Raphaël Guy est parfois considéré comme le « père de l’architecture arabisante » en Tunisie où il a exercé de 1900 à 1918 durant le protectorat français. Malgré le succès de son ouvrage posthume L’architecture moderne de style arabe, l’homme, l’étendue de son œuvre et son parcours sont en revanche relativement méconnus. Son activité officielle, qui coïncide avec l’apogée de la domination coloniale, la brièveté de sa carrière (1900-1918), la relève rapide prise par d’autres architectes après s...

The idea of devoting one thematic section of ABE Journal to the architecture of European embassies and diplomatic buildings outside Europe was the outcome of two connected initiatives. As a guest scholar of inha (Institut national d'histoire de l'art, Paris) in the spring of 2013, I organized with Mercedes Volait an international workshop entitled A l’orient du monde. Diplomatie europeenne et architecture par-dela les rivages de la Mediterranee (1770-1920). This meeting provided the opportuni...

Based on research carried out at the Caccia Dominioni family archive, this contribution tells the intriguing story of the Italian Embassy at Ankara (1938-1940), a project involving Paolo Vietti Violi (1882-1965), Florestano di Fausto (1890-1965) and Paolo Caccia Dominioni (1896-1992). The main point of our paper is assessing Caccia Dominioni’s role, from a construction manager to the author of a “variant” which actually introduced a completely new layout. He was working at the site from April 1938 to 1940, running day-to-day operations, taking care of the financial management, hiring and looking after workers, maintaining official relations with Italian and Turkish authorities, supervising the supply of materials, and developing Di Fausto’s drawings, which arrived rarely and mostly incomplete. Caccia Dominioni’s “variant” introduced a completely new layout, resulting from a thorough understanding of the landscape potential, fully exploiting the opportunities provided by the diagonally sloping ground. Rather than a single group of monumental buildings, Caccia Dominioni envisaged a variety of structures, each dedicated to a specific function, sized and shaped accordingly. Altogether, the Embassy looked like a village, a “city within a city” so common for foreign legations in the Levant.

Several recent developments—most notably the mass immigrations caused by strife, war and poverty, and the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom—have drawn intense attention to the question “What is Europe?,” and it is urgent that we turn this debate also to the subject of architecture and its history. After discussions within the board of ABE Journal, it was decided to hold a roundtable on the subject at the EAHN conference in Dublin (2–4 June 2016). This debate section is devoted to the five pap...

This paper highlights a group of buildings built in Beijing for diplomatic purposes in the 1970s, at a turning point in China’s state politics and foreign relations. After the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution ended in 1969, Chinese politics shifted from a single emphasis on revolution to a more pragmatic focus on development. A dynamic balance between the two factions, the leftists and the pragmatists, was achieved at the top level of state leadership under Chairman Mao’s mediation. At the same time, there was a significant breakthrough in China’s relations with the Western countries, culminating in Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. For this increase in foreign affairs, two batches of diplomatic buildings were built in Beijing from 1969 to 1976, before and after Nixon’s visit. Three architectural cases are studied, namely, the International Club (1972), the Diplomatic Residence Compounds of Jianguomenwai and Qijiayuan (1970s), and the Beijing Hotel East (1974). These cases reveal a complex interrelation between formal expression, knowledge transfer, and political interference. More specifically, the expression of “Chinese characteristics”, the absorption of Western modernism, the knowledge transfer of large-panel construction, and the interference of political struggles in architectural design were all entangled in these cases. The paper concludes that in the early 1970s, these diplomatic buildings embodied a strong intention to absorb modernism, marking a key moment in the historiography of modernism in China in the twentieth century.

Sharon Rotbard’s book White City Black City cleverly examines the planning and architectural histories of Tel Aviv and Jaffa during the twentieth century. These histories are deeply entangled in the broader political and cultural climates that brought about the creation and crystallization of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, at first one against the other, and then one at the expense of the other. The book is in three parts, with the first two parts—“White City” and “Black City”—constituting the bulk of t...

The island of Bali is arguably one of the most enigmatic locations to observe the lasting legacy of colonialism within the historiography of vernacular architecture in Asia. Despite Edward Said’s seminal thesis on orientalism and the subsequent production of postcolonial scholarship, architectural and traveling discourses on Bali carry through the hegemonic notion of otherness, with little resistance, far beyond the colonial era. The Orientalist notion of a traditional and authentic Bali is a powerful conception that has produced its own realities and governed the production of cultural and architectural markers on the island throughout the 20th century. Outside the established tourist path of the island’s southern coastline and its hilly hinterland, however, we are confronted with a multifaceted and cosmopolitan urban landscape. This other side of Bali challenges the established architectural categories, such as “traditional Balinese,” that have long governed the world’s interaction with and perception of the island’s built landscape. Unsurprisingly, most architectural and travel accounts have labeled these dynamic landscapes as inauthentic, culturally polluted, or insignificant. They are nonetheless conceived, built, and inhabited by the island’s diverse local population, unlike the architectural simulacra of Bali that dominate the island’s key tourist destinations, such as Ubud, Legian and Sanur, and were built for tourists.This article is an exploration of the forgotten facets of Bali’s architectural landscape. It showcases hybrid and modern architectural traces left behind as diverse localities on the island repositioned themselves within the changing time of the late nineteenth and early-20th centuries and the arrival of the tourist gaze. Focusing on the former capitals of three royal kingdoms of 19th century Bali—Badung, Klungkung, and Karangasem—it will examine how the vernacular, cosmopolitanism, and modernism interacted. Ranging from an insertion of modern architectural forms within the vernacular setting to a hybrid configuration of multiple cultural references, the case studies featured here illustrate a shifting vernacular landscape molded by the island’s dynamic power relations. They destabilize the notion of an authentic, autonomous, and real Bali that is championed not only by colonial and traveling discourses, but also by the majority of the island’s population today.

The concept of the vernacular is ubiquitous, obdurate and slippery. While many scholars still work as if its meaning is self-evident and unproblematic, others suggest the term is inadequate because it includes too many phenomena, and some that we should abandon it because of this slipperiness and just agree to adopt the term “traditional architecture” or some other nomenclature instead. There is no simple way around all this and certainly no limiting definition, imposed by dictionary diktat, ...

Over the course of the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962), the French colonial civil and military authorities profoundly reorganized the vast territory of Algeria (France’s longest colonial presence in North Africa, which began in 1830), drastically transformed its built environments, and rapidly implanted new infrastructure and settlements across the country. In addition to the destructions of war, the colonial regime decreed a number of laws, orders, and directives for the evacuation of certai...