In the field of modern design, Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) stands out as one of the great protagonists of the twentieth century. With designs such as the lakefront gardens of the Pampulha suite in Belo Horizonte, the spectacular Copacabana beachfront, the massive Flamengo Park and the roof garden of the Ministry of Education and Health headquarters, the latter three in Rio de Janeiro, he became instrumental in putting Brazil in the forefront of the internatio...

This paper examines the establishment of the Jesuit Université Saint-Joseph from 1875 in Beirut and explores the Jesuits’ dual allegiance to France and Rome. Countering the prevailing notion that the University was a French project in this period, I contend that the Jesuit Mission was much more reliant on its supranational Jesuit network than on French imperial support. Questioning precisely how the Jesuits were able to construct such an imposing urban complex in a city under Ottoman rule, I show that “empire” and “nation” were not bounded notions in the nineteenth century. Rather, the Jesuit project was simultaneously inscribed within multiple localities and spheres of influence that allowed the Jesuits to navigate various oppositions and to ensure the survival of their project in the city. By operating at the fringes of what constituted “foreign” or “colonial” power, they were able to consolidate their urban position; their constructions became the basis for their later integration with French colonial interests. Thus, the case study of the Université Saint-Joseph opens up the possibility of understanding colonial architecture not as an extension of colonial power but as a precondition for it.

En abril y mayo de 1968, dos importantes empleados de la VEB Zementanlagenbau (ZAB) de Dessau ― VEB es una empresa estatal ― viajaron desde la RDA a Nuevitas, Cuba. La ZAB de Dessau estaba construyendo una planta de cemento cerca de la pequeña ciudad cubana en la provincia de Camagüey, al este del país. El motivo del viaje era la puesta en marcha de la primera línea de hornos de la planta, pero el objetivo principal era comprobar “informes y mensajes contradictorios” sobre una “complicada sit...

In 1922, the Commonwealth Bank opened in Cairns, North Queensland, on the corner of Abbott and Spence Street, not far from the Esplanade and the waters of the Trinity Inlet. A single-story timber building, “bolted together” and pinned to the ground by sunken concrete piers, the structure was described in the local press as “cyclone proof” and the strongest timber building in Australia. Cooled by fifty exhaust vents and simplex windows, the banking chamber also met the requirements of its tropical context and was described as an “ideal office interior” in which the “health and fitness of the staff have been considered in all essentials from first class sanitation to an up-to-date ventilation system.”In this paper the entanglement of comfort—the health and fitness of the bank’s workers, both physical and psychological—with the bank’s design—both tropical and cyclone proof—will be examined. I will argue that the Commonwealth Bank was an early example of a commercial building designed to respond to tropical cyclones, a common occurrence in Northern Australia, but one which had little impact on the planning and construction of buildings at this time. While the bank was built to replace an earlier, smaller building inadequate to the institution’s needs, it was also a direct response to a catastrophic cyclone—the strongest on record—which hit Cairns and surrounding districts on February 2, 1920. Devastating the city and neighboring towns, the cyclone produced a significant storm surge, described in the press as a “tidal wave,” that inundated the city’s central business district, including Abbott Street, where the bank building was located. The structural properties and technical innovations of the new building effectively addressed the anxieties that this event, and subsequent cyclone seasons, would continue to evoke.It will also be argued that the bank building and its widely publicized innovations were part of a larger campaign by the institution (and other northern businesses) to attract staff from the cooler southern parts of Australia (Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne), and particularly men (managers and accountants) with wives and children. Promising both safety and comfort for its workers and their families, the bank, it will be argued, also sought to counter the popular conviction that Northern Australia was not suitable for settlement and must remain empty and unproductive. This was achieved by the banking corporation through the national promotion of the lifestyles (and especially sporting activities) of the bank workers, the climatic suitability of the bank buildings, and the technical innovations that ensured it was “cyclone proof.”

When we put out our call for papers on Entanglements of Architecture and Comfort beyond the Temperate Zone at the end of 2018, we were not expecting such a response as to require a double issue. Yet clearly this is an issue that a wide range of scholars are working on at the moment. Many of the papers look at how seemingly peripheral visions of comfort from the Global South were not so peripheral at all, investigating the power dynamics and changing cultural expectations around being at ease in an environment. In addition, we note the current interest in Australia into how Architecture and Comfort have been historically entangled and the importance of scholarship in history of medicine for current research.

Thermal comfort is the preoccupation of many building scientists, but it is something that architects and architectural historians seldom explore. For designers, the fact that comfort is an environmental attribute related to physical and psychological experience, expected to go unnoticed in the modern world, means that it is often taken for granted. Shouldn’t this taken-for-grantedness stir the curiosity of architectural historians? Don’t critical architectural historians share a tradition of...

Central to Mirjana Lozanovska’s latest book Migrant Housing. Architecture, Dwelling, Migration (2019) is the question whether we can consider the migrant house as a distinct category within architectural historiography. This is of course a rhetorical question, as the book in an unparalleled way points out how migrants’ sociocultural inscriptions and contributions were hitherto completely lacking in the historiography of the architecture of housing. In her book, Lozanovska focuses on postwar m...

In the 1820s an increasing number of Scottish settlers arrived in the Colony of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania, Australia) to take up government land grants. At the time, they were the second largest ethnic group, after the English, and through their numbers, enterprise (typically pastoralism and trading), land ownership, and building helped shape the colonisation and Europeanisation of the island. This article outlines their influence in the built environment and proceeds to present portraits of three related Scottish-Vandemonian pastoral properties. Employing personal records and correspondence it focuses upon the motivations, ambitions, and agency of Scottish networks (familial, social and entrepreneurial) as reflected in the architecture and building of their mansions. Those networks were local, regional, and global, with active participants in Scotland, and were instrumental in the development of the mansions. The designs for these mansions (often unattributed), along with their construction, also played a role in the building of these networks. Employing the lens offered by the experience of Scottish settlers, the paper considers the interplay of empire, regions, settler networks, and buildings in Van Diemen’s Land in the first half of the nineteenth century.

This edition of ABE Journal began life as an international symposium held at the University of Edinburgh in November 2017. That event, like this publication, was entitled “Building the Scottish Diaspora: Scots and the Colonial Built Environment.” Sponsored by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Edinburgh, the symposium brought together ten representatives from five countries (mainly from within Britain’s former c...

This paper investigates the pre-modern urban development of Medina during the Ottoman reign within the framework of the Ottoman administration of the Arab provinces. Specifically, the spatial organization of Medina is investigated based on multiple visual, cadastral and historical sources. Although Medina was remote from the center of political power, it maintained an articulated significance for the Ottoman state structure, as much as the major provincial cities. This is evident in the continuous Ottoman role in staging its own image in Medina by introducing typical Ottoman hallmarks of urbanization. However, the spiritual significance of Medina, in turn, molded the applied methods of spatial organization, which had to be attuned to the religious sanctions and sensitive loci of worship. By the end of the Ottoman presence in Arabia, the resulting urban character and texture of the city reflected a fusion of spatial innovations with deep-rooted tradition, which shaped a lasting historical image of Medina.