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Author
Date
2023-11-23Type
- Conference Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
Not all archives are created equal: some are treasured, while others are trashed. This poses a particular problem for architectural historians who venture outside of the conventional canon: for example, those interested in little-known architects, construction companies, industrial or material producers or bureaucratic entities. Despite being responsible for a large share of the built environment today, these actors hardly make it to the pages of architectural history books and professional magazines since they engage with ‘ordinary’ rather than exceptional architecture. Archives of these entities are vast but full of other documents, different from the design files architectural historians usually work with. Business archives are often incomplete, endangered by the constraints and conditions of storage, contingent on the political, social, and technological forces that influence what is worth being preserved and what is to be excluded from the historical record. Historians interested in the architecture of the everyday, then, find themselves performing a version of archaeological research, stitching together “imprints, tracks and trails of a once-living thing.” What does it mean for architectural historians to engage not with canonical objects or famous practitioners but with a different research subject that occupies a marginal position? How does this position then affect both the methods and the research outcome? Based on my recent research experience from a doctoral dissertation on a Norwegian construction company, Moelven Brug and a general interest in “other” producers of architecture, this paper discusses methodological problems that arise when dealing with other, more ordinary archives that architectural historians usually forego. I argue that investigations of these other archives lead towards a more open and democratic discipline. Show more
Publication status
acceptedBook title
Architecture Archives of the Future: 10th Annual Conference November 2023Pages / Article No.
Publisher
TU Delft; Het Nieuwe InstituutEvent
Organisational unit
09643 - Avermaete, Tom / Avermaete, Tom02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG
Funding
22-1 FEL-01 - The Business of Foreign Aid: Nordic Architecture in Postcolonial AfricaArchitecture in Postcolonial Africa (ETHZ)
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ETH Bibliography
yes
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