Figure 6 - uploaded by Hilde Heynen
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General view of the exhibition halls at the Cinquantenaire in 1880 (photograph published in Piet Lombaerde, Leopold II. Koning-Bouwheer, Gent, Snoeck-Ducaju, 1995, p.86).
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... Etterbeek, alongside the planned ringroad, there was a former parade ground, which was designated as the site for the national exhibition of 1880, held to celebrate Belgium's ftieth anniversary. Two grand exhibition halls were built, in an iron-and-glass construction with stone façades (Fig. 6). They were joined in a monumen- talising layout by an arcade and an arch construc- tion, which were at that time provisionally built in wood and plaster. The whole site, which is presently occupied by a series of museums housed in the buildings from 1880 and later extensions, is known as the Cinquantenaire, referring to the ftieth ...
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... When the public sector is involved, the development of such projects is justified on the basis that they serve collective interests. However, this is often entangled with the pursuit of power that serves the political interests of narrow groups, even when the declared goal is to use architecture to aid the construction of collective identities (Heynen 1999;Vale 1992). In the European context, this means that taxpayers' money might be used to serve interests that might not be collectively shared. ...
For nearly as long as there have been urban centres, exceptional architecture projects have contributed to transforming city form and city fortunes. In this special issue of ‘European Planning Studies’, we focus on star architecture and its ability to contribute to urban transformation, with articles on the phenomenon of star architecture from a range of disciplines. Star architecture is a topic where concerns about place, identity, economy, innovation and communication intersect. In this introduction to the special issue, we overview how star architecture participates in urban transformations, and address how research into star architecture connects to ideas of identity and branding, the media, the economy, urban governance and architecture itself. We also overview methodologies for studying star architecture and urban transformation: the choice of research methods and research approach affects the problematization and the types of research questions that can be answered. Studying star architecture offers insight into disparate fields including network analysis, media studies, geography, planning, cultural economy, identity, branding and spectacle. By looking beyond economic effects, researchers can expand the audience for studies of star architecture, and more fully understand its role in urban transformation.
... Jencks (2006) argues that the term "iconic" refers to the architectural specificity of buildings that facilitate their transformation to become icons, that is, identity-generating and attention-capturing symbols of a city, affecting both the perceptions of visitors and the local population. While monuments petrified collective memories (Heynen 1999), iconic buildings petrify "meanings [that] are plural, mixed as metaphor, and carry a paranoiac charge but, more importantly, carry significant and relevant suggestion" (Jencks 2011). This is why iconic buildings use "enigmatic signifiers" (Jencks 2011). ...
Based on the idea that star architecture projects cannot be read at ground level only, instead, the media is their primary site of reading as Foster (2008) has argued of Pop architecture, this chapter reads star architecture projects through the media. The “Bilbao effect” idea has supported the circulation of the unproven assumption that a star architecture project can disrupt or transform the image of a city in the media. Making use of case studies of three public cultural facilities commissioned to star architects and put into use in three medium-sized cities in Europe in the past 10 years, this chapter investigates the extent to which a transformation of exposure in the print media has accompanied the development of star architecture projects in their respective cities. Findings of quantitative research of selected international and national newspapers and media platforms are presented. This chapter concludes that despite possible increase in the inauguration year, star architecture can have quite short-lived quantitative media effects.
... Jencks (2011, 4) argues that "the iconic building has replaced the monument", the building type that had a clear iconography and distinct cultural code. While monuments petrified collective memories (Heynen 1999), iconic buildings petrify "meanings [that] are plural, mixed as metaphor, and carry a paranoiac charge but, more importantly, carry significant and relevant suggestion" (Jencks 2011, 213). This is why iconic buildings use 'enigmatic signifiers' (Jencks 2011). ...
Public authorities’ declared rationale for the commission of star architects is based on the hypothesis that due to their specific capacities, buildings designed by star architects can have significant effects on the economic and social performances of their respective cities. With a conceptual impact model on hand, this paper illustrates the specific offerings of star architectural projects and the underlying hypotheses that link these offerings to intended and effective impacts. The investigation of three case studies shows that different rationales guided the development of these ‘special’ projects. The application of the impact model assists in identifying these differences.
... Literature on collective memory shows how constantly incidents of the past are tied in fundamentally with social networks and landscapes (BOYER, 1994;HALBWACHS, 1980;HEYNEN, 1999;ABDELMONEM & SELIM, 2012). Memory occurs in the present to inform our habitual associations and way of life, not distinct from its archaeological presence. ...
This paper examines the position of planning practices operated under precise guidelines for displaying modernity. Cultivating the spatial qualities of Cairo since the 1970s has unveiled centralised ideologies and systems of governance and economic incentives. I present a discussion of the wounds that result from the inadequate upgrading ventures in Cairo, which I argue, created scars as enduring evidence of unattainable planning methods and processes that undermined its locales. In this process, the paper focuses on the consequences of eviction rather than the planning methods in one of the city’s traditional districts. Empirical work is based on interdisciplinary research, public media reports and archival maps that document actions and procedures put in place to alter the visual, urban, and demographic characteristics of Cairo’s older neighbourhoods against a backdrop of decay to shift towards a global spectacular. The paper builds a conversation about the power and fate these spaces were subject to during hostile transformations that ended with their being disused. Their existence became associated with sores on the souls of its ex-inhabitants, as outward signs of inward scars showcasing a lack of equality and social justice in a context where it was much needed.
... Creating sets of architectural values gave the illusion of a common history, and of 'moving together' through history. (Jones, 2011: 59) Exercises of identifying buildings with the nation are not always successful (see Heynen, 1999b) and require a deal of skill on the part of the architect and timing on the part of the commissioner in order to be so. The 'style' chosen for European architecture styles was often an essentially contested choice with "social meanings attached to particular historicist styles and buildings taking on a 'moral' dimension." ...
This research assesses how contact with Europe and America from 1853 created a new notion of the modern in Japan and colonial Taiwan, through exploring the architectural expressions of Japanese architects. Taking a detailed look at relevant theories of the modern, and the geo-political, governmental and intellectual histories of Meiji Japan, I analyse how Japan used architecture in their nation-building process, and later the role of architecture in building colonial modernity in Taiwan. The study explores how colonial buildings crystallised Japan’s fledgling modernity, cumulating in an extensive case study of the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office, focusing on how the building spatially embedded hierarchical relationships, and how through mastery of European architectural forms it became an artefact of techno-cultural superiority.
Through these analyses I find that whilst Japan’s modernity was genuine (in that it was rationally innovative and fashionably reflected up-to-date forms and technologies) the conditions that produced it were sufficiently different that Japan effectively created a split in the idea of what it meant to be modern. Whilst modernity in Europe occurred over a long period, driven by the Enlightenment and the growth of imperialism, in Japan the primary driver was the desire to be seen as civilised, which required instrumental utilisation of reason (and later colonisation) to achieve. Japan’s architectural modernity was intrinsically tied to the state’s drive towards Great Power status, dominance over East Asian neighbours and the reframing of a national Japanese cultural identity as intrinsically superior. These diverse aims led to a unique cultural gap between public and private life developing in Japan, and to Japan politically and culturally splitting off from East Asia.
This thesis looks in detail at the story of kindai (modern) architecture in Japan, through exploring a number of themes. First, how translated concepts entered Japan through Josiah Conder, the first Professor of Architecture in Japan, who instituted a new ranking of building types that placed indigenous architecture below European masonry. Second, how political centralisation led to the creation of a modern Japanese architecture style promoted by Conder’s successor TATSUNO Kingo, which became a national style through its use first in Japan and later more extensively in Japan’s colonies. Third, due to the foundational splits in the basis for architectural education in Japan, new social boundaries were created through the Governor-General’s Office which allowed colonial architects to shore their sense of superiority whilst avoiding Orientalist rackets. In spite of this the building remains equivocal: the modern split between Japanese administration and residential architecture even applied to the Governor-General, and implied Euro-American authority remains through the necessary spatial and stylistic appropriations. As the first study that traces the formation of modern architecture in Taiwan to Japan and further back to Victorian Britain, this thesis provides a trans-disciplinary contribution to the field.
... To this end I have sought to approach architecture with a sense of the ways in which it is drawn into state projects at the forefront. Architecture has historically been an important way that states have sought to codify collective identities, such as the nation (see, for example , Lasswell 1979;Vale 1992;Crinson 1996;Heynen 1999a;Jones 2002;McNeil and Tewdwr-Jones 2003), with the commission of major architects, revealing the intent of regimes from ancient Rome to the European Union to express something of their self-understanding in the cultural sphere. 1 From the point of view of states, the promise of architecture is in its potential meaningfully to connect citizens into political projects through material forms of buildings, which can resonate sufficiently with lived social experience. Untangling this relationship requires engagement with the ways in which architects and architectural projects are mobilized by political regimes. ...
... Modernism's claims to transform the built environment and the social order were reliant on overcoming a dualism at the heart of the field itself in connecting a political practice to a radical aesthetic and technological programme. Although a thorough discussion of modernism is beyond the limits of this chapter, a brief description of some of its ideal typical features allows us to situate the debates about critical architecture (for more extensive surveys of architectural modernism see, for example , Habermas 1989a;Frampton 1990;Ghirardo 1996;Heynen 1999a). The modernist vision was posited on the tranformatory potential of radical architectural programmes, with claims made for the potential of architects to be at the vanguard of revolutionary cultural activity directed at facilitating social justice. ...
... This contention is clearly evidenced by the major architectural projects the world over that in addition to their primary function also serve a memorial purpose. In such cases architects seek to reconcile a range of competing contingent functions and meanings, with their work taking on characteristics akin to monuments in an early modern age, a period of time when the built environment was one of the few spaces in which socially significant memories could be communicated widely across society (see Heynen 1999b;Tonkiss 2005). The capacity of states and other polities to communicate social messages across rapidly expanding nineteenth-century urban citizenry led to the ascription of messages onto the built environment via a whole range of monuments and statues and major public buildings designed to have a memorial function; the countless monuments and plaques that characterize capitals and other large cities the world over are testament to this tendency (Therbon 2002) (Ruskin's notion of buildings as 'storehouses of memory ' (1992 [1849]) is to be understood in this context). ...
States have long been active in commissioning architecture, which affords one way to embed political projects within socially meaningful cultural forms. Such state-led architecture is often designed not only to house the activities of government, but also to reflect political-economic shifts and to chime with a variety of 'internal' and 'external' publics as part of wider discourses of belonging. From the vantage point of sociology, this context necessitates critical engagement with the role of leading architects' designs and discourses relative to politicized identity projects. Focusing on the mobilization of architecture in periods of social change, The Sociology of Architecture uses critical sociological frameworks to assess the distinctive force added to political projects by architects and their work. Through engagement with a range of illustrative examples from contested contemporary and historical architectural projects, Paul Jones analyses some of the ways in which architects have sought to.
This chapter critically explores the process of storing memories of the 2004 Tsunami disaster in Banda Aceh’s “beautiful” tsunami museum. Drawing on interviews and observations at the Tsunami Museum, the chapter argues that the museum has emerged as a new symbol representing Banda Aceh as a disaster area. However, this museum is selective in its representation, forgetting other key defining aspects of Banda Ache’s history, particularly memories of the thirty-years (1946–2005) of conflict, a painful period of Acehnese history. It is contended that the Tsunami Museum deliberately masks this conflict, and instead focuses on the 2004 tsunami in a manner that promotes government action in Banda Aceh in a positive light. The museum’s monumental form and beauty project a sense of authority and tranquillity to mask the memories of conflict. Applying Kaplan’s theory of unwanted beauty to our analysis of the Tsunami Museum, we argue that while memorials adopt authority and tranquillity to enhance a sense of remembering, this very beauty can be manoeuvred to exclude ugly memories. In sum, we contend that what you see in public spaces is not a complete story.
Drawing from the experiences of various architectural products explored in the previous chapters, the chapter examines the connections between gender, architecture and space. Gendered architectural production and materialization manifest through the various forms of under-representation of women in the process of historic construction and preservation. The constancy of architectural appropriation under successive regimes is critical in the context of pushing the boundaries of analysis beyond the decolonizing narrative as the post-colonial state has equally been widely accused of deepening democratic deficit and perpetuating marginalization of minority groups and individuals such as women.
