Date:
Email: ieanewhistories@gmail.com
Paris, April 9 – 10 – 11, 2025
Institut d'études avancées – École nationale supérieure d'architecture Paris-Malaquais / Université PSL
This symposium explores the interplay between environmental and decolonial approaches in architectural research. It examines the epistemological implications of concepts like the Anthropocene and their relevance to rewriting architectural history. Discussions will include macro-historical and micro-historical methodologies and their impact on the field.
Practical information + Application procedure and deadlines
Proposals for contributions should be sent no later than January 15, 2025 to: ieanewhistories@gmail.com.
They should be written in English or French.
Each proposal, in a single .pdf file, must specify the theme and include name, email address, professional affiliation, address, telephone number, a short scientific biography (200 words max.) of the author, a title and a 500-word abstract The abstract will be used to assess the relevance of the proposal, and should include a research question, methodology, corpus/sources/field and bibliographical references. The file must be named as follows: Ax (1 or 2 according to your choice or 1+2), hyphen, surname.
Timeline
Text between 1,500 and 2,000 words, in English or French, outlining the oral presentation and the general structure of the article to come, including an essential bibliography. It will be a prerequisite for the drafting of papers for publication in the proceedings, which will be subject to a selection process amer the colloquium. Precise editorial standards for extended abstracts will be sent at a later date.
Steering Committee
Diane Aymard (AAU/CRENAU-Nantes), Federico Ferrari (ENSAPM-ACS/AUSser-PSL), Marilena Kourniati (ENSAPLV-AHTTEP/AUSser), Christelle
Lecoeur (ENSAPM-PSL), Marilia Macedo Espina (ENSAPMACS/AUSser -PSL), Sophie Paviol (ENSAG-AE&CC).
Full Call
Making architectural history through the prism of environmental and decolonial issues: In an undoubtedly cyclical process, numerous recent publications invite us to “rethink” or “revisit” historiography of architecture, seeking to go beyond monographic approaches, criticism of architectural objects and the presentation of architectural movements. Their aim is to apprehend the architectural field through the prism of current social concerns within the late, complex modernities (whatever prefixes are often attached to them).
For almost two decades now, postcolonial (or even decolonial) studies and environmental studies, as well as gender studies, have penetrated the discipline with force, to the point where some evoke the emergence of “new” or “alternative” histories. It now seems necessary to take a reflective and critical look at architecture in the light of current concerns.
From historiography to the epistemology of history, what are the “new problems, new approaches, new objects” – taking up and updating the propositions of Pierre Nora and Jacques Le Goff – new periodizations, new geographical areas of architectural history?
This symposium aims to clarify the complexity of these narratives, which are both plural and situated, in order to better understand the methodological questions they raise and the contemporary issues they illuminate. It will question these new data and make them resonate with approaches that claim to be postcolonial and/or environmental. It will examine the epistemological implications of the use of certain notions, such as the anthropocene, and their mobilization in the field of architectural research. In what way, where and how might environmental and decolonial thinking come together to encourage the exploration of uncharted aspects of history? Malcom Ferdinand invites us to think about “decolonial ecology” from a Caribbean perspective, using decolonial criticism and struggles against cultural and racist discrimination as a lever for environmental struggles. Given that modernity is intrinsically colonial in its relationship with the world, and is driven by a Eurocentric universalism, this symposium will also examine the possibility of certain architectural modernities being postcolonial, or even decolonial. Current historical approaches that challenge Eurocentrism and attempt to redefine certain fundamentals of the architectural discipline – in the diversity of its meanings, scales and modalities – will be at the heart of the symposium.
The symposium also intends to explore the impact these new postures may have on the relationship between, on the one hand, attempts to rewrite great histories of architecture using a “Braudelian” longterm approach – with works that are also “mainstream” – and, on the other hand, examples of more microhistorical approaches.
In our view, the new decolonial and environmental histories represent an opportunity to reaffirm the role of the historian as a committed intellectual: in particular, for the history of architecture, they provide an opportunity to reconsider certain meanings of the architectural discipline, notably the notion of the project, and the architect's knowledge, practices and forms of action in the “present time”.
Areas for consideration:
1 – Postcolonial or decolonial histories of architecture / 2 – Environmental histories of architecture
Crossroads
Proposals for intervention may fall in two lines of thinking, opening up to cross-cutting topics and approaches. As shown by several works – such as Conservation in Africa. People, Policies and Practice
(David Anderson, Richard Grove (eds.), 1987), through to more recent research on so-called tropical architectures, such as A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience (Jiat-Hwee Chang , 2016) – postcolonial and environmental histories are closely linked.
