TDSR 11.1 Fall 1999

Volume 11.1

BUILT FORM AND THREE CULTURAL TENDENCIES: NOSTALGIA, PRESENTISM AND ANTICIPATION
Ali A. Mazrui
This article examines the effect of cultural orientation on the built forms of various societies. It proposes a distinction between societies that are primarily nostalgic, presentist, or anticipatory. Examples from Africa and elsewhere are used to show how such cultural orientation has had an effect on built form and overall cultural outlook. The rise of anticipatory views among Western societies has helped bring a revolution in favor of leisure activities. Among other things, this promises profound advances in respect for women and the environment. As societies become more anticipatory, the threat of war also becomes more muted. To be fully realized, however, such advantages need to be spread more equitably across world cultures.

MEMORY WITHOUT MONUMENTS: VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE
Stanford Anderson
This article concerns the role of memory in vernacular architecture. It first points to a distinction between social memory and disciplinary memory in architecture. It then calls attention to the difference between the forms of memory embodied in the vernacular architecture of preliterate and literate societies. In preliterate societies, the cohesion of social and disciplinary memory in vernacular buildings allows the buildings to provide information about the past, but that past is not as much separate from, as subsumed in, the present. By contrast, literate societies develop records of their past — a past set apart, and so inducing inquiry and skepticism. A continuity is actually present in these distinctions between the types of memory embodied in the vernacular architecture of different societies, moving from the forms associated with preliterate societies, through the variations within literate, relatively ahistorical societies, and ending with the highly stylized “vernacular usage” in intensively historical ones. While the growth of disciplinary memory has facilitated the establishment of an architectural profession, a complete separation of social and disciplinary memory would ultimately prove destructive to the linkage between a society and its forms of architectural expression.

EAST BLOC, WEST VIEW: ARCHITECTURE AND LITHUANIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY
John V. Maciuika
The waning of the Western Cold War discourse has made it possible today to render a more nuanced picture of cultural developments, and their political undercurrents, that once took place in different regions of the Soviet bloc. This article evaluates historical evidence from the past half-century to demonstrate that a Westward orientation played a significant role in Soviet Lithuanian architecture, retaining a subterranean influence even through the region’s most trying periods as a republic in the former U.S.S.R. Applying innovations from countries like Finland and France, Lithuanian architects worked both within and on the outside of a Soviet bureaucracy to introduce humanizing elements and a Western, decidedly non-Soviet orientation into their designs. By grafting this Westward-looking orientation onto local traditions, architects at the Baltic periphery of the Soviet Union kept alive an historical ambition to be included in a Western European national and cultural community.

FRACTURED PLANS: REAL ESTATE, MORAL REFORM, AND THE POLITICS OF HOUSING IN NEW DELHI, 1936-1941
Jyoti Hosagrahar
This article explores the continuities and discontinuities between traditional housing solutions and the housing solutions of modern state agencies. It focuses on state-initiated housing projects in Delhi between 1936 and 1941, located on the fringes of the old walled city and imperial New Delhi. From the British colonial government’s perspective, the planned extensions were to be exemplars of controlled growth. However, closer investigation reveals the plural perceptions of housing and the political motivations behind these projects. Eventually, the realities of private enterprise and real estate speculation dominated the process of developing the extensions. In this way, customary building practices contested the authority of municipal codes, professional planners, and imperial institutions to create an incomplete, fragmented, and “informalized” landscape of planned housing.

CONTINUITY AND TRANSFORMATION OF BOSNIAN DWELLING TRADITION IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SARAJEVO
Marina Pecar
This article discusses the characteristics of and potential for preserving the dwelling tradition of the city of Sarajevo in the context of changing historical conditions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the housing shortage caused by recent war devastation. Originally developed according to Ottoman vernacular design principles, many of the traditional neighborhoods of Sarajevo have been transformed or devastated over time. However, a few surviving traditional dwellings maintain their character and integrity as educationally significant examples capable of informing contemporary architectural responses to the current challenge of urban and neighborhood rehabilitation.

IASTE

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF TRADITIONAL ENVIRONMENTS

TDSR 11.1 Fall 1999