Architectural History The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain

In this episode we talk about architectural and aurality, asking what impact radio had on architecture, architects and public audiences.



Our Contributors:



Olga Touloumi is Associate Professor of Architectural History at Bard College. Her research concerns questions of globalization and media in twentieth architecture. Her first book Assembly by Design situates mid-20th century architectural constructions of global governance within debates on media democracies and liberal internationalism. Touloumi has co-edited Sound Modernities, a volume on how acoustics and sound technologies transformed modern architectural culture during the twentieth century; and with Theodora Vardouli Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common Ground, a volume about the exchanges between designers and computational technologists in Europe and North America.



Shundana Yusaf is Associate Professor of History and Theory at the School of Architecture, University of Utah. Her scholarship juxtaposes colonial/ postcolonial history with sound studies in architecture. Her first book is Broadcasting Buildings: Architecture on the Wireless, 1927-1945 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014). Her current book is called Resonant Tombs: A Feminist History of Sufi Shrines in Pakistan. As its starting point, it takes sound as an architectural material of construction and women as secondary architects, collectively nestling ephemeral auditory monuments with their bodily resources within material monuments built by heroic men with material resources. 



Details of audio clips:



Movietone News newsreel of First United Nations General Assembly at Westminster Hall 1946 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3em8Yvf13y4



British Pathe newsreel U.N. Hears President - Kennedy Asks Joint US - Soviet Moon Trip, 1963 https://youtu.be/iBcfSqwvVlg?si=iS7nJ0aIRIjbMFzp



Charlie Chaplin - Adenoid Hynkel Speech - The Great Dictator (1940)

https://youtu.be/isLNLpxpndA?si=iWZNmbzMehKQwT9y



The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain brings together all those with an interest in the history of the built environment – academics, architects, heritage experts and the wider public. As the leading body in the field, we believe that appreciation of architectural history plays a vital role in understanding our culture, past and present. With the help of our members, we publish new research, organise a broad range of events, provide educational opportunities and advance the understanding of the built histories of all periods and places, in Britain and beyond.



Membership https://www.sahgb.org.uk/

In this episode we discuss the press, periodicals and magazines in architectural history from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

Our contributors are: 

Dr Anne Hultzsch is an architectural historian and leads the ERC-funded group ‘Women Writing Architecture 1700-1900’ (WoWA) at ETH Zurich. With a PhD from the Bartlett, University College London, and a postdoc at AHO Oslo, she works on intersectionality in architectural history between ca. 1650 and 1930, exploring the histories of gender, print, perception, and travel. She is author of Architecture, Travellers and Writers: Constructing Histories of Perception 1640-1950 (2014) and has edited The Printed and the Built: Architecture, Print Culture, and Public Debate in the Nineteenth Century (with Mari Hvattum, 2018) and The Origins of the Architectural Magazine in Nineteenth-Century Europe (The Journal of Architecture, 2020). 

Dr Lieske Huits, is a decorative arts historian and university lecturer at University of Leiden. Lieske’s PhD, titled A New Visual Narrative of Nineteenth-Century Historicism, explored historicism and revival styles in the decorative arts and architecture of the nineteenth century, and the display of historicist objects in international expositions and museums of decorative arts. 

For more information about the SAHGB, their programme of events, publications and grants and to join the society, see their website at https://www.sahgb.org.uk/

In this episode we introduce the theme of our miniseries, architecture and media. We talk about our own research interests and what the study of media, in all its various forms, has to offer architectural history. 

Jessica Kelly’s book about modern architecture and the media is called No More Giants: J.M. Richards, The Architectural Review and modernism and is published by Manchester University Press (2022), find out more about Jessica’s research here: https://www.londonmet.ac.uk/profiles/staff/jessica-kelly/



Matthew Lloyd Roberts is a PhD student working on the cultural reception of architecture in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Britain, details here: ⁠https://csca.aha.cam.ac.uk/roberts-phd/⁠

Matthew writes about architecture for a variety of publications and produces the podcast About Buildings and Cities.



For more information about the SAHGB, their programme of events, publications and grants and to join the society, see their website at https://www.sahgb.org.uk/

This miniseries of the Architectural History podcast has been produced to mark the SAHGB Conference 2023: 'Constructing Coloniality: British Imperialism and the Built Environment'. The conference takes as its theme the coloniality of architecture and heritage in relation to the British Empire, from the early years of expansionism and the escalation of the slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the physical and political force wielded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the development of racial capitalism, to the subsequent and ongoing struggles for independence, freedom and justice.In this episode we spoke to Sonali Dhanpal about her research into a statue of Queen Victoria erected in Bangalore at the turn of the 20th century. The complex history of the statue speaks to the contested and anxious realities of imperial reification, all too often forgotten in contemporary debates about public statues and imperial legacies.To support the work of the SAHGB, become a member: ⁠https://www.sahgb.org.uk/join-renew⁠This podcast is produced by Front Ear Podcasts

This miniseries of the Architectural History podcast has been produced to mark the SAHGB Conference 2023: 'Constructing Coloniality: British Imperialism and the Built Environment'. The conference takes as its theme the coloniality of architecture and heritage in relation to the British Empire, from the early years of expansionism and the escalation of the slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the physical and political force wielded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the development of racial capitalism, to the subsequent and ongoing struggles for independence, freedom and justice.

In this episode we spoke to Mira Waits about her research on police stations in colonial India. Mira considers these buildings in the context of broader visual and material culture of policing and carcareal architecture in colonial histories. 

To support the work of the SAHGB, become a member: ⁠https://www.sahgb.org.uk/join-renew⁠

This podcast is produced by Front Ear Podcasts

This miniseries of the Architectural History podcast has been produced to mark the SAHGB Conference 2023: 'Constructing Coloniality: British Imperialism and the Built Environment'. The conference takes as its theme the coloniality of architecture and heritage in relation to the British Empire, from the early years of expansionism and the escalation of the slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the physical and political force wielded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the development of racial capitalism, to the subsequent and ongoing struggles for independence, freedom and justice.



In this episode we spoke to Ola Uduku about her work on the relationship between empire and the built environment in West Africa. We discussed how different forms of colonial and imperial government shape architectural production and the complex cultural manifestations of imperial architecture before, during and after formal colonisation.



To support the work of the SAHGB, become a member: https://www.sahgb.org.uk/join-renew



This podcast is produced by Front Ear Podcasts