context of third world urban centres.

Frontiers of Architectural Research, 2014

Overturning assumptions that nonwestern architecture has been static over time, new scholarship focused on colonial and postcolonial architecture and urbanism and on nonwestern modernism has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of architecture. Much more, however, remains to be done. Comparative studies of colonialism, especially between empires, attention to innovation outside Europe and the English-speaking world and more consideration of memory and migration are among the most exciting possible new directions.

South African Journal of Art History, 2008

Inheritable Resilience. Sharing Values of Global Modernities. Proceedings of the 16th International docomomo Conference, 2021

Pictures can easily represent life situations, both real and artificially recreated while technical drawings hardly describe the way man dwells. The constant increase of architectural images can be considered as part of the general change in society defined by W.J.T. Mitchell as “pictorial turn”. The worldwide diffusion of pictures contributes to the democratization of progress and a standard of living spaces, but it encourages a homogenization of buildings and a loss of places too. If we overcome the dialectic between global and local, we can ob- serve how these images construct narratives that gather in each place the world as a whole creating a collective imaginary capable of transforming specific places starting from global instances. Focusing on three pictures of modernist architectures and analyzing them with an approach taken from the studies of visual culture, this essay explores the ability of architectural images to encourage the birth of transcultural narratives that can overcome local boundaries creating a worldwide collective imaginary.

Cuaderno de Notas, 2019

The writing of architectural history shifted with the turn of the century. By 1999, there is an urge to understand architecture from a global perspective, under the lens of postcolonial theories. Sibel Bozdoğan set the task: to write an 'intertwined history,' which shows that the western canon and the cultural production of societies outside of Europe and North America are not separate and independent, nor is the latter to replace the former. Subsequent literature failed to look into subtle instances of cross-cultural exchanges and universally shared values, thus neglecting to revise the notion of universalism. This paper analyses the resulting literature on global architecture published between 1999 and 2014, and more recent scholarly discussions to understand what remains for historians to do today. Though it may be that 'global' has lost its criticality as category to comprehend the present, the historiography of global architecture is yet to be written.

2007

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 339-353).This dissertation examines the critical role played by modern architecture and planning in shaping the discourse on Third World development after the Second World War. At stake here is an ignored dimension of the history of modern architecture and planning as well as that of the development discourse that sheds important light on the relationship of both these discourses to the trajectories of global domination and control. Critiques of development have largely focused on how the economic approaches proposed by international institutions such as the World Bank and the UN have favored the financial and political agendas of global industrial powers. This dissertation argues that design practices like architecture and planning-usually thought to be concerned only with shaping the physical environment-have also played a significant role in shaping the key ...