Canon(s) and Icon(s): re-wondering a North-South contamination
The purpose of the edited book is to map the complexity of a North-South contamination(s) across temporal framework and consequently the different approaches through specific case studies and comparative investigations. Of particular interest will be the disentanglement of the building, hybridizing or dismantling of Nordic and Southern models within a broader process of decolonization meant to offer alternatives to dominant stereotypical standpoints.
In the last decades, both architectural history and discipline have witnessed a continuous addition of external figures to the canon (Banham 1996) often following Henry-Russel Hitchcock’s “extra-canonical” approach. Rethinking the grand narrative of architecture also needs what Beatriz Colomina defined an “intra-canonical” perspective (Kotsioris 2020): the attempts to dismantle, expose, and even reassemble the structure of the canon and its multifaceted icons. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories, for Christopher B. Steiner canon is a “structure which is in a continuous process of reproducing itself, mediating its identity through market forces, and negating the social conditions of its productions by covering the tracks of its arbitrary and subjective formations” (Steiner 1996).
Starting from such premises, this edited book belonging to the series SUPPLEMENTA aims at confronting the rhetoric(s) on multiple exchanges between Nordic European countries and Southern ones, also beyond their European boundaries including Global South, spanning from traditional methods of architectural research to the more experimental and artistic formats. The reception of these thoughts has been transformed under the pressure of the cultural and socio-economic change. To a closer look, the construction of the aura around both models “North” and “South” derived from: field trips; exchanges between institutions; books and reviews; itinerant exhibitions; involvement of cultural diplomatic propaganda; built interventions assumed as key references till nowadays; and, not least, the establishment of supranational agreements, treaties and privileges, guaranteeing a contamination of ideas and practices, as well as a free circulation of people, capital, goods, knowledge and service.
The purpose is to map across temporal framework the different approaches through specific case studies and comparative investigations within a broader process of decolonization aiming to offer alternatives to dominant stereotypical standpoints.
The full call for edited book chapter comprising the four analytical perspectives from which address the topics and the book process timeline as well are available here.
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Guidelines for proposals
Authors interested in submitting a book chapter for the book are invited to send, at first, one single proposal (max 10 MB) comprising: a chapter abstract (3500 characters), its outline and a title; one b&w image; five keywords; author(s) name(s); current affiliation and e-mail address; a short bio (500 characters) and a list of 3-5 recent publications.
Proposals submissionby 26 July 2022
Accepted authors will be notified by 15 September 2022
