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Vandana Baweja

University of Florida, Architecture, Faculty Member

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Phone: 352.294.1465
Address: School of Architecture
College of Design, Construction and Planning
University of Florida
1480 Inner Road, Room 242
Gainesville, FL 32611-5702

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Papers by Vandana Baweja

Baweja, Vandana. “Bombay/Mumbai Waterfronts in the Hindi Film Deewaar [The Wall] (1975).” In The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Design: Global Perspectives from Architectural History, edited by Joseph Heathcott, 306–18. New York and London: Routledge, 2022.

The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Design: Global Perspectives from Architectural History, 2022

Otto Königsberger and Global Architectural Histories

docomomo 63 , 2020

Otto Königsberger was a German émigré architect who worked as the state architect in princely Mys... more Otto Königsberger was a German émigré architect who worked as the state architect in princely Mysore in British India in the 1940s. Upon emigration to London in 1951, he subsequently became an educator of Tropical Architecture (1954-1971) at the aa School of Architecture. This paper examines how Otto Königsberger’s career can illuminate “global” as a paradigm in Modernist historiography.

BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 2) Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), , 2019

Part 2 of the lecture presents how the film Slumdog Millionaire represents the most recent phase ... more Part 2 of the lecture presents how the film Slumdog Millionaire represents the most recent phase of Bombay's globalization and its name change to Mumbai. Slumdog Millionaire is the life story of the Muslim protagonist Jamal who is a contestant on the TV show “Kaun Banega Crorepati,” [“Who wants to be a Millionaire”] in Mumbai. Jamal’s life and the story of the transition from Bombay to Mumbai are narrated in the film through a series of questions on the quiz show. The film begins with the Muslim protagonist Jamal’s childhood in the slums in Bombay. Jamal and his brother Salim loose their mother and their slum home in a riot. This riot was one in a series of riots, which were meant to cleanse Bombay of its Muslim population, who are seen as outsiders. Evacuated from the slum, they leave the city of Bombay to go to Agra and then come back to Bombay in search of Jamal’s Hindu friend Latika. When Jamal and Salim return to Bombay, it was no longer “Bombay” but had changed to “Mumbai.” Jamal’s story is closely tied to the urban history of the transition of Bombay into Mumbai. The transition of Bombay into Mumbai is marked by two significant changes: one, the rise of right wing Hindu forces and two, the transition of Bombay from a post-industrial city to a global service provider.

BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 1) Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019.

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC),, 2019

LECTURE 5. BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 1) LECTURE 5. BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 1) ! () The ... more LECTURE 5. BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 1) LECTURE 5. BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 1) ! () The first part of this lecture investigates how Bombay was built and imagined as a cosmopolitan city through Hindi cinema, through the use of urban sites and architectural icons that are nodes within global architectural and urban histories. Bombay's public spaces such as-Marine Drive, the Gateway of India, Maidans, bazaars, and parks-are landmarks that have come to represent the cosmopolitanism of the city. These landmarks are rendered cosmopolitan due to their complex urban historical trajectories that have been enmeshed in global cultural and capital flows. Mumbai's architectural icons such as the Victoria Terminus Train Station, the High Court, University Building, the Bombay Flat, the High rise condominium, and the Art Deco district are cultural chronotopes that symbolize nineteenth and twentieth century high-end globalization processes. These high-end architect-designed icons and public spaces were built with collaborations between European architects, Bombay-based architects, contractors, and construction labor. To accommodate the vast numbers of working classes in the city, including construction labor who built these icons, low-end global building types such as squatters settlements and chawls emerged to accommodate living spaces for the working class. These are spaces of low-end globalization, which are as cosmopolitan and innovative as their high-end counterparts. The first part ends with examples of films that show how these spaces of high-end and low-end globalization intersect and represent social life in the city. supporting documents: Bibliography Handout Lecture Abstract Quiz with Answers PREVIEW SLIDES

SHANGHAI IN CINEMA (PART 2) Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019.

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019

The second part of this lecture presents how films represent Shanghai’s current global status, th... more The second part of this lecture presents how films represent Shanghai’s current global status, the historic globalization processes that have
shaped the city, and the tensions between high-end and low-end globalization processes, using four films—Skyfall (2012, English Directed
by Sam Mendes), Meili xin shijie [Beautiful New World] (1999, Directed by Shi Runjiu), Yima de houxiandai shenghuo [The Postmodern
Life of My Aunt] (2006, Directed by Ann Hui), and Suzhou he [Suzhou River] (2000, Directed by Lou Ye). The lecture begins by examining
how Skyfall (2012, English Directed by Sam Mendes) represents Shanghai as a glitzy skyscraper city, in a perpetual present, and purged of
the historic processes that have shaped the city. Meili xin shijie [Beautiful New World] (1999) is set in the context of the 1990s consumer
revolution and the intense transformation of Shanghai through which the old city was torn down to build new skyscrapers. It is the story of
two people Zhang Baogen and Jin Fang who aspire to be consumers of this new world that is transforming Shanghai. They have been left at
the margins of this consumer revolution and globalization processes that have created the glossy Shanghai that we see in Skyfall. Thus, Meili
xin shijie [Beautiful New World] shows the globalization of Shanghai is an uneven process in which the benefits of globalization for the elite
few create social chasms that can be hard to bridge. Yima de houxiandai shenghuo [The Postmodern Life of My Aunt] (2006, Directed by
Ann Hui), represents Shanghai as an urban palimpsest, where drastic changes of political ideologies have resulted in radical transformation
of architecture and urbanism. Consequently, the characters constantly wander through older layers of Shanghai juxtaposed with the new. The
filmic representation of architecture and urbanism in The Postmodern Life of My Aunt depicts fragmentation and layering as visual tropes
that spatialize how the characters navigate the city. Suzhou he [Suzhou River] (2000, Directed by Lou Ye) represents how tensions between
high-end and low-end globalization processes, have shaped the Suzhou River Bank. In the film, the river functions as a metaphor for
globalization. It establishes Shanghai’s identity as the treaty port that brought China into contact with international trade. The film signifies
how global trade is closely tied to the globalization of culture.

Shanghai In Cinema (Part 1), Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019

The first part of this lecture chronicles two phases of Shanghai’s globalization. The first phase... more The first part of this lecture chronicles two phases of Shanghai’s globalization. The first phase known as “the treaty port phase” began with Britain’s victory in the First Opium War (1839–42), which inaugurated the making of Shanghai into a global city. This phase ended with the Japanese occupation of Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) and the subsequent Second World War, when most foreigners fled the city, bringing Shanghai's 101 years as a treaty port to an end. Shanghai was transformed into a socialist city under Chairman Mao Zedong (1949–1976) and the city’s emphasis shifted to heavy manufacturing industry under the influence of the Soviet Union’s planning methods. In the early 1990s, Deng Xiaoping, the leader of the world's largest Communist Party, embraced capitalism. The second phase of Shanghai’s globalization began in 1990s with Chairman Deng changing the ideological course of China’s destiny. This lecture investigates three urban areas that developed during the treaty port phase—the Bund, the Suzhou Creek Bank, and Shanghai's commercial spine, Nanjing Road. These urban areas are rendered cosmopolitan due to their complex urban historical trajectories that have been enmeshed in global cultural and capital flows. In addition to these urban areas, the lecture looks at two architectural types—the Art Deco skyscraper, a product of high-end globalization processes, and the lilong, an archetype of low-end globalization. Shanghai’s treaty port phase architectural icons such as— the Customs House (1925–1927), Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (1921–1923), The Cathay Hotel/Sassoon House (1929) on the Bund; the Neo-baroque Post-Office (1924), Broadway mansions (1934), Embankment Building (1933) on the Suzhou River; and Sun Sun (1926), Sincere (1917), and Wing On (1918) on the Nanjing Road are cultural chronotopes that symbolize nineteenth and twentieth century high-end globalization processes. These high-end architect-designed icons and public spaces were built with collaborations between European architects, Shanghai-based architects, contractors, and construction labor. To accommodate the large population of working classes in the city, including construction labor who built these icons, low-end global building types such as squatter settlements and lilong emerged. These are spaces of low-end globalization, which are as cosmopolitan and innovative as their high-end counterparts. This lecture chronicles the urban and architectural transformations during the second phase, or the current phase of Shanghai’s globalization through three key urban spaces– West Nanjing Road, Pudong, and People's Square and People's Park.

Indo-Saracenic Architecture, Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC)

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2017

In colonial historiography, architecture in South Asia is stylistically classified as Neoclassica... more In colonial historiography, architecture in South Asia is stylistically classified as Neoclassical, Gothic, and Indo-Saracenic. The debates on style in South Asia were closely tied to the nationalistic battles between proponents of the Neoclassical and Gothic styles in Britain. In the South Asian colonial context, the debate over an appropriate style hinged on how architectural styles should represent Britain’s status as the imperial ruler of South Asia—whether colonial architecture in South Asia should be built in styles that were prevalent in Britain or in Indic indigenous styles. After the mutiny when the British crown took over the governance of India, the quest for an appropriate assimilationist indigenous style led to the development of the Indo-Saracenic style as a modernized native style. It drew its aesthetic expression from a synthetic reconfiguring of regional indigenous architectures, which were combined with modern functional planning and engineering. The term “Saracenic” referred to Islamic architecture in nineteenth century India. G.H.R. Tillotson locates the Indo-Saracenic style in a larger global context to argue that it was a South Asian iteration of the global developments that were taking place in reconstituting Neoclassical and Gothic architectural styles with modern technologies and spatial planning. Indo-Saracenic architecture can thus be understood as part of a synchronic global revivalist phenomenon in the mid to late nineteenth century along the colonial networks of the Empire.

Art Deco Mumbai in and Miami Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC)

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), , 2018

This lecture is based on the assumption that Art Deco offers a unique lens into the globalizing p... more This lecture is based on the assumption that Art Deco offers a unique lens into the globalizing processes and networks along which architects, objects, and ideas circulated. This lecture proposes that the circulation, development, and consumption of Art Deco objects, buildings, films, and art works represents an unprecedented compression of space and time. Art Deco architects freely borrowed and mixed motifs, forms, and visual cues from architectures and material cultures of ancient and distant civilizations—Egyptian, African, East Asian, Mughal, and Pre-Columbian. The Art Deco palette also included contemporary European Avant-Garde architecture and visual culture. Critics label this kitsch, however, this very eclectic and excessive aesthetic of Art Deco created buildings that represent the collapsing of cultural and temporal compartments—representing a dizzying global pool of knowledge, travel, and mobility.

A Brief History of Sustainable Architecture

Otto Koenigsberger's Architectural Photographic Archive in India 1939–1951

Beyond Alternative Modernities

G wendolyn Wright's work first demonstrated how the colonies and the metropole were intertwined i... more G wendolyn Wright's work first demonstrated how the colonies and the metropole were intertwined in the shaping of paradigms of modernist architecture and urbanism through her analysis of French colonies—Indochina, Morocco, and Madagascar—as " champs d'expérience " or sites of experimentation , where modernist ideas were tested for their efficacy before they were implemented in the metropole. 1 Wright's book was crucial in recognizing the omission of the colonies in modernist architectural histories, but did not unearth the agency of the colonized in shaping architectural and urban discourses. Recent histories of indigenous modernities, in the case of Asian architecture and urbanism, such as Jyoti Hosagrahar's Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urba-nism have proven how colonized subjects were dynamic actors in the domestication of metropolitan architecture and planning ideals. 2 Through the lens of philanthropic architectural projects in Bom-bay (now Mumbai), Preeti Chopra demonstrates how colonialism was a collaborative enterprise in which the mercantile elite and colonial agencies formed ad-hoc alliances, which illuminate how the categories of the colonizer and colonized are not as distinctly delineated as we imagine them to be. 3 Swati Chattopadhyay's scholarship on Calcutta and Rebecca Brown's history of Patna destabilize the " white town/black town " model of the colonial city. 4 Brenda Yeoh's work on Singapore documents how resistance to urbanism as a spatial tool for regulating cities validates how the colonized were never passive subjects of modernity. 5 Recent scholarship such as Vikramaditya Prakash's Chandigarh's Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India and Sanjeev Vidyarthi's book on Jaipur One Idea, Many Plans: An American City Design Concept in Independent India, reveal how citizens of newly formed nation-states were active agents in translating and transforming top-down modernist architecture and planning ideals. 6 Duanfang Lu's work has decentred modernist architectural and

“Otto Koenigsberger and Modernist Historiography”. Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand. Volume 26, Number 1:(2016) 226–250.

Otto Koenigsberger's (1908Koenigsberger's ( -1999 work in India (1939India ( -1951 complicates th... more Otto Koenigsberger's (1908Koenigsberger's ( -1999 work in India (1939India ( -1951 complicates the idea that tropical architecture was a strain of European modernism that was dispersed to the colonial tropics along the imperial networks of the British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s. Koenigsberger, a German émigré architect, arrived in India in 1939 in princely Mysore -a state under indirect British rule. As the state architect in Mysore (1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945)(1946)(1947)(1948), he designed numerous buildings -schools, hospitals, offices, police stations, palace extensions, pavilions, colleges, factories, and bus shelters. In 1951, he emigrated from India to London and, in 1954, established the department of tropical architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. His treatise on tropical architecture, Manual of Tropical Housing and Building (1974) offers a critique of modernisation, which originated in Koenigsberger's failed and successful projects in India. Yet, until recently the majority of his architectural work in India was unknown. This paper discusses the absence of Koenigsberger's architectural oeuvre in South Asian architectural histories and argues that uncovering his work in India offers a missing link between colonial and post-colonial architectural cultures, and global networks of tropical architecture. His career illuminates how multiple actors outside the colonial state apparatus -such as the Maharajah's regime with their sovereign ideals and independent entrepreneurial clientsshaped his ideas of modernism.

"Otto Koenigsberger and Tropical Architecture". Arris – The Journal of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH). Volume 25: 2–17.

Dharavi Redevelopment Plan: Contested Architecture and Urbanism

<<<<<Baweja, Vandana."Dharavi Redevelopment Project: Contested Architecture and Urbanism.” In The... more <<<<<Baweja, Vandana."Dharavi Redevelopment Project: Contested Architecture and Urbanism.” In The Expanding Periphery and the Migrating Center: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), March 19–21, 2015, Toronto, Ontario, edited by Lola Sheppard and David Ruy, Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Press, 2015.>>>>>

Dharavi, located in Mumbai in India, is one of Asia’s largest slums and shot to global fame with its depiction in the Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire. In 2004, Dharavi Redevelopment Project was launched as a public-private alliance between the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) and global corporations. Its principal architect Mukesh Mehta listed the key goals of the Dharavi Redevelopment Project as: “sustainable development; rehabilitation of all the slum families and businesses; reestablishment of non-polluting industries; and the integration of slum dwellers with main stream residents.” The Dharavi Redevelopment Project has been marketed as a form of sustainable urbanism through the HIKES (health, income, knowledge, environment, and socio-cultural development) program. The HIKES program, which effectively realizes the “world-class city” urban vision of neoliberal urbanists is postured as sustainable urbanism, making it attractive to neoliberal urbanists and middle class environmentalists alike. In theory, the Dharavi Redevelopment Project would provide Dharavi residents with cross-subsidized materially upgraded permanent high-rise modern housing, piped water, sanitized waste disposal, drainage, and green parks. Yet Dharavi residents have rejected it as a hubristic unsustainable modernizing project, designed to evict and disenfranchise them. This paper examines why the Dharavi Redevelopment Project is a contested model of architecture and urbanism to argue that the project is emblematic of class warfare over architectural typologies, urban space, urbanism, and the role of the state in making world-class cities. The Dharavi Redevelopment Project reduces slum rehabilitation to a simplistic problem of numbers in terms of Floor Space Index (FSI). At the core of the battle over Dharavi Redevelopment Project is a cultural conflict over urban citizenship and what the ideal city should be.

Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture

Baweja, Vandana. "Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture." I... more

The Porch as a Threshold in Between Architecture and Landscape Architecture: Igor B. Polevitzky’s Birdcage House (1949) and the Florida Tropical Home

Baweja, Vandana. “The Porch as a Threshold in Between Architecture and Landscape Architecture: Ig... more Baweja, Vandana. “The Porch as a Threshold in Between Architecture and Landscape Architecture: Igor B. Polevitzky’s Birdcage House (1949) and the Florida Tropical Home,” Wolkenkuckucksheim | Cloud-Cuckoo-Land | Воздушный замок, (Internationale Zeitschrift zur Theorie der Architektur) International Journal of Architectural Theory, Volume 20, Number 34 (2015): 73–94.

Sustainability and The Architectural History Survey

Architecture and urbanism have engaged sustainability as an action-oriented objective through the... more Architecture and urbanism have engaged sustainability as an action-oriented objective through the practice of green design and sustainable urbanism, which have several iterations. Architectural history has yet to produce a significant body of work in response to environmental discourses that are currently dominated by sustainability. The architectural history survey – when taught from an environmental history perspective – can serve the purpose of understanding not just sustainability, but the relationship of architecture and urbanism to the environment through history. I address the question, how can sustainability, a 1980s paradigm, be addressed in the teaching of the architectural history survey that ranges from prehistory to contemporary times? Sustainability is a dominant contemporary paradigm of environmentalism produced through economic development discourses of environmental management. I argue that the architectural history survey can provide opportunities to engage environmental histories in unearthing and disseminating ecological histories of architecture and urbanism. The architectural history survey – when taught from an environmental history perspective – can serve the purpose of understanding the environmental discourses that have informed sustainability historically, across different times and cultures. I propose that teaching architectural history within the larger field of environmental history is one way through which sustainability, as an environmental management paradigm, can be grasped, defined, and critiqued. Environmental history is one of the fastest growing fields of history, and is not a subdiscipline of history but a metadiscipline, given its scope and inclusivity. Writing architectural histories within the metadiscipline of environmental history is emerging as a new way of producing architectural histories. The architectural history survey taught from an environmental history perspective can contribute to an understanding of fundamental concepts about architecture and cities within the environmental discourse and therefore position the idea of sustainability historically.

Architecture and Urbanism in Slumdog millionaire: From Bombay to Mumbai

This article proposes that the film Slumdog Millionaire depicts a key moment in the history of I... more This article proposes that the film Slumdog Millionaire depicts a key moment in the history of India — the transformation during the 1990s of Bombay into Mumbai. In the film, the life trajectories of Jamal Malik (its Muslim protagonist), his Hindu love Latika, and his older brother Salim play out against the metamorphosis of the city from conditions of modernity to postmodernity. Recent scholarship has suggested this transformation involves the erasure of Bombay's former cosmopolitanism. The article argues that Slumdog Millionaire constructs an urban narrative that spatializes and critiques this change, and that is built on two tropes. First is the erasure of Bombay's complex local histories to facilitate its reinvention as monocultural, neoliberal Mumbai. This is expressed through the use of settings where the city's former architectural palimpsest is being razed to create homogenized redevelopment areas. Second is the increasing exclusion of the poor from public space — a point the film makes through its selective use (and avoidance) of traditionally emblematic public spaces. Overall, the film narrates Bombay/Mumbai's recent urban history as a class war between what Rahul Mehrotra has called the " kinetic " and the " static " cities. The article also builds on Nezar AlSayyad's argument that cinematic representations frequently draw on urban discourses in narrative construction — and, conversely, that cinema may serve as a lens through which to examine the cultural foundations upon which these discourses are built. In this regard, Slumdog Millionaire refers to three urban/ architectural spaces invested with specific ideological meaning: Dharavi, an organic settlement of vernacular architectures used to represent old Bombay; Lake Castle, an apartment building used to depict Bombay's neoliberal transformation into Mumbai; and Victoria Terminus, the Gothic Revival train station which serves as a site of contestation between those who would preserve the city's multiple histories and those who would overwrite them.

What’s Next for Architectural History? Sustainability and the Architectural History Survey

Baweja, Vandana."What’s Next for Architectural History? Sustainability and the Architectural Hist... more Baweja, Vandana."What’s Next for Architectural History? Sustainability and the Architectural History Survey." In Where Do You Stand: Proceedings of the 99th Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), March 3–6, 2011, Montréal, Canada, edited by Alberto Pérez-Goméz, Anne Cormier and Annie Pedret, 452–57, Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Press, 2011.

Messy Modernisms: Otto Koenigsberger’s Early Work in Princely Mysore 1939–1941

Baweja, Vandana. “Messy Modernisms: Otto Koenigsberger’s Early Work in Princely Mysore 1939–1941,... more

Baweja, Vandana. “Bombay/Mumbai Waterfronts in the Hindi Film Deewaar [The Wall] (1975).” In The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Design: Global Perspectives from Architectural History, edited by Joseph Heathcott, 306–18. New York and London: Routledge, 2022.

The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Design: Global Perspectives from Architectural History, 2022

Otto Königsberger and Global Architectural Histories

docomomo 63 , 2020

Otto Königsberger was a German émigré architect who worked as the state architect in princely Mys... more Otto Königsberger was a German émigré architect who worked as the state architect in princely Mysore in British India in the 1940s. Upon emigration to London in 1951, he subsequently became an educator of Tropical Architecture (1954-1971) at the aa School of Architecture. This paper examines how Otto Königsberger’s career can illuminate “global” as a paradigm in Modernist historiography.

BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 2) Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), , 2019

Part 2 of the lecture presents how the film Slumdog Millionaire represents the most recent phase ... more Part 2 of the lecture presents how the film Slumdog Millionaire represents the most recent phase of Bombay's globalization and its name change to Mumbai. Slumdog Millionaire is the life story of the Muslim protagonist Jamal who is a contestant on the TV show “Kaun Banega Crorepati,” [“Who wants to be a Millionaire”] in Mumbai. Jamal’s life and the story of the transition from Bombay to Mumbai are narrated in the film through a series of questions on the quiz show. The film begins with the Muslim protagonist Jamal’s childhood in the slums in Bombay. Jamal and his brother Salim loose their mother and their slum home in a riot. This riot was one in a series of riots, which were meant to cleanse Bombay of its Muslim population, who are seen as outsiders. Evacuated from the slum, they leave the city of Bombay to go to Agra and then come back to Bombay in search of Jamal’s Hindu friend Latika. When Jamal and Salim return to Bombay, it was no longer “Bombay” but had changed to “Mumbai.” Jamal’s story is closely tied to the urban history of the transition of Bombay into Mumbai. The transition of Bombay into Mumbai is marked by two significant changes: one, the rise of right wing Hindu forces and two, the transition of Bombay from a post-industrial city to a global service provider.

BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 1) Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019.

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC),, 2019

LECTURE 5. BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 1) LECTURE 5. BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 1) ! () The ... more LECTURE 5. BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 1) LECTURE 5. BOMBAY/MUMBAI IN CINEMA (PART 1) ! () The first part of this lecture investigates how Bombay was built and imagined as a cosmopolitan city through Hindi cinema, through the use of urban sites and architectural icons that are nodes within global architectural and urban histories. Bombay's public spaces such as-Marine Drive, the Gateway of India, Maidans, bazaars, and parks-are landmarks that have come to represent the cosmopolitanism of the city. These landmarks are rendered cosmopolitan due to their complex urban historical trajectories that have been enmeshed in global cultural and capital flows. Mumbai's architectural icons such as the Victoria Terminus Train Station, the High Court, University Building, the Bombay Flat, the High rise condominium, and the Art Deco district are cultural chronotopes that symbolize nineteenth and twentieth century high-end globalization processes. These high-end architect-designed icons and public spaces were built with collaborations between European architects, Bombay-based architects, contractors, and construction labor. To accommodate the vast numbers of working classes in the city, including construction labor who built these icons, low-end global building types such as squatters settlements and chawls emerged to accommodate living spaces for the working class. These are spaces of low-end globalization, which are as cosmopolitan and innovative as their high-end counterparts. The first part ends with examples of films that show how these spaces of high-end and low-end globalization intersect and represent social life in the city. supporting documents: Bibliography Handout Lecture Abstract Quiz with Answers PREVIEW SLIDES

SHANGHAI IN CINEMA (PART 2) Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019.

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019

The second part of this lecture presents how films represent Shanghai’s current global status, th... more The second part of this lecture presents how films represent Shanghai’s current global status, the historic globalization processes that have
shaped the city, and the tensions between high-end and low-end globalization processes, using four films—Skyfall (2012, English Directed
by Sam Mendes), Meili xin shijie [Beautiful New World] (1999, Directed by Shi Runjiu), Yima de houxiandai shenghuo [The Postmodern
Life of My Aunt] (2006, Directed by Ann Hui), and Suzhou he [Suzhou River] (2000, Directed by Lou Ye). The lecture begins by examining
how Skyfall (2012, English Directed by Sam Mendes) represents Shanghai as a glitzy skyscraper city, in a perpetual present, and purged of
the historic processes that have shaped the city. Meili xin shijie [Beautiful New World] (1999) is set in the context of the 1990s consumer
revolution and the intense transformation of Shanghai through which the old city was torn down to build new skyscrapers. It is the story of
two people Zhang Baogen and Jin Fang who aspire to be consumers of this new world that is transforming Shanghai. They have been left at
the margins of this consumer revolution and globalization processes that have created the glossy Shanghai that we see in Skyfall. Thus, Meili
xin shijie [Beautiful New World] shows the globalization of Shanghai is an uneven process in which the benefits of globalization for the elite
few create social chasms that can be hard to bridge. Yima de houxiandai shenghuo [The Postmodern Life of My Aunt] (2006, Directed by
Ann Hui), represents Shanghai as an urban palimpsest, where drastic changes of political ideologies have resulted in radical transformation
of architecture and urbanism. Consequently, the characters constantly wander through older layers of Shanghai juxtaposed with the new. The
filmic representation of architecture and urbanism in The Postmodern Life of My Aunt depicts fragmentation and layering as visual tropes
that spatialize how the characters navigate the city. Suzhou he [Suzhou River] (2000, Directed by Lou Ye) represents how tensions between
high-end and low-end globalization processes, have shaped the Suzhou River Bank. In the film, the river functions as a metaphor for
globalization. It establishes Shanghai’s identity as the treaty port that brought China into contact with international trade. The film signifies
how global trade is closely tied to the globalization of culture.

Shanghai In Cinema (Part 1), Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019

The first part of this lecture chronicles two phases of Shanghai’s globalization. The first phase... more The first part of this lecture chronicles two phases of Shanghai’s globalization. The first phase known as “the treaty port phase” began with Britain’s victory in the First Opium War (1839–42), which inaugurated the making of Shanghai into a global city. This phase ended with the Japanese occupation of Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) and the subsequent Second World War, when most foreigners fled the city, bringing Shanghai's 101 years as a treaty port to an end. Shanghai was transformed into a socialist city under Chairman Mao Zedong (1949–1976) and the city’s emphasis shifted to heavy manufacturing industry under the influence of the Soviet Union’s planning methods. In the early 1990s, Deng Xiaoping, the leader of the world's largest Communist Party, embraced capitalism. The second phase of Shanghai’s globalization began in 1990s with Chairman Deng changing the ideological course of China’s destiny. This lecture investigates three urban areas that developed during the treaty port phase—the Bund, the Suzhou Creek Bank, and Shanghai's commercial spine, Nanjing Road. These urban areas are rendered cosmopolitan due to their complex urban historical trajectories that have been enmeshed in global cultural and capital flows. In addition to these urban areas, the lecture looks at two architectural types—the Art Deco skyscraper, a product of high-end globalization processes, and the lilong, an archetype of low-end globalization. Shanghai’s treaty port phase architectural icons such as— the Customs House (1925–1927), Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (1921–1923), The Cathay Hotel/Sassoon House (1929) on the Bund; the Neo-baroque Post-Office (1924), Broadway mansions (1934), Embankment Building (1933) on the Suzhou River; and Sun Sun (1926), Sincere (1917), and Wing On (1918) on the Nanjing Road are cultural chronotopes that symbolize nineteenth and twentieth century high-end globalization processes. These high-end architect-designed icons and public spaces were built with collaborations between European architects, Shanghai-based architects, contractors, and construction labor. To accommodate the large population of working classes in the city, including construction labor who built these icons, low-end global building types such as squatter settlements and lilong emerged. These are spaces of low-end globalization, which are as cosmopolitan and innovative as their high-end counterparts. This lecture chronicles the urban and architectural transformations during the second phase, or the current phase of Shanghai’s globalization through three key urban spaces– West Nanjing Road, Pudong, and People's Square and People's Park.

Indo-Saracenic Architecture, Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC)

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2017

In colonial historiography, architecture in South Asia is stylistically classified as Neoclassica... more In colonial historiography, architecture in South Asia is stylistically classified as Neoclassical, Gothic, and Indo-Saracenic. The debates on style in South Asia were closely tied to the nationalistic battles between proponents of the Neoclassical and Gothic styles in Britain. In the South Asian colonial context, the debate over an appropriate style hinged on how architectural styles should represent Britain’s status as the imperial ruler of South Asia—whether colonial architecture in South Asia should be built in styles that were prevalent in Britain or in Indic indigenous styles. After the mutiny when the British crown took over the governance of India, the quest for an appropriate assimilationist indigenous style led to the development of the Indo-Saracenic style as a modernized native style. It drew its aesthetic expression from a synthetic reconfiguring of regional indigenous architectures, which were combined with modern functional planning and engineering. The term “Saracenic” referred to Islamic architecture in nineteenth century India. G.H.R. Tillotson locates the Indo-Saracenic style in a larger global context to argue that it was a South Asian iteration of the global developments that were taking place in reconstituting Neoclassical and Gothic architectural styles with modern technologies and spatial planning. Indo-Saracenic architecture can thus be understood as part of a synchronic global revivalist phenomenon in the mid to late nineteenth century along the colonial networks of the Empire.

Art Deco Mumbai in and Miami Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC)

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), , 2018

This lecture is based on the assumption that Art Deco offers a unique lens into the globalizing p... more This lecture is based on the assumption that Art Deco offers a unique lens into the globalizing processes and networks along which architects, objects, and ideas circulated. This lecture proposes that the circulation, development, and consumption of Art Deco objects, buildings, films, and art works represents an unprecedented compression of space and time. Art Deco architects freely borrowed and mixed motifs, forms, and visual cues from architectures and material cultures of ancient and distant civilizations—Egyptian, African, East Asian, Mughal, and Pre-Columbian. The Art Deco palette also included contemporary European Avant-Garde architecture and visual culture. Critics label this kitsch, however, this very eclectic and excessive aesthetic of Art Deco created buildings that represent the collapsing of cultural and temporal compartments—representing a dizzying global pool of knowledge, travel, and mobility.

A Brief History of Sustainable Architecture

Otto Koenigsberger's Architectural Photographic Archive in India 1939–1951

Beyond Alternative Modernities

G wendolyn Wright's work first demonstrated how the colonies and the metropole were intertwined i... more G wendolyn Wright's work first demonstrated how the colonies and the metropole were intertwined in the shaping of paradigms of modernist architecture and urbanism through her analysis of French colonies—Indochina, Morocco, and Madagascar—as " champs d'expérience " or sites of experimentation , where modernist ideas were tested for their efficacy before they were implemented in the metropole. 1 Wright's book was crucial in recognizing the omission of the colonies in modernist architectural histories, but did not unearth the agency of the colonized in shaping architectural and urban discourses. Recent histories of indigenous modernities, in the case of Asian architecture and urbanism, such as Jyoti Hosagrahar's Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urba-nism have proven how colonized subjects were dynamic actors in the domestication of metropolitan architecture and planning ideals. 2 Through the lens of philanthropic architectural projects in Bom-bay (now Mumbai), Preeti Chopra demonstrates how colonialism was a collaborative enterprise in which the mercantile elite and colonial agencies formed ad-hoc alliances, which illuminate how the categories of the colonizer and colonized are not as distinctly delineated as we imagine them to be. 3 Swati Chattopadhyay's scholarship on Calcutta and Rebecca Brown's history of Patna destabilize the " white town/black town " model of the colonial city. 4 Brenda Yeoh's work on Singapore documents how resistance to urbanism as a spatial tool for regulating cities validates how the colonized were never passive subjects of modernity. 5 Recent scholarship such as Vikramaditya Prakash's Chandigarh's Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India and Sanjeev Vidyarthi's book on Jaipur One Idea, Many Plans: An American City Design Concept in Independent India, reveal how citizens of newly formed nation-states were active agents in translating and transforming top-down modernist architecture and planning ideals. 6 Duanfang Lu's work has decentred modernist architectural and

“Otto Koenigsberger and Modernist Historiography”. Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand. Volume 26, Number 1:(2016) 226–250.

Otto Koenigsberger's (1908Koenigsberger's ( -1999 work in India (1939India ( -1951 complicates th... more Otto Koenigsberger's (1908Koenigsberger's ( -1999 work in India (1939India ( -1951 complicates the idea that tropical architecture was a strain of European modernism that was dispersed to the colonial tropics along the imperial networks of the British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s. Koenigsberger, a German émigré architect, arrived in India in 1939 in princely Mysore -a state under indirect British rule. As the state architect in Mysore (1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945)(1946)(1947)(1948), he designed numerous buildings -schools, hospitals, offices, police stations, palace extensions, pavilions, colleges, factories, and bus shelters. In 1951, he emigrated from India to London and, in 1954, established the department of tropical architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. His treatise on tropical architecture, Manual of Tropical Housing and Building (1974) offers a critique of modernisation, which originated in Koenigsberger's failed and successful projects in India. Yet, until recently the majority of his architectural work in India was unknown. This paper discusses the absence of Koenigsberger's architectural oeuvre in South Asian architectural histories and argues that uncovering his work in India offers a missing link between colonial and post-colonial architectural cultures, and global networks of tropical architecture. His career illuminates how multiple actors outside the colonial state apparatus -such as the Maharajah's regime with their sovereign ideals and independent entrepreneurial clientsshaped his ideas of modernism.

"Otto Koenigsberger and Tropical Architecture". Arris – The Journal of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH). Volume 25: 2–17.

Dharavi Redevelopment Plan: Contested Architecture and Urbanism

<<<<<Baweja, Vandana."Dharavi Redevelopment Project: Contested Architecture and Urbanism.” In The... more <<<<<Baweja, Vandana."Dharavi Redevelopment Project: Contested Architecture and Urbanism.” In The Expanding Periphery and the Migrating Center: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), March 19–21, 2015, Toronto, Ontario, edited by Lola Sheppard and David Ruy, Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Press, 2015.>>>>>

Dharavi, located in Mumbai in India, is one of Asia’s largest slums and shot to global fame with its depiction in the Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire. In 2004, Dharavi Redevelopment Project was launched as a public-private alliance between the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) and global corporations. Its principal architect Mukesh Mehta listed the key goals of the Dharavi Redevelopment Project as: “sustainable development; rehabilitation of all the slum families and businesses; reestablishment of non-polluting industries; and the integration of slum dwellers with main stream residents.” The Dharavi Redevelopment Project has been marketed as a form of sustainable urbanism through the HIKES (health, income, knowledge, environment, and socio-cultural development) program. The HIKES program, which effectively realizes the “world-class city” urban vision of neoliberal urbanists is postured as sustainable urbanism, making it attractive to neoliberal urbanists and middle class environmentalists alike. In theory, the Dharavi Redevelopment Project would provide Dharavi residents with cross-subsidized materially upgraded permanent high-rise modern housing, piped water, sanitized waste disposal, drainage, and green parks. Yet Dharavi residents have rejected it as a hubristic unsustainable modernizing project, designed to evict and disenfranchise them. This paper examines why the Dharavi Redevelopment Project is a contested model of architecture and urbanism to argue that the project is emblematic of class warfare over architectural typologies, urban space, urbanism, and the role of the state in making world-class cities. The Dharavi Redevelopment Project reduces slum rehabilitation to a simplistic problem of numbers in terms of Floor Space Index (FSI). At the core of the battle over Dharavi Redevelopment Project is a cultural conflict over urban citizenship and what the ideal city should be.

Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture

Baweja, Vandana. "Otto Koenigsberger and the Tropicalization of British Architectural Culture." I... more

The Porch as a Threshold in Between Architecture and Landscape Architecture: Igor B. Polevitzky’s Birdcage House (1949) and the Florida Tropical Home

Baweja, Vandana. “The Porch as a Threshold in Between Architecture and Landscape Architecture: Ig... more Baweja, Vandana. “The Porch as a Threshold in Between Architecture and Landscape Architecture: Igor B. Polevitzky’s Birdcage House (1949) and the Florida Tropical Home,” Wolkenkuckucksheim | Cloud-Cuckoo-Land | Воздушный замок, (Internationale Zeitschrift zur Theorie der Architektur) International Journal of Architectural Theory, Volume 20, Number 34 (2015): 73–94.

Sustainability and The Architectural History Survey

Architecture and urbanism have engaged sustainability as an action-oriented objective through the... more Architecture and urbanism have engaged sustainability as an action-oriented objective through the practice of green design and sustainable urbanism, which have several iterations. Architectural history has yet to produce a significant body of work in response to environmental discourses that are currently dominated by sustainability. The architectural history survey – when taught from an environmental history perspective – can serve the purpose of understanding not just sustainability, but the relationship of architecture and urbanism to the environment through history. I address the question, how can sustainability, a 1980s paradigm, be addressed in the teaching of the architectural history survey that ranges from prehistory to contemporary times? Sustainability is a dominant contemporary paradigm of environmentalism produced through economic development discourses of environmental management. I argue that the architectural history survey can provide opportunities to engage environmental histories in unearthing and disseminating ecological histories of architecture and urbanism. The architectural history survey – when taught from an environmental history perspective – can serve the purpose of understanding the environmental discourses that have informed sustainability historically, across different times and cultures. I propose that teaching architectural history within the larger field of environmental history is one way through which sustainability, as an environmental management paradigm, can be grasped, defined, and critiqued. Environmental history is one of the fastest growing fields of history, and is not a subdiscipline of history but a metadiscipline, given its scope and inclusivity. Writing architectural histories within the metadiscipline of environmental history is emerging as a new way of producing architectural histories. The architectural history survey taught from an environmental history perspective can contribute to an understanding of fundamental concepts about architecture and cities within the environmental discourse and therefore position the idea of sustainability historically.

Architecture and Urbanism in Slumdog millionaire: From Bombay to Mumbai

This article proposes that the film Slumdog Millionaire depicts a key moment in the history of I... more This article proposes that the film Slumdog Millionaire depicts a key moment in the history of India — the transformation during the 1990s of Bombay into Mumbai. In the film, the life trajectories of Jamal Malik (its Muslim protagonist), his Hindu love Latika, and his older brother Salim play out against the metamorphosis of the city from conditions of modernity to postmodernity. Recent scholarship has suggested this transformation involves the erasure of Bombay's former cosmopolitanism. The article argues that Slumdog Millionaire constructs an urban narrative that spatializes and critiques this change, and that is built on two tropes. First is the erasure of Bombay's complex local histories to facilitate its reinvention as monocultural, neoliberal Mumbai. This is expressed through the use of settings where the city's former architectural palimpsest is being razed to create homogenized redevelopment areas. Second is the increasing exclusion of the poor from public space — a point the film makes through its selective use (and avoidance) of traditionally emblematic public spaces. Overall, the film narrates Bombay/Mumbai's recent urban history as a class war between what Rahul Mehrotra has called the " kinetic " and the " static " cities. The article also builds on Nezar AlSayyad's argument that cinematic representations frequently draw on urban discourses in narrative construction — and, conversely, that cinema may serve as a lens through which to examine the cultural foundations upon which these discourses are built. In this regard, Slumdog Millionaire refers to three urban/ architectural spaces invested with specific ideological meaning: Dharavi, an organic settlement of vernacular architectures used to represent old Bombay; Lake Castle, an apartment building used to depict Bombay's neoliberal transformation into Mumbai; and Victoria Terminus, the Gothic Revival train station which serves as a site of contestation between those who would preserve the city's multiple histories and those who would overwrite them.

What’s Next for Architectural History? Sustainability and the Architectural History Survey

Baweja, Vandana."What’s Next for Architectural History? Sustainability and the Architectural Hist... more Baweja, Vandana."What’s Next for Architectural History? Sustainability and the Architectural History Survey." In Where Do You Stand: Proceedings of the 99th Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), March 3–6, 2011, Montréal, Canada, edited by Alberto Pérez-Goméz, Anne Cormier and Annie Pedret, 452–57, Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Press, 2011.

Messy Modernisms: Otto Koenigsberger’s Early Work in Princely Mysore 1939–1941

Baweja, Vandana. “Messy Modernisms: Otto Koenigsberger’s Early Work in Princely Mysore 1939–1941,... more

Book Review: The Culture of Nature in the History of Design. Edited by Kjetil Fallan. New York: Routledge, 2019.

Environmental History, 2021

Review of A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience, By Jiat-Hwee Chang in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Volume 76, Number 4, (December 2017):551–553.

Book Review of Claire Zimmerman, Photographic Architecture in the Twentieth Century.

Book review of A Joint Enterprise: Indian Elites and the Making of British Bombay, By Preeti Chopra

Review of in Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum  Volume 19, Num... more

Review of House, but No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay's Suburbs, 1898–1964. By Nikhil Rao

Review of House, but No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay's Suburbs, 1898–1964. By Nikhil Rao in... more

Book review of The Greening of Architecture: A Critical History and Survey of Contemporary Sustainable Architecture and Urban Design

Review of The Greening of Architecture: A Critical History and Survey of Contemporary Sustainable... more

Book Review of One idea, many plans: an American city design concept in independent India Sanjeev Vidyarthi

One idea, many plans: an American city design concept in independent India Vandana Baweja Planni... more

BAWEJA Conference prorgams

Film and Architecture Syllabus

ARC 6912 Modern India Architecture and Urbanism Syllabus

This course is a critical examination of the architecture and urbanism of South Asia from 1757, w... more This course is a critical examination of the architecture and urbanism of South Asia from 1757, which is considered the year of the beginning of British East India Company conquest in India, to now. The course will encourage students to examine how architectural and urban histories intersect with colonial and post-colonial theories. We have four distinct chronological segments in the class: 1) Beginning of the British Rule to the Mutiny: 1757-1857 2) The Mutiny to planning of the New Delhi, the Imperial Capital of India:1857-1930 3) Architecture and nationalism after Independence: 1947-1990 4) Current phase of globalization: 1990-now This course will begin with the early development of colonial port cities such as Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. Students will study the architectural and urban transformations in the Indian sub-continent that resulted from the cultural contact with the British Empire. To address the central question of how the colonizers and colonized transformed their built environment, the course will be organized around topics such as colonial knowledge; the Bungalow; discourses on colonial domesticity; colonial representations of Indian architecture; urban planning of colonial cities; hygiene, health, and sanitation; hill stations; princely palaces; and public buildings. We will look at what happened after colonialism in independent South Asia. We will study Cities such as Chandigarh, that developed in response to the partition of the Indian sub-continent into the nation-states of India, Pakistan, and later, Bangladesh. We will examine urban formations such as steel towns (Jamshedpur, Bhillai, Bhadravati), refugee towns, and new capitals (Dhaka, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar, Islamabad). We will study the architecture of the Indian sub-continent after Independence and look at the work of architects such as The readings offered in this course will address many questions, such as: How did colonial power determine space, urbanism, and architecture? How were these intentions subverted? How did colonial architecture and urbanism generate specific spatial configurations that constructed social power and identity? How were architecture and urbanism used to regulate society? How were architecture and urbanism understood as an object of knowledge and reform? How were class and racial differences constructed and negotiated through architecture and urbanism in a colonial setting? How did modern scientific discourses such as medicine, sanitation, and hygiene intersect with the practices of architecture and urbanism? How did modern science generate new urban forms, social order, and mechanisms of control? How were these new forms resisted and domesticated? We will examine how nationalism informed the formation of New towns in India. We will study Modernism in the context of international networks to examine South Asia as a node of cultural exchange through the work Eckhart Mutheius, Le Corbuiser, Louis Kahn, Otto Koenigsberger, Jane Drew, and Maxwell Fry.

Sustainable Architecture Undergrad Syllabus

The objective of this course to examine how environmentalism has informed architectural discourse... more The objective of this course to examine how environmentalism has informed architectural discourses, and how discourses on the built environment and urbanism have impacted environmentalism globally. The course will introduce students to the various paradigms of environmentalism, such as: environmental apocalypticism, the limits of resources, environmental health and toxic discourse, environmental justice, sustainability, and urban environmentalism, and how these have impacted architecture and urbanism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will look at Sustainable Architecture as a discursive construct and examine the competing logics of Green buildings. We will look at environmentalism and sustainable architecture globally with special emphasis on different meanings of sustainable architecture in the global south and the global north. We will begin with the nineteenth century concerns about hygiene and health and its impact on architecture globally. We will examine how environmental health discourses including hygiene, Silent Spring, Sick Building Syndrome, and obesity, shaped architectural debates. We will consider how debates over equity in the third world have impacted how we think of social sustainability in the context of the built environment. We will not only look at architects, but environmental thinkers such as We will look at the work of architects such as Laurie Baker, Bernard Rudofsky, and Hassan Fathy, impacted our thinking of the relationship between architecture and the environment. We will look at how counter cultural communes such Drop City in Colorado and Auroville in India transformed the geodesic dome from a mass produced object into a countercultural symbol. We will study the material and architectural transformations in fast growing economies like China and India, and how these developments have shaped the sustainability debate in the contemporary context.

Summer Course Asian Art and Modernity, at the Harn Museum, UF.

by Vandana Baweja and Eric Segal

A PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM MODERN ARCHITECTURE AS PLACE-MAKING IN FLORIDA

A PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM MODERN ARCHITECTURE AS PLACE-MAKING IN FLORIDA Date: Sunday, February 7, 201... more A PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM
MODERN ARCHITECTURE
AS PLACE-MAKING IN FLORIDA

Date: Sunday, February 7, 2016, 1:00 to 6:00 PM
Location: The Historic Thomas Center, 302 NE 6th Ave, Gainesville, Florida 32601
Phone:(352) 393-8539

ORGANIZERS
VANDANA BAWEJA, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, University of Florida.

MARTHA KOHEN
Professor, School of Architecture, University of Florida.
Founding Member and Board Member of DoCoMoMo Florida Chapter

JOHN NEMMERS
Archivist for the Architecture Archives; Associate Chair of the Department of Special and Area Studies Collections, University of Florida.

SPONSORS

FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL

CENTER FOR HUMANITIES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

SAMUEL P. HARN MUSEUM OF ART
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

GAINESVILLE MODERN
GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA

HISTORIC PRESERVATION PROGRAM
COLLEGE OF DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION, AND PLANNING
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
COLLEGE OF DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION, AND PLANNING
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Panelist, “Feminist Scholarship and the Environment,” Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research, University of Florida, October 14th, 2011, Gainesville, Florida.

“The Missing Modernist Histories of Otto Koenigsberger’s Architecture in India (1939–1951),” Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi, India, December 9, 2014.

Otto H. Koenigsberger (1908–99) a German émigré architect, arrived in India in 1939 in princely M... more Otto H. Koenigsberger (1908–99) a German émigré architect, arrived in India in 1939 in princely Mysore in South India—a state under indirect British rule then governed by Maharajah Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV (1884–1940). Koenigsberger worked as an architect for the Mysore Government's Public Works Department (PWD). During his tenure in Mysore, from 1939 to 1948, Koenigsberger designed hundreds of buildings for princely Mysore. In 1948 Koenigsberger moved to Delhi and became the Federal Director of Housing (1948–1951) for the ministry of health in Nehru's government. His work for Nehru involved both planning and architecture projects to resettle partition refugees. To solve the massive housing demand posed by partition refugees, Koenigsberger proposed a prefabricated housing module for resettling the refugees. The housing units did not succeed, and Koenigsberger subsequently resigned from his position as the Federal Director of Housing and moved to London, where he later founded the department of tropical architecture (1954–1971) at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture. Koenigsberger headed the department of tropical architecture from 1957 until it closed in 1971. The fact that Koenigsberger designed several hundred buildings in India is largely unknown in the architectural histories of South Asia. The speaker in this talk examines the reasons for the erasure of Koenigsberger's architectural work from South Asian architectural histories. The speaker proposes that unearthing Koenigsberger's architectural work in princely Mysore and its impact on the tropical architecture in London can offer new ways of looking at the global circulation of Modernism. Koenigsberger's career challenges the Euro-centric modernist canon that perpetuates a diffusionist narrative of the spread of Modernism.

"Slumdog and the City: Bombay and Mumbai," History, Theory, Criticism Workshop, The Wolfsonian Museum and Florida International University, Miami, Florida, February 24–25, 2011.

Sustainability Committee, American Society of Environmental History (ASEH).

Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) 100th anniversary Steering Committee.

SAH Founders Award Committee

Julia Scalzo, “All a Matter of Taste: The Problem of Victorian and Edwardian Shop Fronts” JSAH, v... more Julia Scalzo, “All a Matter of Taste: The Problem of Victorian and
Edwardian Shop Fronts” JSAH, volume 68, March 2009.
Deploying the deceptively narrow topic of storefront design in
England from the early 19th to the early 20th Centuries, Julia
Scalzo’s essay “All a Matter of Taste: The Problem of Victorian and
Edwardian Shop Fronts” uncovers a topic that will help define
the architectural landscape for much of the 20th Century: the
tension between the consumers of mass culture and the professional
arbiters of taste. Scalzo skillfully tracks how taste – understood
as disinterested aesthetic appreciation – was used to create a
desired distance between commerce and architecture, between lay
builder and professional architect, and between popular culture
and an artistic elite. The humble storefront played a key and
controversial role in this drama of early professionalization. Indeed,
the moralizing virtue of restraint, a sentiment that dominates
modernist debates, is traced back to the heavily contested territory
of that prime signifier of commerce: the shop front.
Julia Scalzo’s essay has a provocative and clear thesis, executes
a broad historical sweep, draws on diverse and original sourcematerial, and is presented with refined craft and delicate wit. While 2010 SAH
celebrating the excellence of Scalzo’s fine essay, the jury notes with
pleasure the overall strength of the selected finalists for the 2010
Founders’ Award.
Kent Kleinman, Cornell University
Vandana Baweja, University of Florida
Sevil Enginsoy Ekinci, Middle Eastern Technical University

"South Asian Architectural and Urban Historiographies," The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), Chicago, Illinois, April 21–25, 2010.

"Architecture and Environment: Re-Visions of Swadeshi and City in the Making of a Global Green Design Movement," Association of Asian Studies (AAS) 2010 Annual Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 25–28, 2010.

“Greening the Architectural History Survey”,” Understanding Sustainability: Perspectives from the Humanities, at Portland Center for the Public Humanities, Portland State University, May 20–22, 2010.

"Slumdog and the City: Bombay, the Global Cosmopolis," The First European Architectural Historians Network (EAHN) Conference, Guimarães, Portugal, June 17–20, 2010.

"Bombay and Mumbai in Slumdog Millionaire," Sustainable Cities: 5th Biennial Conference of the Urban History Association (UHA), Las Vegas, Nevada, October 20–23, 2010.

"Slumdog and the City: The Utopia of Bombay," The Utopia of Tradition: The 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), Beirut, Lebanon, December 15–18, 2010.

iaste is an interdisciplinary forum where scholars from various disciplines and countries can exc... more iaste is an interdisciplinary forum where scholars from various disciplines and countries can exchange ideas, discuss methods and approaches, and share findings. As opposed to disciplinary associations, iaste is a nonprofit organization concerned with the comparative and cross-cultural understanding of traditional habitat as an expression of informal cultural conventions. iaste' s purpose is to serve as an umbrella association for all scholars studying vernacular, indigenous, popular and traditional environments. Current activities of iaste include the organization of biennial conferences on selected themes in traditional-environments research, the publication of edited books on selected themes, a public outreach program which includes supporting films and documentaries, and the publication of the Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Working Paper Series, which includes all papers presented at iaste conferences and accepted for publication.

"What’s Next for Architectural History? Sustainability and the Architectural History Survey," Where Do You Stand: The 99th Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), Montréal, Canada, March 3–6, 2011.

"Tropical Architecture and Green Architecture," History and Sustainability: Stories of Progress, Hubris, Decline, and Resilience: American Society of Environmental History (ASEH) 2011 Annual Conference, Phoenix, Arizona, April 13–17, 2011.

"The Tropical Body and Tropical Architecture," The 100th Annual Conference of the College Art Association (CAA), Los Angeles, California, February 22–25, 2012.

“Vernacular Architecture and Climate Change,” Subtropical Cities: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Fall Conference, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, October 17–19, 2013.

“The Creation of Comfort and Climate Responsive Design: The Environmental Design Treatise,” Whose Tradition? The 14th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, December 14–17, 2014.

“Architecture and The Imagination of a Mysore Nation,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2015 Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois, March 26–29, 2015.

"Dharavi Redevelopment Project: Contested Architecture and Urbanism,” The Expanding Periphery and the Migrating Center: The 103rd Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), Toronto, Ontario, Canada, March 19–21, 2015.

“Architecture and Climate,” Turning Protest into Policy: Environmental Values and Governance in Changing Societies: American Society of Environmental History (ASEH) 2015 Annual conference, Washington DC, March 18–22, 2015.

Sustainability Committee Roundtable: “Environmental History in Sustainability Studies Education,” American Society of Environmental History (ASEH) 2015 Annual conference, Washington DC, March 18–22, 2015.

“Tropical Architecture and the Reinvention of Vernacular Architecture in the British Colonial Tropics,” Out of the Loop: The 35th Annual Meeting of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Chicago, Illinois, June 3–7, 2015.

“Florida Tropical Modernism and Tropical Architecture,” The 33rd Annual Meeting of The Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH), San Antonio, Texas, October 14–17, 2015.

“Otto Koenigsberger and Neighborhood Planning in India,” Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) 16th National Conference, Los Angeles, California, November 5–8, 2015.

“The Florida Tropical Home (1933–1965),” Environmental History and Its Publics: American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) 2016 Annual Conference, Seattle, Washington, March 30–April 3, 2016.

“Otto Koenigsberger and Tropical Planning,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference 2016, Seattle, Washington, March 31–April 3, 2016

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