http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29945 Search the Channel search http://archive.nyu.edu/simple-search http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30265 Title: War as a Challenge to Architecture. Andrei Burov's Civic Designs at theTime of World War II<br/><br/>Dmitrieva-Einhorn, Marina<br/><br/>Abstract: The development of wartime technologies had a stimulating effect onarchitecture in Europe and the United States. The war left its tracesnot just in the shape of heavy edifices such as bunkers, orfortifications like the Atlantic Wall or monuments like the Line ofGlory on the frontiers of the Reich, but its legacy also stimulatedexperiments in temporary and civil architecture. This was particularlyvisible in the use of new materials and lightweight constructions, whichwere implemented not only in military construction, such as Pier LuigiNervi's hangars, but also in residential housing, ranging from barracks,to communal housing, and single family homes. Focusing on the impact ofthe war on the style of Soviet civic architecture, I shall analyse thewartime projects of the Soviet architect Andrei Konstantinovich Burov(1900-1957). A graduate of Vkhutemas, Burov began his carrier as aconstructivist. He produced modernist set designs for the theatre andthe cinema (among others, for Eisenstein&rsquo;s film 'The old and thenew'//'General line'). But in the history of Soviet architecture he isbest known as the architect of classical Stalinist residential houses inMoscow rather than as a modernist. In fact, in the 1930s he preacheddown the constructivist school and promoted the classical tradition inarchitecture. During the war, however, Burov turned his attention tomuch more innovative projects, uniting the contradictory directions ofhis earlier career. His wartime designs were based on new materialsapplied to future dwellings, originally inspired by wartimetechnologies, which embodied a utopian dream of a new architecturehealing the world. This new turn in his work was reflected in hisextravagant project of a reconstruction of the Black Sea resort ofYalta, which was damaged during the war. Burov invented and developedthe so-called 'anisotropic' technologies for prefabricated architecture,which were equally suited for residential housing, such as his designsof typified small storey houses for the Southern regions of Russia, andfor large buildings of museums and exhibition halls, as exemplified inhis projects for the War Monuments in Stalingrad. However, none ofBurov's wartime projects was realized. In analyzing Burov's visions andtheoretical concepts of architecture, this paper seeks to show adiscrepancy between technological achievements, pragmatic needs andideological tasks, which was characteristic for the architecture of thelate Stalinism. In doing so, it encourages viewing Soviet architectureof the post-war period in a more differentiated manner. Sovietarchitects, the paper argues, found a variety of answers to the newchallenge posed by wartime architecture. As such it required a responseboth on the level of technology and in the ideological interpretation ofthe role of architecture in Soviet society--a response that, however,mostly remained a unrealised project. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30288 Title: System Theories: Science, War, Construction<br/><br/>Imperiale, Alicia<br/><br/>Abstract: This paper will examine the confluence of information and systems theoryand the production of architectural building systems. The two areinterrelated around the adaptation of pre-WWII techniques and knowledgethat became transformed during the years leading up to, during, and inthe immediate postwar period. Much of the progress regarding theevolution of computation is attributed to the large scale deployment ofhighly acute mathematical minds to the problem of interpreting theencrypted messages sent from Axis command centers to the troops on land,on the sea and in the air. Known as the 'code breakers' theseindividuals were crucial in the advancement of computation, cyberneticsand systems theory. After laying out the theoretical implications ofsystems theory, this paper analyzes two case studies of wartime buildingsystems. In one case, a wartime factory was retooled for peacetimehousing production, and in the other pipe factories were retooled toproduce bomb casings. Case 1: Packaged House System. At the end of1941, Konrad Wachsmann and Walter Gropius, German emigres to the U.S.began to collaborate on a project for industrialized modular housing,which became known as the 'PACKAGED HOUSE'. Wachsmann designed a'universal Joint' that would give great structural stability to thejoining of prefabricated panels. The JOINTING SYSTEM was based on 2-,3-, and 4-way connections between panels. All surfaces were conceived tobe used from the same panels: exterior walls, interior partitions,floors, ceilings and the roof. In February of 1942, the NationalHousing Agency allocated $153 million for the housing of displaceddefense workers. By May 1945 with the end of WWII, the house was stillnot in production, despite enthusiasm for the project. But the housecould have a second chance, in the enormous postwar demand for returningGI's and their families. The General Panel Corporation raised funds tobe able to take over the former Lockheed Factory in Burbank, California,which had been built to build wartime aircraft for government contracts.And it was a classic example of using factories that made armamentscould be retooled to make houses. Case 2: Tubi Innocenti: scaffoldingsystem. Ferdinando Innocenti, born 1891, experimented with iron pipeand tubes and started producing tube scaffolding in 1933, with a rapidsystem of mounting and dismantling a combination of tubes and amechanical fastener. During the war years the Innocenti plants suppliedbodies for 150 and 250 kg airplane bombs, for which cut down tubes wereused, and also produced 15% of all bullets produced in Italy. After thewar, Innocenti continued to make scaffolding and all other types of pipeand tubes for industry and then developed a scooter: the Lambretta. Theidea came from vehicles dropped in Rome by the British paratroopers. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30276 Title: Neville Chamberlain: An Unlikely Influence in Post-War British Planning<br/><br/>Potter, Edmund<br/><br/>Abstract: While the name Neville Chamberlain has an accepted place within theWorld War II lexicon, it is largely absent in the study of the conflictin relation to architecture and town planning. During the inter-warperiod, Birmingham, England led the nation in council housing, due inpart to the city's alignment with the political career of Chamberlain.As he rose to prominence in the Conservative Party so did the fortunesof the community. Shortly after he became Prime Minister in 1937,Chamberlain used British fears of an air war to launch an investigationinto the distribution of the nation's industrial population. Thispaper will explore how Chamberlain's attempt to improve the livingconditions of the working class through the Garden City aestheticinfluenced the New Towns Act of 1946. It will discuss how the model ofBirmingham led the Prime Minister's Barlow Commission to call for an'embargo' on future factory construction in London and other largeindustrial centers. Rather than continuing the policy of rebuildingcity centers with affordable housing, new disbursed communities(satellite towns) would be established throughout the country based onthe Garden City model. This paper will examine how Patrick Abercrombie,who had been a member of the commission, salvaged many of the conceptsof the plan despite the liability of being linked with one of the chiefauthors of appeasement. It will discuss Abercrombie's 1944 GreaterLondon Plan, which called for eight to ten towns to be built in a ringaround the capital. Together, these new communities could re-house383,000 people. Abercrombie's plan inspired a weary nation and becamethe core for much of post-war planning. Finally, this paper willdiscuss how Chamberlain&rsquo;s patronage impacted Birmingham&rsquo;srole as a leader in town planning and post-war design. In 1945,Birmingham, like much of central London, lay in ruins. The Germans haddamaged 103,919 homes, many in areas originally set aside for slumclearance. During 1943, the Ministry of Town and Country Planningestablished the Advisory Panel on Redevelopment of City Centres.Birmingham's City Engineer, Herbert Manzoni, was one of the panelmembers. Despite this, three years later, the Government refused togive Birmingham the right to develop a new town under the 1946 Act. Thenew Labour Government hoped to create the healthy environment of theinter-war estates, but without the middle class cultural agenda promotedby inter-war architects and planners. Rather than rely on 'traditional'English forms, they looked to the Modernists who had been driven out byHitler before the war. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30269 Title: Mobilization of Modern Design: Architects' and Artists' Pursuit ofCamouflage during World War II<br/><br/>Knoblauch, Joy<br/><br/>Abstract: During World War II, architects and artists mobilized their knowledge ofcolor, light, shadow, material, texture and form to assist the militarywith camouflage, particularly the protective concealment of targets onthe ground. Over twenty schools including the Pratt Institute and theChicago School of Design offered wartime courses in camouflage to traindesigners in the theories and techniques of civilian defense, concealingfactories and confusing aerial bombers. Students learned to isolatebasic principles of visual perception and to use them for camouflageprojects including the construction of decoys and the use of variousmaterials to 'garnish' the netting draped over guns, trucks and tanks.They were taught to plant trees to disrupt the shadows cast by an objectand to use paint for patterning or 'countershading' to blend equipmentand buildings with the natural and urban surroundings. Most importantly,the students were taught that in order to conceal a target on theground, the camoufleur needed to understand the bombardier's view fromthe air and the 'process of vision' by which he selected and targeted asite on the ground. This vision was enhanced by new technologiesincluding aerial photography, infrared photography and of course theaircraft itself. Practices for deceiving 'both the eye and the camera'were also displayed in a traveling exhibit curated by the Museum ofModern Art in cooperation with the Pratt Institute and the U.S. ArmyEngineers Board of Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The principles of perceptionand strategies of concealment in the show informed the public thatcamouflage was a job for professionals, and that an amateur could domore harm than good by dabbling in it himself. Similarly, the camouflagecourses at the Chicago School of Design gave architects and artists theopportunity to collaborate with experts in the United States ArmedForces and in private industry. In all areas of camouflage, architectsand artists combined their artistry with an informed understanding ofnew technologies of vision to support the effort to win the war. Manycamouflage manuals speculated that the lessons learned, about theimportance of dispersal and of informal arrangements of buildings andlandscaping, would remain useful after the war was won. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30264 Title: Italy 1942: Visions of the Future Dwelling<br/><br/>Casciato, Maristella<br/><br/>Abstract: This paper wishes to examine why and how of what was termed in 1942 'unostrano momento d'ozio' ('an odd period of idleness') became for an eliteof Italian architects, who grew up under the banner of modernism, afertile condition to reassess the future dwelling as the new ideal forall human beings. One year earlier Alberto Lattuada, architect,photographer, and renowned film director captured that suspendedatmosphere in his L'occhio quadrato, 26 black and white pictures ofstrong realism. The call for reviewing 'la casa e l'ideale' ('the home:an ideal vision') launched by Domus in August 1942, offered thesearchitects the model ground to express their dreams and hopes. Domusprogram eventually allowed them to free the creation of a kind of'esperanto' that helped to transfer the iconic rationalism in thecultivated modern vernacular of postwar reconstruction. It was all butan escape from reality; rather it showed how these architects used thatcall for adjusting their know-how to the elaboration of some radical,alternative design inventions, that displayed a rich repertoire ofmaterials and technologies, a visionary high-tech avant la lettre. Theyear 1942 may well serve as synecdoche of the period between autharchyand post-WWII reconstruction. The comparison between Domus and thespecial issue of Edilizia Moderna, April-December 1942, entitled'Costruzioni del Tempo di Guerra' (&quot;Building during War Time&quot;)exemplifies the ambiguities that the profession was confronting. Herethe agony of the regime is in the background, while the buildings showhow technical skill may be turned into dull functionality. I'm planningas well to read this condition looking backward to a series of booklets,issued by the Ministry of War in 1938, to instruct architects andplanners, among others, on how to build in order to prevent damagescaused by air attacks. War also meant imprisonment. Ludovico Quaroni,one of the key figures of twentieth-century Italian architecture and aprotagonist of postwar reconstruction remained in a camp in India forabout five years. His carnets of sketches contained a plenitude ofdrawings for the ideal home next to vivid images of village dwellingsand domestic vernacular. Would the Indian trope become a source of hisvillage like the Tiburtino neighborhood of early '50s? It is worthexploring further this more distant resonance. No doubt that thependulum between desire of the new and nostalgia justified thepermanence of the contradictions this paper aims to illustrate. By theend, Fascism caused death, fear, emigration...as well as being pivotalin forcing architects to envision the 'rinascita'. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30267 Title: Italy 1938: The Autarchic Debate<br/><br/>Aviles, Pep<br/><br/>Abstract: On 3 October 1935, Mussolini's fascist regime invaded Ethiopia withundesired but foreseeable consequences for its imperialist aims: fourdays after the conquest, the Society of Nations imposed the subsequenteconomic sanctions, promoting an international economic blockage.Although financial retaliations against Italy didn't last long, endingon 15 July 1936, the chance was taken by the dictatorship regime tointensify autarchic policies as a way to overcome the scarcity of rawmaterials and successfully address the pre-war intricate globalpanorama. This soon translated into both a ferrous control of foreigncurrencies in order to purchase commodities in the international marketsand a vociferous campaign discouraging those materials as iron andsteel, which the military endeavor jealously demanded. Consequently,architecture as a discipline and all the industrial activity around itsuffered from governmental interferences through the scarcity andcontrol of commodities, therefore accommodating the discourse to a newtendentiously created material situation. If during the immediate pastthe defense of modern materials was traditionally articulated aroundtechnical and sociological values, the battle in pre-war Italy waspolitically and geographically focused: after stigmatizing some modernmaterials as 'antinational', the dispute among those who saw in moderntechniques a thread to Italian traditional architecture, and thoseembracing the formal and intellectual basis of modern movement becameideologically loaded. National and autochthonous values came to thefore, promoting local materials as stone, marble, or wood, as a sourceto diminish the cost of construction following a seemingmisinterpretation of the autarchic logic. The presentation is focusedon the written technical reports and the political reactions takingplace after the debate organized by Il Giornale d'Italia during July andAugust 1938 and entitled 'Per l'autarchia. Politica dell'Architettura'.The journal published fifteen articles with contributions of some of themajor figures of Italian architecture as Marcelo Piacentini, Gio Pontior Pier Luigi Nervi. Those articles soon triggered resounding reactionsin magazines such as Casabella or Rassegna, filling their pages withtechnical investigations and opinionated articles and thereforepolarizing the discussion between the architects supporting the officialindictments and the ones against. The sour discussion led to adefinition of autarchy directly and intimately linked to the cheapnessof the outputs on the one hand, but also to a traditional, historicistnational turn as a legitimate way to address future challenges inarchitecture. Material availability became then the battlefield ofideology, intermingling political interests, aesthetic agendas, andwarfare events. Even though the paper does not address post-war Italianarchitecture, the implicit target is to present an episode of the alwaysdifficult relationships between politics, architecture, industry, andmaterial contingencies in order to partially unveil the archaeologicalprecedents of the Italian post-war architecture. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30280 Title: Gimme shelter: Destruction and Reconstruction Landscapes from theTecton's Air Raid Precautious Plan for Finsbury Borough<br/><br/>Zancan, Roberto<br/><br/>Abstract: In March 1939, a small-scale exhibition showing the borough's Air-RaidPrecautious policy opened at Finsbury, London. The show exhibited andpublicized a scheme for heavily protected underground shelters,commissioned to Tecton architects, assisted by engineer Ove Arup. Farlater, after the publication of 'Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie,Instructions pratiques sur la defense passive' and illustrated proposalon air-war Le Corbusier's 'The Radiant City,' the exhibition produced awide impression on the British public and enlarged the debate onarchitecture of shelters in Great Britain. Soon after, The ArchitecturalPress published an enlarged version of Tecton-Arup's scheme forFinsbury, titled 'Planned ARP.' Martin Pawley, John Allen, Keith Malloryand Arvid Ottar had demonstrated how much the scheme is a key experienceabout air-raid passive defense, refuge architecture and constructionstrategies for urban structures during WWII. This paper will attempt toshow that, as part of Berthold Lubetkin's design activity for a largerprogram of social building and regeneration in the borough of Finsbury,the shelters project not only reflected a deep engagement in the reformof architecture towards a 'modernist' construction attitude to war, butis also an unique case study to understand mutations in architecturefrom peace to war time, and from war to peace time again. If theadaptation of social and urban survey's methods to decide the size ofthe shelters and to planning their suitable locations illustrate theredirection of techniques towards military logistics, the spiral rampedaccommodation in the shelters, designed to convert to car-parking use inpeacetime, proves a practice of war-architecture as 'not a small-termresponse to extraordinary events but permanent investments in urbaninfrastructure'. At another level, before the anxious depiction of ascared humanity in London subway by Henry More became an icon of humanexperience at 'the age of mechanical' war, the didactic attitude ofGordon Cullen's diagrams--at that time working as free lance illustratorfor Tecton--seems to communicate all the reassuring qualities of modernconstruction face to the war. Powerful imagery of the results ofbuilding fabric collapse due to high explosive bombs produced by Cullendon't remove the danger, but send its solution not to a individual,traditional domestic landscape, or to 'a shelter which people could usein their own homes', as proposed by the Home Ministry. They dialog withthe light, progressive and fluid constructions of collective 'heavilyprotected shelters', and offer 'protection of civilian population ratherthan mere accommodation'. In this sense the representation of adestruction-scape has its double not only in the safety and quietgestures of plastic human figures that live the cutaway models ofTecton, but also in a horizon of community in which the collective value(and living) of buildings during war give sense to design. It argues fora future of planned reconstructed-scapes that counterattacks thedispersal of population in the countryside proposed by a scarcelypresent Government and announce the disaster of Subtopia of theafter-war period. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/31296 Title: Front to Rear: Architecture and Planning during World War II<br/><br/>Abstract: Considered by most historians of 20th century architecture as a voidbetween peaceful periods of active architectural production, the SecondWorld War remains an unwritten chapter in most textbooks. It correspondshowever to an intense body of experience, which can be observed fromJapan to the United States, passing through Russia, Germany, France,Italy, Spain and England. WWII was a key moment in the process ofmodernization, and manifold issues are raised by the preparation of war,the total mobilization of territories and cities and their eventualoccupation, destruction and reconstruction....<br/><br/>Description: Conference held March 7-8, 2009, at the Institute of Fine Arts. Scheduledocument includes introductory statement, list of speakers, and timeschedule of presented papers. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30263 Title: False walls and double attics: fortifying Warsaw's inner city<br/><br/>Jozefacka, Anna<br/><br/>Abstract: During World War Two, Warsaw's much-maligned tenements andinfrastructure were reconceived by the Resistance to function as abulwark against the Nazi occupation. Concealed meeting locations,storage facilities, manufacturing spaces, and underground shelters andpassageways were constructed, veiled from the Nazis for civilianprotection and underground military activities. Pre-war, the mostwidely criticized aspects of the inner city, its narrow streets, highbuilding density, and poor quality wooden construction proved to be mostsuitable for both passive and active forms of resistance. According toone account, the Home Army commissioned at least 50 apartmentrenovations, the purpose of which was to convert living quarters intoconcealed meeting locations. Ideal to this purpose were top floorapartments in buildings of wooden construction, where access to rooftopsand multiple escape routes could be easily and quickly constructed.Common was the practice of linking adjacent buildings via attics orbasements to create concealed passageways. Ground floor spaces werepreferred for storage, printing presses and manufacturing facilities. In1943 there were reportedly over 400 underground shelters built withinthe Warsaw Ghetto, dug below the buildings as well as their innercourtyards/light wells, their holding capacity ranged from a fewindividuals up to several hundred. Some of the shelters were makeshiftexpansions of preexisting basements while others were new sophisticatedconstruction projects comprised of multiple rooms fitted withelectricity, telephone, plumbing, air shafts, and alternative exits. Thenarrowness of the streets allowed for at least four underground tunnelsto be dug, linking the Ghetto with the Polish side. The discussion ofarchitectural activity in wartime Warsaw is commonly limited to the workcarried out in preparation for the postwar reconstruction anddocumentation of historic monuments under threat of destruction. Theactual building activity taking place in the city continues to belargely under-investigated by architectural historians, discussed morefrequently by historians in the contexts of Jewish and Polish resistancemovements. Among those involved in the forms of wartime buildingactivity described above were trained architects, engineers, andprofessional builders. The purpose of this paper is to expand thediscussion of wartime architectural activity in Warsaw to encompassthese forms of architectural and building production and to show thatwartime conditions, and a repressive occupation, revealed an unexpectedvalue to the dense urban fabric, which in peacetime circumstances wasdismissed and identified for demolition. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30277 Title: Constantinos A. Doxiadis: The War and the Archive<br/><br/>Theocharopoulou, Ioanna<br/><br/>Abstract: Architect and planner Constantinos A. Doxiadis's entire professionallife involved collecting and classifying information in exhaustivedetail. His process of working was archival: we sense that he waspersonally far more interested in gathering, enumerating, and organizinga multitude of facts--analysis, research, were some of his favoriteterms--than the synthesis of these facts into a project. Doxiadis'scommitment to the archive, both literally, as evidenced by his ownextensive personal and office archives, and figuratively--his diligencein gathering a mass of details on what some saw as increasinglyunrelated topics--rendered his work difficult for many of hiscontemporaries. This paper will explore how Doxiadis's tendency tocollect, organize and manage facts that grew increasingly sophisticatedthroughout his life, was particularly colored by his experience duringthe war. During the war, Doxiadis (1913-1975) turned his officialpost as Chief Town Planner into a way of gathering information for theGreek Resistance. He founded and maintained a veritable 'architects'underground', that became the 'scientific' staff of the resistancemovement, deploying hundreds of architects and engineers throughoutGreece who often risked their lives to collect data and intelligence. Itis less well-known that during this time Doxiadis also led a series ofclandestine meetings in Athens, the 'Circle of Scientists', whodiscussed 'technical topics'. The Circle was comprised of a group ofarchitects and other intellectuals mostly drawn from Doxiadis's closeassociates. Their project was to compile and exchange more dataprimarily about architecture and experiments in housing from NorthernEurope and Russia but also casting a broad look at topics ranging fromvernacular art and building to aerial photography, the language questionand the baking of bread in urban centers. The transcripts of the Circleof Scientists meetings were recorded in a journal, Chorotax&igrave;a(from choros = space and taxi = order), a single copy of which exists inthe Doxiadis Archive in Athens, dating from 1942. The work of the'scientific' resistance movement was elaborated into a recentlyre-discovered, large-format catalogue, 'Sacrifices of Greece During theSecond World War', published immediately after the end of the War.Transcribing war-time losses, 'Sacrifices of Greece' gave furtherincentive to classify and enumerate: no longer just about culturalartifacts but also about olives, wheat, goats, donkeys, mules andstarving children, this time the numbers and data also turned intosophisticated visual information. Doxiadis's life-long mission ofpreserving and classifying facts, developed during a period of wartimeresistance, endowed his work with a special urgency. As a high-rankinggovernment employee during the decade of the 1940s, we sense that hefelt personally responsible to protect and organize the totality ofknowledge about his country. Compounded by the lack of access to thewar-time material until very recently, and by the political and personalantagonism felt towards Doxiadis, accentuated during the Civil War(1946-49) and again during the early 1970s, this early period of intenseand prolific architectural activity has been largely misunderstood andall but forgotten. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30266 Title: Compromising Modernity: Japanese Monumentality during World War II<br/><br/>Jacquet, Benoit<br/><br/>Abstract: Among the unwritten chapters on the architecture produced during WorldWar II, the case of Japanese monumental architecture is representativeof the ideological agenda of a whole generation of Japanese architects.The construction of war monuments started after the Japanesecolonization of East Asia and was a critical issue at the end of thethirties. The creation of a Committee for the Construction of theGreater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere by the Architectural Institute ofJapan after the start of the Pacific War catapulted the issue ofNational Architectural style to the forefront. The discoursesproduced on the occasion of architectural competitions for the MemorialTower for the Fallen Soldiers (1939), the Memorial of the Greater EastAsia Co-Prosperity Sphere (1942) and the Japanese Cultural Center inBangkok (1943), reveal how modern architects participated in theinvention of a national monumentality. How were such discourses onJapanese monumentality constructed theoretically? Firstly, they wererooted in the geopolitical context of the conflicted relationshipbetween both Japan and its Asian 'Orient' and the European-American'Occident'. After assimilating western techniques, Japanese architectsstarted to look back at Oriental architecture, thus engendering aperspective from which Japan could estimate its own degree of modernity.At this juncture, intellectuals were engaged in an ongoing debateregarding the 'overcoming of modernity' and were looking for originalforms of 'Japanese' thought. In the field of architecture, the criticof the Occident was funded in criticism of the so-called western formsof monumentality. Japanese (modern) architecture was mostly presented asan alternative to the westernization of Asian architecture. The Japaneseoccupation of East Asia was said to provide the opportunity toexperiment with architectural and urban planning in Asia, and to developa regional modern architecture. The Japanese architects who took partin the birth of Japanese modern architecture in the thirties wereparticularly active during the war. These same figures later becamemajor participants on the international architectural scene in thepostwar era. This paper will focus on the fate of this generation ofarchitects who, after carrying the ideals of modernization, contributedto the discourses on Japanese National architecture in the forties. Wewill also see how these discourses have been incorporated into forms ofJapanese contemporary architecture. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30290 Title: City and War: Foreign Influences, the Pacific War, and the Japanese Citybetween 1937 and 1945<br/><br/>Hein, Carola<br/><br/>Abstract: In 1942, Ishikawa Hideaki published a book entitled 'War and the City'('Sensoo to Toshi') in which he examined foreign planning concepts andlaid out the basics for a master plan for the Imperial Capital Tokyo. Inthe book, Ishikawa refers to numerous foreign examples, includingnotably German planners such as Paul Wolf and Walter Christaller. Thispublication provided a detailed approach on the theme of planning fordefense, and built on earlier works by Ishikawa and notably his 1941textbook on urban and regional planning in which he had already proposedhis own regional planning ideas. Ishikawa's proposal for Tokyo dividedthe city into multiple small units and strongly influenced Ishikawa'spostwar reconstruction plan. Ishikawa's career with the TokyoMetropolitan Government spans the war and postwar period from 1933 to1955. His work in Tokyo and in the colonies, in conjunction with that ofother prominent planners and architects of the time, provides room for atwo-pronged analysis of war and the Japanese city. In a first part, thepaper therefore analyzes urban design for colonial areas, where militarystructures facilitated the application of Japanese planning concepts.For Japanese planners the colonies were an important study ground offoreign planning concepts (German, Russian, etc.) as well as anopportunity to develop and try out their own design concepts. Among theexamples to be discussed are Ishikawa's experiences in Shanghai, TangeKenzo's proposal for the Japanese Cultural Center in Bangkok (1942) andhis 1942 entry in the Greater East Asia competition, as well as theurban project for Datong by a group of planners including Uchida Shozoand Takayama Eika for Datong. In a second part, the paper examinesinstances in which the war context facilitated planning in Japan, As thegovernment and notably the military prepared the Japanese mainland for apossible future defense, their support allowed planners to realizeproposals for decentralization planners had discussed for several years,but that had not found support. The construction of decentralizedmilitary towns such as Sagamihara Military City in 1940, or the decisionon the construction of a green belt in 1939 are evidence of the urbantransformation that took place during the war years. In conclusion,the paper argues that Japanese architecture and planning between 1937and 1945 were characterized by a conscious borrowing of foreign urbanplanning and design ideas both in order to demonstrate Japanesearchitectural and urban design skills in the colonies and in order totransform and defend the urban spaces on the Japanese islands. War anddefense preparation led to an acceleration of urban development that isvisible both in planning examples in the colonies as well as in Japan. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30270 Title: Building bridges--burning bridges<br/><br/>May, Roland<br/><br/>Abstract: With the banks, the bridge brings to the stream the one and the otherexpanse of the landscape lying behind them. It brings stream and bankand land into each other's neighborhood. Martin Heidegger, 1951buildings often carry symbolic messages. Probably the most obvious oneis transported by bridges, transforming landscapes, countries, orpeople, which had been separated before, into neighbors. But, incontradiction to their constitutional idea of peace, bridges can alsodevelop into symbols of a dangerous threat or domination. This is whathappens especially in wartime. Shortly after coming into power in thesummer of 1933 Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of theReichsautobahnen, a vast motorway system for Germany. Work on one of themost extensive infrastructure projects of its times was started the sameyear under supervision of the Inspector General for German Roadways,Fritz Todt. Due to the concept of a street network avoidingintersections at the same level, bridges became a central constituent ofthe motorway project. Furthermore, besides their technical task,motorway bridges also developed into an important element forpropaganda. In fact, even if many of the approximately 5000 motorwaybridges built under the Nazi regime cannot be valued as outstandingconstructions, the comprehensive quality of design in nearly all thestructures--reaching from small culverts to gigantic viaducts--played akey role for the international enthusiasm towards the German motorways.Against many widespread beliefs, the aspect of war preparation onlyplayed a marginal role during the first years of motorway construction.But, as the war approached, this situation rapidly changed andespecially the bridge builders got increasingly involved in the warmachinery. In 1938 Todt was ordered to build a 400-mile-long line ofdefensive forts and tank traps. Works on this so-called Westwall weresupervised by an extraordinarily effective branch office of theInspectorate General, soon known under the name Organisation Todt (OT).At first only needed for their general engineering skills, many of thebridge builders soon returned to their original profession. Beingdistributed by the OT on bridge building brigades, they followed on theheels of the forward moving army, rebuilding bridges that had beendamaged during the fighting. Surprisingly, the works on the motorwayswere not totally stopped when the war broke out, and the plans for themotorway network were even extended with every victory of the Germanarmy. Thus, also the architects involved in the motorway project hadplenty of planning to do. But, the expression of their bridges underwenta decent change. From sober and harmonious engineering structures theydeveloped into gigantic monuments of a conquering, militarized country.When the war tide finally turned, most of these projects still werenothing more than hypertrophic dreams--dreams that finally turned intothe nightmare of the destruction of German bridges by the own retreatingarmy. It is the aim of the author to discuss the involvement of Germanbridge builders in the war process through exemplary projects.Therefore, the paper would mainly focus on the works of some key figuresfor German bridge building of that time, such as the architects PaulBonatz and Friedrich Tamms, and the engineers Karl Schaechterle,Gottwalt Schaper and Fritz Leonhardt.hry 2451/29945 http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30268 Title: Architecture, War and Genocide: Military Goals and the Development of SSConcentration Camp Architecture<br/><br/>Jaskot, Paul B.<br/><br/>Abstract: World War II is a defining war for understanding modern history not onlybecause of its place in 20th-century geopolitics but particularlybecause of the scale of warfare and new level of brutality. As is wellknown, central to the Nazi military campaign in the East were theideological goals of state leaders to expand the land available for'German' settlement and, concomitantly, to rid that land of thosedesignated undesirable, above all the European Jews. The architecturalremnants of the SS concentration camps have become emblematic for theexperience of victims in this campaign as well as the extremes of Nazipolicy. And yet in spite of their status as some of the most infamousconstruction in the modern period, relatively few architecturalhistorians take up the concentration camps in their analysis of Germanarchitecture. Further, the minority of architectural historians who haveanalyzed the camps tend to focus on one site rather than the system as awhole and naturally concern themselves with the experience of thevictims rather than the perpetrator's interests and view ofarchitecture. Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt's important work onAuschwitz is an exception to many of these trends. Still, in terms ofthe military campaigns going on in the East, even they tend to seeAuschwitz as an ideological site that developed over time parallel tothe military campaigns rather than as integral to them. In this account,the concentration camps and the waging of war produce simultaneous ifrelated goals. This paper argues against the isolation of theconcentration camps from the war by taking a broader view of theconstruction of SS concentration camps, analyzing their typologicaldevelopment and use of specific architectural and spatial traditions. Inparticular, it argues that the imperial goals of the war as emphasizedin the political economic goals of the state are integral for helping toexplain the scale and architectural choices made at Auschwitz and otherconcentration camps in the SS universe. In so doing, I look not only atthe important parts of the camps that were sites of massive oppressionbut also at those sites built for the SS themselves, analyzingadministrative and visual evidence concerning their own goals and theirown construction. With this focus, the intersection of racistideological goals and the military political economy of empire aremanifest. Refocusing on the architecture of the concentration campshelps us to explain the implementation of warfare, its radicalizationand its role in an imperial drive of unifying diverse ideological andpolitical agendas. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30278 Title: Architecture, urbanism and national heritage during German occupation inBelgium: The Modern Movement and the Commissariat-General pour laReconstruction du Pays<br/><br/>Uyttenhove, Pieter<br/><br/>Abstract: Founded in June 1940 under the Militaerverwaltung, the German occupyingforces, the Commissariat-General pour la Reconstruction du Pays seems tobe the continuation of pre-war structures. These had been set up inBelgium by modernist circles inside the Ministry of Public Works,involving for instance the Institut Superieur des Arts Decoratifs of LaCambre in Brussels and the Office de Redressement Economique. Inside theCommissariat-General, the Office for Reconstruction was created next tothe offices for Employment and for War Damage. Raphael Verwilghen, whohad also been the director of the Service des Regions Devastees for thereconstruction after World War I, stood as one of Belgium's mostprominent members of the Modern Movement, at the head of theCommissariat. In this administration for national reconstruction onefinds many other of the leading modern architects and urbanistswho--before the war and even during and after the First WorldWar--belonged to the most progressive circles, among whom Stan Leurs,Max Winders, Joseph Vierin, Valentijn Vaerwijck, and also Henry Van deVelde. Verwilghen's administration covered architecture, urbanism,regional planning and national heritage. The Commissariat's intentionwas to proceed to much more rigorous planning of infrastructures andurban development, and proposed in the main time a very rigid catalogueof new typologies for agricultural settlements and new villages.Planning for the metropolitan areas, started before the war, wascontinued and emphasized. Regional planning for dynamic new industrialareas like Limbourg and the new coal mining areas in the east of thecountry near Germany received special attention. Setting up a newurbanistic legislation, the Commissariat aimed to a total planning ofthe Belgian built environment within a clear and well-defined socialvision. The strong voluntary opposition to the pre-war lack of economicand administrative policies could not avoid that theCommissariat&rsquo;s policy stood in an ambiguous relationship with theGerman military government. Secret German reports to Berlin mention theMilitaerverwaltung's high interest for the infrastructural developmentof rail- and highways in the Belgium region, and especially in Flanders,culturally spoken closer to Germany and considered as one of the regionsto be 'annexed'. In spite of the Commissariat's ambiguous conceptsexisting on the background of the war and the fact that many of itsadministrators were considered and treated as 'collaborators' after thewar, during this period were laid the foundations for the spatialplanning after the war in Belgium. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30279 Title: Architecture as an 'Administrative Function': From the New Deal to War Mobilization<br/><br/>Vallye, Anna<br/><br/>Abstract: When the United States entered World War II, a decade spent tracking thephilosophies, policies, and investment activities of the federalgovernment had prepared the architectural profession for warmobilization. The dramatic expansion of the state apparatus during theNew Deal and governmental interventions in city planning, housing, andpublic works had positioned the government as both a potential clientfor architectural services and (as in the case of FHA mortgageinsurance, for example) a source of systemic changes affectingarchitecture through the building industry. During the 1930s, thearchitectural profession 'modernized' in large part by adapting to itspotential new role in relation to the state. The New Deal introduced anevolving conception of the state&rsquo;s role in the national economy,envisioned in terms of a flexible and open-ended set of managerialprocesses or 'administrative functions,' that arguably served as a modelfor retooling the architectural profession during this period.Mobilization for the war brought new opportunities and new rhetoric toarchitecture but did not alter this trajectory of its professionalevolution. Through a contextual reading of the discourse in Americanarchitectural periodicals of the war years I propose to examine atransformation in the identity of the architect and the meanings andprocesses of architectural design. Encouraged to 'go to Washington' tooffer their services in the war effort, architects were advised to thinkof themselves as 'coordinators' and 'strategists.' The role ofarchitectural expertise in wartime construction was envisioned as afunction of managing productive systems of organized complexity,operated by teams of various experts. Years of following governmentbureaucracy made architects proficient in the New Deal logic of theregulatory and managerial state, and they saw this logic extended to theorganization of wartime production and construction. As architects in asense modeled themselves after government administrators, architecturaldesign was reframed as a process of organization or a regulatoryfunction. The practical effects of this shift in approach are evidencedin many large-scale architectural commissions for the war effort, suchas temporary housing for the war industry and military bases. http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30289 Title: Alvar Aalto: Planning Finland, c. 1940<br/><br/>Pelkonen, Eeva-Liisa<br/><br/>Abstract: My paper will deal with Alvar Aalto's planning ideas during the twoFinno-Russian Wars between 1939-40 and 1941-44, during which he spentprolonged periods in the U.S. and became exposed to Americanregionalism. I will focus on a seminal year 1940 when Aalto was mostactively pursuing different planning ideas during and in the aftermathof the Winter War. I will discuss a series of articles and projectswhich demonstrate the various ways he started to apply regionalistplanning principles to the Finnish war-time context. His article'Finland' written for the Architectural Forum in 1940 maps out thefoundation of Finnish modernism on the lines of American regionalism andputs forth his plan for reconstruction. The proposal 'American Town inFinland' executed while Aalto held a research professorship at MIT was afirst attempt to put regionalist principles to use. A little brochureentitled 'Post-War Reconstruction: Rehousing Research in Finland',published through the Finnish Consulate in New York for Americandistribution in 1940, puts forward the idea of 'flexiblestandardization,' which allowed architecture to absorb variouscontingencies from site conditions to programmatic needs. Aalto's firstlarge scale planning project, the Kokem&auml;ki River Valley RegionalPlan (1940), both commissioned by Finnish industry, both encompassed newsettlements, infrastructure, production, and recreational facilities andused planning as a means to regulate the spatial relationships betweenthese functions. I will point out how the Second World War offers abackdrop, even an answer, to Aalto's activities at that time. The'Finland' article was aimed at convincing his American audience--apotential source of humanitarian aid--that the Finns had nothing to dowith the (putatively) Communist-infested international modern movementnor nationalism that fuelled the Second World War. My paper will thusexpose the audience to little-known aspects of Aalto's activities andpersona, namely that he was very well versed in statecraft and saw hiswritings and architecture as a means to promote and even act out variousgeographical scripts. His geographic narratives produced terminology,representations, and spatial products whose goal was to understand andreinforce national culture, on the one hand, and conceptualizerelationships to other countries, on the other. The spatial idea behindregionalism was a nested network, in which the country's internalinfrastructural, settlement, and production networks are supported byand connected to the larger global networks of international commerce.On the whole exposure to regionalism helped him to overcome thenationalist and internationalist ideologies that had fuelled much of thearchitecture culture of the early part of the 20th century and take apragmatist approach to geographic questions emphasizing management ofeconomic, human, and natural resources during the period of post-warFinnish reconstruction, which eventually laid the foundation for thefuture economic prosperity of the country.