Contents

Acknowledgments.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. VII Chapter 9: Agro-culture .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 117

by Li Shiqiao
Prologue .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1
by William S.W. Lim Chapter 10: Situated Modernism: .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 127
The Production of Locality in Africa
editors' introduction .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 7 by Iain Low
by Jiat-Hwee Chang & William S.W. Lim
Chapter 11: Politics of Greening: .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 143
Part 1: INTERROGATING MODERNISM AND MODERNITIES spatial constructions of the Public in singapore
by eunice seng
Chapter 1: Modernism: Where We're At (and How We Got Here) .. .. 27
by Anthony D. King Chapter 12: Some Reflections on Hospitality and Cosmopolitanism .. .. 161
Within the context of the early republican
Chapter 2: Modernism Across Hemispheres, or, .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 37 Project of Modernization in turkey
taking internationalism seriously by Zeynep Mennan
by Mark crinson
Chapter 13: Brazilian Architecture, Modern Tradition,
Chapter 3: Modernism & Contemporaneity in Architecture:.. .. .. .. .. .. 47 contemporary culture: .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 169
Peripheries & centres Other Brazilian Modernities of the 1950-1970s
by Leon van Schaik AO by Ruth Verde Zein

Chapter 4: Entangled Histories of Modern Architecture .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 59 Part 111: REFLECTING/REFRACTING MODERNISM

by Duanfang Lu
Chapter 14: Commentary .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 181
Chapter 5: East, West, High, Low: .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 69 Multiple Modernisms and Modernities
How Brazilian Modernist Vernacular Problematizes It All by Randolf S. David
by Fernando Luiz Lara
Chapter 15: Commentary .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 189
Part 11: (DIS)LOCATING MODERNISMS IN THE WORLD Centre and Periphery, a Singular Modernism
and studying Modern cultural Production
Chapter 6: (Re-)Searching Modernism: .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 81 by C.J. W.-L. Wee
indonesia after decolonization
by Abidin Kusno Chapter 16: Commentary .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 197
Mobility of Modernism
Chapter 7: Simultaneous Modernities: .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 91 by chua Beng huat
contemporary Architecture in india
by rahul Mehrotra selected Bibliography .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 203

Chapter 8: Opening the Concept of Critical Architecture: .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 105 editors and contributors .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 209
the case of Modern china and the issue of the state
by Jianfei Zhu index .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 213

V Vi

intrOductiOn
non west modernist past:
RETHINKING MODERNISMS AND MODERNITIES
BEYOND THE WEST
Jiat-Hwee Chang and William S.W. Lim
7 8
i n t rO d u c t i O n
An international conference entitled “non West Modernist is hoped, transforming that reality. The disciplinary reality here
Past” jointly organized by AA Asia and the singapore comes from the conjoining of two constructed categories—
Institute of Architects, was held on 15 and 16 January 2011 in the metageographical category of the “non West”1 and the
Singapore. A central objective of the conference was to offer social, cultural and aesthetic category of “Modernist”—and a
an interdisciplinary critique of Eurocentric historiography of related set of concepts implicitly assumed in the title.
modern architecture and propose a polycentric historiogra- What’s in a name, to begin with, as suggested, for instance
phy that examines the speciic histori- by a metageographical category such
cal contexts and values, on their own as the “non West”? it has been argued
terms, the diverse and heterogene- that the naming of a geopolitical region
ous modern architecture outside the serves at least two purposes: it can be
West. The conference organizers felt used to describe and acknowledge an
it was an opportune moment to take existing reality even though that reality
stock of the emergence of the inter- exists independently of its name; and
disciplinary scholarship on globaliza- it can also be used to imagine a real-
tion and modernities during the past ity that is yet to exist or would other-
decade or so, and its impact on archi- wise not exist—although as donald
tectural historiography, especially with Emmerson has warned, one “who uses
regard to the study of architecture the name incautiously risks… project-
beyond the West. Singapore provided
a suitable venue for this stocktaking as
ing homogeneity, unity and bounded-
ness on a part of the world that is in
the discourses on modern architecture fact heterogeneous, disunited, and
(re)produced in Asia—as writings in
books and journals, as courses taught
hard to delimit.”2 Indeed, the very
title of the conference could perhaps
in schools or as oficial discourses also be seen in this light. We there-
produced by various governmental and fore argue that the description, “Non
non-governmental institutions—have West Modernist Past”, expresses
not suficiently been informed by this both an existing disciplinary reality in
recent scholarship. Eighteen inter- architectural history, and projects as
national scholars, including not only well as advocates an alternative disci-
figure 1 An exemplary building in europe and north America
architectural historians and theorists by a “master architect”—S.R. Crown Hall, Illinois Institute of plinary reality.
but also sociologists, and those work- Technology, Chicago, USA, completed in 1956 and designed by in her seminal work on the history
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (All photographs in this chapter are by
ing in area studies and cultural stud- Jiat-Hwee Chang, except where otherwise stated) of a particular case of “non-Western”
ies, were invited to re-theorize and modern architecture, Sibel Bozdogan ˘
re-script the history of modern archi- notes that the study of architectural
tecture beyond the West. modernism outside Europe and North American was, until
the past two decades or so, “doubly marginalized”3 by both
a doubLy marginaLized modernism historians of modern architecture and area specialists. The
For the organizers, the title of the conference, “Non West canonical history of modern architecture is primarily a master
Modernist Past”, foregrounds a problematic disciplinary reality. narrative that centres on certain “master architects”, major
If the identiication of a problem precedes its resolution, the movements and exemplary buildings in Europe and North
conference title should also lead us towards addressing and, it America (FIG . 1). 4 Modern architecture in other regions is
J I AT- H W E E C H A N G & W I L L I A M S .W. L I M i n t rO d u c t i O n

typically only included in the canoni- of not just modern architecture but Taken as a whole, the contributors to this volume chal-
cal history under two conditions—if of architecture in general. 6 these lenge the standard architectural historiography of modernism
one of the “master architects” built in tendencies are traceable to the early through a combination of three approaches. The irst explores
the “periphery”, such as Le Corbusier classic texts of architectural history the heterogeneous nature of modernism in both the West and
in chandigarh (FIG . 2) and Louis Kahn where geographical and cultural differ- the non-West. This involves not only the spatial and tempo-
in Dhaka; and if architecture in the ences are managed and regulated in ral expansion of the standard historiography of modernism,
other regions is subsumed under the a hierarchical manner.7 despite the but also entails an interrogation of the key concepts and
not unproblematic discourse of critical advent of multiculturalism, the emer- underlying assumptions of the historiography. Consequently,
regionalism (which we will discuss in gence of more radical postcolonial this approach rejects the notion of a singular modernity and
greater depth below) as an exemplary critiques in the past few decades, and proposes instead, possible conceptions of multiple moderni-
variation of the universalizing modern acknowledging the changes introduced ties, especially in relation to architecture and urbanism. The
architecture albeit inlected by a local into architectural historiography, the second approach explores the complex relationship between
culture. Assumed in the master narra- asymmetrical relationship between modernism, modernization and modernity. It argues that
tive and these two forms of inclusion is the West and the non-West in archi- modernism was more heteronomous than autonomous:
an asymmetrical binary structure and tectural historiography lingers still figure 3 An example of a historical architecture from a “golden age” that area
although modernism was not necessarily over-determined by
a diffusionist narrative that sees the into the present. This is especially studies specialists tend to focus on—Angkor Wat, Cambodia. the socio-political conditions of its production, it was dei-
West, or Europe and North America, evident in the continuing presence of nitely not an independent aesthetic paradigm untouched by
as the origin of modern architecture “Non-Western Architecture” as a sub- the socio-political conditions of its production. Frequently
and, more insidiously, as a source of ield in many architectural schools in reinforcing either the irst or the second, the third approach
creativity and innovation. Implicit, too, North America, Europe and Australia situates modernism in different historical and geopolitical
in the master narrative is the consign- today. 8 contexts outside the West. In attending closely to the nuances
ment of the non-West (i.e., regions Although a few participants at the of the contexts along with the various processes and actors,
outside europe and north America) conference questioned the categories this approach tends to shed light on the less known aspects
as sites of passive reception of modern figure 2 An example of a building by a “master architect” in the and the concepts implicitly assumed in of modernism outside the West. In the rest of this introduc-
architecture originating from the West. “periphery”—Secretariat Building in Chandigarh, India, the title of the conference, 9 the conclu- tory chapter, we will discuss these three approaches before
it follows then that since modern completed in 1953 and designed by Le Corbusier. sion is inescapable that “non West concluding with a discussion of past modernism in relation to
architecture in the non-West was Modernist Past” foregrounds a prob- contemporary practice.
derived from the West, it is perhaps lematic disciplinary reality. As is evident
less worthy of study by architectural historians—other than from the above, the problem is not simply geographical, which i. muLtipLe modernities and
as a demonstration of local variations of or deviations from could therefore be resolved by redrawing geographical bound- Heterogeneous modernisms
that of the West. aries or having more equal geographical representation. The
in the case of area studies—be it in Asian, Middle Eastern, boundary between Western and non-Western architecture is expansion
Latin American or African—Bozdogan ˘ argues that scholars also, as Gülsüm Baydar argues elsewhere, not only a bound- figure 4 An example of a “timeless” traditional architecture that many area studies
the historical scholarship on modern architecture has
tend to emphasize these non-Western cultures as “other” to ary “between Western architecture and its outside, but also specialists study—Rumah Penghulu Abu Seman, a restored traditional Malay House witnessed quite an expansion in scope in the past two decades
the West, and thereby see modern architecture as a foreign between architecture and its outside, between architecture in the compound of Badan Warisan in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. or so, particularly that on the history of modern architec-
and alien entity incompatible with these cultures. It follows and non architecture”.10 By appropriating the phrase “non- ture in Europe and North America, which has expanded quite
that scholars in area studies who explore architecture tend West” from many standard works in architectural historiog- signiicantly from its previously narrow focus on the modern
to be preoccupied with historical or traditional architecture raphy and coupling it with “modernist”, we hope to stimulate North America. Indeed, many of the conference participants masters in the “heroic age” of the pre-World-War-Two era
at the expense of modern architecture (FIG . 3 & 4). 5 Both a discussion that will offer a trenchant critique of the canoni- have risen to the challenge with thought-provoking papers, to include more peripheral igures and diverse tendencies
forms of marginalization could be attributed to eurocentricity cal historiography of modernism and interrogate the double since revised and included as chapters in this book. in modern architecture in the post-World-War-Two era.11
and to the “Othering” of the non-West in the historiography marginalization of modern architecture outside europe and With the above temporal expansion came a geographical

9 10
J I AT- H W E E C H A N G & W I L L I A M S .W. L I M
expansion in the scope of the history of modern architecture
from the traditional centres to include parts of Asia, Africa,
Middle East and Latin America as the sites of proliferation
of modern architecture in the mid-twentieth century.12 the
geo-temporal expansion also saw the enlargement and diver-
siication of the list of key modern architects. At irst sight,
this expansion appears to be merely about populating the
pantheon of modern architecture with more Asian, African,
Middle Eastern and Latin American architects and their works,
rendering the representation more politically correct in the
context of contemporary multiculturalism, though generally,
with no reference to questions of gender. In some of these
new works, it seems that the central tenets of traditional
Eurocentric architectural historiography, such as the primacy
of Euro-American precedents, the assumed autonomy of the
architect and architectural form, and the attendant narrow
focus on what Greig Crysler calls “life-and-work”,13 remain
unquestioned. In other words, this expansion might appear
to be no more than an exercise in the architectural history
equivalent of afirmative action.
if we probe deeper into some of these new works we
may, however, notice hints that the tenets of traditional
Eurocentric architectural historiography do not remain intact.
For example, instead of relying on Area Studies’ seemingly
“natural” regional classiications, many new studies of modern
architecture in diverse localities outside Europe and North
America deploy various loaded geopolitical categories, such
as Colonial, Third World and Developing World, as qualiiers
to describe the modern architecture there.14 By using these
geopolitically charged categories, these new studies fore-
ground the economic and socio-political contexts, cultural
conditions and institutional structures behind the production
of modern architecture in the non-West. With the emphasis
on the conditions of modernity, architects are more likely to
be treated as embedded actors than as autonomous agents
or creative geniuses, and architectural forms are deemed not
as autonomous but as entities dependent on the conditions
of their production. In short, some of these new works on
modern architecture appear to move beyond the traditional
“life-and-work” approach.
11
ContextuaLization
What exactly are these conditions of modernity? As Anthony
King notes in Chapter 1, although modernity is usually under-
stood to be relational, it is widely used to refer to the socio-
cultural and political economic conditions of industrial capi-
talism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Instead of
focusing on the bourgeois culture which shaped modernism
in Europe and North America, these new studies attend to
how modern architecture was invariably entangled with vari-
ous forces of modernization, such as colonialism, nationalism
and developmentalism outside the West. Extending his earlier
seminal studies, King argues in Chapter 1 that industrial capi-
talism in europe and north America was inextricably linked to
colonialism, as it depended on the surplus capital, raw materi-
als and agricultural products from the colonies.15 Colonialism,
in turn, brought social modernity (albeit unevenly and in ways
that were fraught with contradictory tensions) and modern
architecture to these colonies in the early twentieth century.
Both social modernity and modern architecture were part
of larger socio-cultural and politico-economic transforma-
tions, such as the introduction of a novel capitalist culture,
new social organizations, techno-scientiic approaches to
problem-solving and technocratic rule, with the concomitant
emergence of new rationalities of governance.16 Later in the
mid-twentieth century, in a belated attempt to redress dismal
social problems in the colonies created by decades of neglect,
and in a (failed) last-ditch effort to counter anti-colonial
sentiments and the decolonizing movement, colonial devel-
opmental regimes—the French and the British most prom-
inently—ushered in more (and different forms of) modern
architecture through the introduction of welfare programmes.
these welfare programmes led to the building of a smatter-
ing of mass housing and other modern social facilities, such as
schools and hospitals (FIG . 5).17 Similarly, in the mid-twentieth
century, under postcolonial nationalism, modernism was the
architectural aesthetic of choice for many built monuments
deployed to project the image of a progressive nation and
forge a unitary “imagined community” (FIG . 6).18
figure 5 University of Ibadan Library, completed in 1955 and designed by Maxwell
Fry and Jane Drew. It was built with the assistance of the Colonial Development and
Welfare Scheme (Source: RIBA Library Photographs Collection)
figure 6 National Sports Complex, completed in 1964, Phnom Penh, Cambodia,
designed by Vann Molyvann.
Given the above, many contributors to this volume see
modernism as less about “style” or aesthetics and more
about its relationship to social conditions and the politics
of its deployment. For example, Iain Low notes in Chapter
12
i n t rO d u c t i O n
10 that in the African context, modernism was the “hand-
maiden of colonialism” that facilitated the “cultural genocide”
of indigenous cultural production. Thus, for Low, a truly non
West modernism in the African context, contrary to the
title of the conference, is not in the past as something to be
recuperated, but resides in the future, as something yet-to-
be. Abidin Kusno’s fascinating study of modernism in post-
independence Indonesia in Chapter 6—of what he describes
as the shift from “state modernism” under sukarno regime
to “market modernism” under Suharto and the post-authori-
tarian regimes—also emphasizes the underlying social condi-
tions behind the production of the aesthetics of modernism
he argues:
Modernism is not only a formal language of architec-
ture. Instead it is a social strategy embedded in a historical
condition. It constitutes certain sets of possibilities to deal with
issues of identities, of nationalism, of traditional cultures, of class
formation, and of development in postcolonial Indonesia.
By emphasizing the social and political conditions over archi-
tectural style or aesthetics behind the production of modern
architecture—especially those forms associated with the
so-called “International Style” that Henry-Russell Hitchcock
and Philip Johnson constructed—some of the recent scholar-
ship in modern architecture outside the europe and north
America attend to buildings that do not it stylistically into
the aesthetic paradigm of modernism: these were either new
building types brought about by the modern social milieu or
which have been shaped by unmistakably modern technolo-
gies and processes.19 Not only do many of the buildings not it
stylistically into the aesthetic paradigm of modernism, many
of these buildings invalidate the simplistic but nonetheless
widely held binary opposition between modernism and tradi-
tionalism. For example, the Public Works Department in the
Straits Settlements created grand neoclassical ediices—what
a contemporary critic described as “grand classic style”20 —
in the early twentieth century that harked back to Greek
antiquity, despite the modern planning principles applied in
the design process, the advanced engineering incorporated,
and new construction methods and materials utilized (FIG . 7).
J I AT- H W E E C H A N G & W I L L I A M S .W. L I M
figure 7 drawing of singapore supreme court in neoclassical garb but supported by
a technological innovative system of reinforced concrete foundation beams and piles
(Source: Annual Report of Public Works Department, Straits Settlement, 1936)
Other than reviving ancient tradition in the modern age, the
British, Dutch and French colonialists also “invented” vari-
ous new traditions in the late nineteenth and early twenti-
eth centuries through “scientiic” means. For example, the
British created the syncretic Indo-Saracenic architecture by
mastering and re-interpreting Indian architectural traditions
through archaeology and architectural historiography (FIG .
8). 21 Instead of being mutually exclusive, the traditional and
the modern tend to coexist uneasily and in an often contra-
dictory manner in many cases of colonial architecture. For
instance, Dutch colonial architect Maclaine Pont combined a
highly rational and innovative structural systems with eclectic
and romanticized visual images of traditional architecture in
his design for the technical institute of Bandung (Bandoeng
Technische Hoogeschool) (1918–20) (FIG . 9 & 10). 22 Similarly,
the uneasy juxtaposition of the old and the new, the traditional
and the modern, can be found on a larger urban scale in many
13
figure 8 Indo-Saracenic Architecture in British Malaya: View of the Old Kuala
Lumpur Railway Station framed by an arch of the Railway Administrative Building,
Kuala Lumpur, both designed by Arthur Benison Hubback, of the Federated Malay
states Public Works Department, completed in 1910 and 1917, respectively.
French and British colonial “dual cities”. 23 In these “dual cities”,
a new city based on the latest planning principles and new
aesthetics was built next to, but separated from an old city
that was preserved and contained, creating what an observer
has described as simultaneously “a laboratory for Western life
and a conservatory of oriental life.”24
interrogation
Just as emphasizing the social conditions in the production
of modern architecture problematizes the binary opposition
between modernism and traditionalism, the temporal and
geographical expansion discussed above could not have taken
place without the fundamental interrogation and theoretical
renovation of the conceptions of time and space in the canoni-
cal history of modernism. One of the key inluences behind
the interrogation has been the interdisciplinary scholarship
in postcolonial studies. In Dipesh Chakrabarty’s inluential
figure 9 Interior view of one of the main halls of the Bandoeng Technische
Hoogeschool, completed in 1920, designed by Henri Maclaine Pont showing the
structural systems of parabolic arches of laminated wood and timber trusses.
figure 10 Exterior view of one of the two main halls of the Bandoeng Technische
Hoogeschool showing the multi-tiered roofs that evoke the roofs of traditional
Minangkabau architecture.
14
i n t rO d u c t i O n
Provincializing Europe, he argues that the West has produced
the discriminatory practice of “historicism”, premised on a
single historical time that is linear, irreversible and progres-
sive. Chakrabarty argues that the structure of historical time
imposes a “irst in Europe, then elsewhere” stagist theory of
history that consigns the rest of world to the “imaginary wait-
ing-room of history”. 25 Following Chakrabarty, urban theorist
Jennifer Robinson argues that historicism provides the basis
for modernity’s “privileged association with the West”, which
she feels has to be “decoupled”. Robinson also argues that
the “stagist theory of history” buttresses the “harmful habit
of viewing the embrace of novelty as ‘innovative’ in Western
contexts, but ‘imitative’ in others.”26
What both chakrabarty and robinson highlight is the
conjoining of a speciic conception of historical time with
that of geography such that the West became the privileged
site of modernity. One could also argue that the diffusionist
narrative in canonical modern architecture is likewise prem-
ised on similar conjoined conceptions. Various scholars have
questioned such dichotomous geo-temporal conceptions. For
example, Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper “treat the
metropole and the colony as a single analytic ield”. 27 rather
than seeing the colonies as peripheral sites of reception, they
and other scholars argue that many colonies were “laborato-
ries of modernity” and what Gwendolyn Wright calls, “‘champs
d’experience’ or experimental terrains”28 in which various
techniques in control, production and regulation, including
those with important architectural and urban implications,
were irst tested. The innovations made in the colonies were
then brought back to the metropole. 29 the argument here
is aimed not so much at reversing the original Eurocentric
hierarchy but de-emphasizing the geographical hierarchy and
emphasizing the interconnectedness between the metropole
and the colony, the centre and the periphery, the West and
the non-West (FIG . 11 & 12).
As Mark Crinson notes in Chapter 2, given a much more
dynamic understanding of geographical interconnectedness,
the concept of dissemination that underlies most accounts
about the internationalization of modern architecture is
patently inadequate: it assumes, among other things, “a
passive recipient” and “a distinction between a pure root and
J I AT- H W E E C H A N G & W I L L I A M S .W. L I M
figure 11 Map of the British Empire, 1931: An illustration of the hierarchical metropole-colony, temperate-tropics relationships (Source: Crown Colonist).
figure 12 A map taken from the Department of Tropical Studies at the Architectural Association, circa 1963: The globe is distorted to emphasize the Latin American and African
portion of the tropical belt. It could be taken as an illustration of the shifting relationship between the so-called core and periphery, temperate and tropical countries
(Source: Courtesy of Professor Patrick Wakely).
distorted, misunderstood or in other ways, sullied offshoots.”
Drawing from scholarship in the humanities and social sciences,
architectural historians and theorists have been using vari-
ous new conceptual frameworks, such as transculturation
and hybridization, to describe these complex two-way global
interactions. 30 Contributors to this volume also extend this
trend in signiicant ways. In Chapter 2, Crinson introduces the
concept of critical internationalism, which he sees inhering in
15
modernism, to foreground the self-critical aspects of modern-
ism and to show that while modernism was entangled with
nationalism, regionalism, globalism and colonialism, it was not
necessarily complicit with their objectives or “commensurate
with such partisanship”. Crinson argues instead, that critical
internationalism, which includes “both an ‘internationalism-
from-below’ and an extension of the Enlightenment cosmo-
politanism of multiplicity” has an ethical inspiration, one
that demonstrates how “translation and appropriation can
unbalance and re-order the geometry of centre and periph-
ery and cut the seeming bond between westernization and
modernization.”
Indeed “re-order[ing] the geometry of centre and periph-
ery” is what Leon van Schaik does in Chapter 3. He proposes
a mental-spatial model of what he calls “metropolises” and
“provinces” in order to better understand architectural
change and innovation. According to van Schaik, the metropo-
lises and provinces are not geographical locations that corre-
spond to rigid idea of centres and peripheries. Rather, van
Schaik conceives the provinces as “fundamental bases of our
own mental space, the very framing of our understandings
of reality and of our ability to act”. Thus, for him, the prov-
inces are the very sites where creative change arises while the
metropolises are “simply the sites of recognition for what we
do.” Following from that, he argues that:
‘Peripherality’ is the condition that arises when those working in
their Province locate the Metropolis in which they seek validation in
a remote geographical location. We can also see that a Metropolis
now consists not of a ‘Centre’, but of the best possible arena for a
conversation about your own work.
Fernando Lara in Chapter 5, also questions and complicates
“the geometry of centre and periphery” and the attendant
concept of dissemination. By showing how the poor in Brazil,
who could not afford to employ architects, actually appro-
priated and re-articulated the language of modernism in the
design and construction of their own self-help houses in the
working class suburbs and favelas, Lara gives us an account of
the complex processes of transculturation. He argues that not
only should the centre-periphery binary be problematized, the
binary between high art and popular culture, as represented
respectively by the architect-designed modern architecture
and the self-help houses, should also be dismantled, seeing
how modern architecture became popularized and vernacu-
larized in Brazil and many other places. In Chapter 12, Zeynep
Mennan interrogates dissemination from another theoretical
angle. She uses the Derridean concept of hospitality to under-
stand the nature of architectural exchanges and translations
between the West and turkey during the turkish republican
16
i n t rO d u c t i O n
project of modernization in the early twentieth century, and to
reconsider the question of foreignness and domesticity. Taken
together, one could say that by interrogating the geographi-
cal hierarchy in the production of architectural knowledge,
Crinson, van Schaik, Lara and Mennan also provide important
bases for a critique of critical regionalism, one of the most
inluential theories for understanding modernism outside
Europe and North America, renovating some of its key under-
lying assumptions.
Duanfang Lu extends the interrogation above and makes
that critique of critical regionalism explicit in Chapter 4. Her
critique is epistemological, aimed primarily not at critical
regionalism per se but at how critical regionalism highlights
what she describes as “the global sovereignty of architectural
modernism and the suppression of other architectural knowl-
edges”. By giving prominence to modernism and treating it
as “universal civilization” while regarding regional culture not
as living knowledge with equal signiicance, but as irrational
idiosyncrasies to be de-familiarized, Lu argues that critical
regionalism “falls well within the jurisdiction of eurocentric
epistemology”. Lu’s argument is based on her desire to right
the wrongs of the epistemological violence conducted by
the West, to re-legitimize de-legitimized knowledges and to
“imagine an open globality based not on asymmetry and domi-
nance, but on connectivity and dialogue on an equal basis”.
muLtipLiCities and aLternatiVes
That there are diverse and multiple forms of socio-cultural
modernities with their attendant architectural knowledges
and “heterogeneous trajectories of modern architecture” lies
at the heart of Lu’s argument, substantiated by recent scholar-
ship in the humanities and social sciences on multiple moder-
nities. This scholarship notes that modernity has effectively
been de-territorialized and is “decisively at large, irregularly
self-conscious, and unevenly experienced”. 31 Proponents argue
that modernization is not a homogenizing process that leads
diverse societies with different cultures to converge towards
a monolithic modernity based on the West. Rather, proc-
esses of modernization have led to a multiplicity of social and
cultural formations that confronted, contested and diverged
from Western formulations of modernity. 32 it is argued that
J I AT- H W E E C H A N G & W I L L I A M S .W. L I M
while plural alternative modernities might not adhere to the
prescribed understanding of modernity, they are not deicient
or any less authentic and should not be regarded thereby as
any less modern.
Two of the chapters in this volume are especially perti-
nent to this scholarship on multiple modernities in offering
perceptive re-conceptions of modernity based on the study of
architecture and urbanism in the Chinese context. In Chapter
8, Jianfei Zhu reframes criticality, one of the key concepts in
Euro-American modernism, based on a close study of archi-
tecture in twentieth century China. Refuting Peter Eisenman’s
claim of a dearth of critical architecture in Asia, Zhu argues
that the framework of Eisenman’s criticality, which draws on
Kantian philosophy and emphasizes the autonomy of form and
the architect’s individuality, is overly narrow and is thus of
limited relevance to the Asian, particularly, Chinese, context.
Zhu suggests that hilde heynen’s understanding of critical-
ity in terms of the Frankfurt school’s critical theory and its
emphasis on social engagement and critique represents a more
accommodating approach that while still inadequate, is more
relevant, to the Chinese context. Because of the differences
between the Chinese and the European political traditions,
Zhu argues that there was “neither room nor necessity for
a bourgeois individual to emerge, to resist the state, and to
achieve a so-called ‘free’ society.” Thus, in place of oppositional
ideological politics between the individual and the state that
serves as one of the premises for the Euro-American notion
of criticality, Zhu notes that criticality in China is distinguished
by its emphasis on “collaborative ethics and the moral leader-
ship of state power.” According to Zhu, this Chinese notion
of criticality can be discerned in the architectural production
of recent Chinese history from the 1930s to 2000s. It was, for
example, evident in the ways Chinese architectural practices
were organized, especially in their collaborative relationships
with the various state forms, whether Republican, Maoist or
post-Maoist.
Like Zhu, Li Shiqiao argues in Chapter 9, that the Chinese
context offers an alternative conception of modernity. Li calls
this agro-culture, his term for an intellectual and cultural
stance that is deined with, not against agriculture. To illus-
trate this concept of agro-culture, Li embarks on a wide-
17
ranging discussion of its two key concepts—abundance and
prudence. Unlike the Western intellectual tradition that
values abstinence and denigrates abundance, Li argues that
the Chinese value abundance, which he understands to be “a
distribution of a spectrum of quantities based on the principle
of complementarity.” Similarly, Li sees prudence, a primary
virtue in agriculture, as much valued by the Chinese, which is
evident in their emphasis on stability and security. In contrast
to Western modernity’s preference for risk and the spirit of
revolt as exempliied in the open polis that houses public life,
Li claims that the “Chinese city continues to perpetuate an
urban form of encircled, protected and controlled spaces for
insiders”. Li’s chapter is, however, not a one-sided celebration
of this agro-intellectual tradition; he concludes on a caution-
ary note by alluding to some of the problems facing chinese
cities today, problems that might have arisen from an over
adherence to concepts of “abundance” and “prudence”.
ii. retHinking modernisms
and modernities:
arCHiteCturaL Heteronomy
broadening witHout “paCkaging”
While we have broadened and re-conceptualized moder-
nity and modernisms by arguing for diverse constructions of
socio-cultural modernities and aesthetic modernisms, we are
also aware that questions have been raised about the nature
and “analytical utility” of these multiple modernities. 33 it
should be evident that the contributors to this volume are
not just adopting an uncritically celebratory position that
hails non-Western modernity or multiple modernities. We
are conscious that even Eurocentric modernism is not mono-
lithic. 34 We are also acutely aware of the complex relationships
between modernity, modernization and modernism, and we
are careful to avoid the pitfalls of what Frederick Cooper has
called the “packaging” of modernity with modernization and
modernism. By “packaging”, Cooper was referring to certain
scholars’ tendency to bind and conlate into one metahistori-
cal category, different political economic processes, diverse
socio-cultural conditions and aesthetic movements. According
to Cooper, the “packaging” of modernity in the scholarship is
sometimes accompanied by the attribution of causal signii-
cance to modernity, treating it as an agentless abstraction that
variously caused, among other contradictory phenomena, the
destruction of both indigenous tradition and the preservation
of heritage, and the emergence of both racism and multicultur-
alism. As part of the “package”, modernism is also subjected to
similar reductive treatment in which, for example, the critique
and dissent of modernism that were fundamental to modern-
ism are conveniently ignored and modernism is reduced to a
caricature. 35
between autonomy and Heteronomy
Given the complex relationships between modernity and
modernism, and the danger of “packaging” and conlating
the divergent tendencies into a monolithic entity, it perhaps
explains why crinson chooses in his contribution to this
volume to treat modernism “in a limited way, not absorbing
it into wider terms like modernity or modernization or even
that catch-all ‘modern architecture’” and not “allow[ing] the
cascade of contradictions and qualiiers… to wash away the
things about modernism that are recognized globally”. Using
Sarah Goldhagen’s three generating principles of modern-
ism—tradition has no authority over architectural vocabu-
lary; deployment of modernism for social betterment; and
zeitgeist—as a starting point, Crinson adds another three
more principles to the deinition of modernism: style, profes-
sionalism—in the sense of the modern profession’s “sover-
eignty over design”—and internationalism. Unlike Goldhagen,
Crinson has no qualms about seeing style as one of the gener-
ating principles. He refuses modernism’s naturalization of
style and argues that style is “generative: it deines a language,
sets certain problems, and provides the recognition factor or
signal element of modernism”.
crinson’s limited framework and his emphasis on style as
one of the generative principles of modernism are especially
striking because they contradict some of our earlier concep-
tions of non-West modernism. Quite a few contributors
to this volume—King and Kusno in particular—stress that
modernism is not so much about style or aesthetics, but more
about the socio-historical conditions in which it emerged and
the social strategies it embedded. Does this mean that we
18
i n t rO d u c t i O n
have to choose between, on the one hand, Crinson’s limited
framework of modernism with its emphasis on style, and on
the other hand, the expanded framework of modernism with
its emphasis on social modernity as proposed by King and
Kusno? Should we continue to privilege style as one of the
key bases of modernism and discount, for example, the colo-
nial architecture that was produced under conditions of social
modernity and shaped by undoubtedly modern technologies
and processes on the grounds that they do not it in with the
aesthetic paradigm of modernism? Or should we, given these
compelling cases, foreground the socio-political processes and
political economic factors in our study of non-West modern-
ism, despite the very real risks of “packaging” and conlating
modernism with modernity?
While speciic political economic conditions or socio-polit-
ical contexts might have accounted for the rise of modernism
in the recent past, there is really no clear causal relation or
easy correspondence between the larger structural condi-
tions and the aesthetics of modernism. This dichotomy is,
however, false and the choice is obviously not so stark. Indeed,
as Rahul Mehrotra argues in Chapter 7, the two frequently
take different trajectories in India. The political economic
conditions of recent neoliberal globalization have especially
elicited a diversity of aesthetic responses beyond strait-
jacket modernism or postmodernism. One of the aesthetic
responses that Mehrotra identiies is what he calls, “counter
modern” where in contemporary India, ancient Indian building
traditions are revived alongside cultural and religious funda-
mentalisms. He notes that this revival manifests itself in two
clear ways—the resurgence of temples with ancient imagery
built by master craftsmen, and the resurrection of belief in
Vastu, the ancient sacred rules of building. Mehrotra shows
that, in India, social modernity and aesthetic modernism often
diverged and “modernity was simultaneously embraced and
resisted, creating a highly fractured and fragmented architec-
tural and urban landscape.”
One could argue that aesthetic modernism was frequently
deployed in contexts where the very conditions of social
modernity were absent. Such “modernism without moder-
nity” was necessary in many non-Western contexts because
in the irst place, the need to modernize and generate social
J I AT- H W E E C H A N G & W I L L I A M S .W. L I M i n t rO d u c t i O n

modernity was the very reason for the state-sponsored “trans- the social changes imagined by the modern avant garde, or the “ideological syllogism of architecture” that only architects architects and politicians (the han Awals and sukarnos of the
plantation” of aesthetic modernism. The enthusiastic embrace that architectural modernism would inevitably lead to social produce architecture. 41 the discourse of autonomy is implicit developing world, not forgetting the whole range of possible
of modernism by Third World politicians like Jawaharlal modernity in these contexts of underdevelopment. Indeed, as in most histories of modernism. According to Anthony Vidler actors besides the highbrow designer and patrons as Lara
Nehru, Sukarno, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Norodom Sihanouk Holston’s study shows, Brasilia’s modernism produced some in his fascinating Histories of the Immediate Present, a sense of reminds us) were situated in and responded to the socio-
and Juscelino Kubitschek can be understood as a form of, what unexpected social consequences, including what he calls the disciplinary autonomy was projected into the architectural political conditions of the overlapping processes of decoloni-
Bozdogan calls, “visible politics” 36: the Brazilianization of Brasilia. Rather, language of modernism by key architectural historians in the zation, modernization and development.
the use of modern architecture as an our point is that modernism, as an mid-twentieth century. 42
instrument of social change, bypass- aesthetics and style, in the expanded Larson, however, notes that this professional and discipli- situated modernisms47
ing undesirable stages, in order to sense of including formal representa- nary autonomy is undermined by the architect’s reliance on Quite a few of the contributions to this volume provide us with
stimulate leaps in the modernization tion and spatial coniguration, cannot the larger social, cultural and economic actors and factors to situated accounts of how modernism evolved in the respec-
process and propel the underdevel- be regarded as something that is realize (that is, build) architecture and uses the term, heter- tive contexts they focus on. Both Low and Mehrotra provide
oped nation into a modernized and merely shaped by political, economic onomy, to describe this reliance on those actors and factors broad historical sketches on how modernism has under-
developed future. 37
and/or socio-cultural conditions outside the architectural profession and discipline. The heter- gone various phases of transformation in Africa and India,
This is also what James Holston, in without shaping these conditions in onomous approach to understanding architecture tends to respectively, and how they continued to shape contemporary
his brilliant anthropological study of turn. In Lefebvrian terms, space is not be used by social scientists like David Harvey and Donald practices. Low (in Chapter 10) discusses how modernism in
Brasilia, calls “inverted development” just a neutral container or backdrop McNeil. 43 While these accounts using the heteronomous Africa has evolved from its oppressive colonial legacy, which
(FIG . 13). He notes that inverted
38
to social processes, it being the very approach might provide compelling insights into the under- destroyed indigenous culture, to form irstly a contested
development turns on its head the material realities that could poten- standing of architectural change, they sometimes run the modernism, as exempliied by Roelof Uytenbogaardt’s work
conventional view that changes in tially alter social relations and cultural risk of over-emphasizing structural conditions and inadvert- in South Africa, and subsequently, a situated modernism in
urban and architectural form depend values, and space is produced by, while ently reduce architects to what Pierre Bourdieu calls "'bear- the present. Low sees this as a process of gradual localiza-
on and follow from social changes; also contributing to these social proc- ers’ of structure", and architecture to epiphenomenon of the tion, turning modernism from an alien and alienating entity
rather, he argues, inverted develop- esses. 39 Now that we have argued that economy or the social. 44 A point that Bozdogan makes else- to one that incorporates local culture and practices in its
ment draws on architectural modern- both the limited and expanded frame- where is instructive here: “The point is not to dismantle the siting, programme, design process and mode of production.
ism’s environmental determinist idea works are useful but inadequate, and myth of the architect as autonomous and creative genius by Mehrotra (in Chapter 7) explores the “multiplicities of ‘alter-
that the creation of new forms of the relationship between modernism replacing it with an equally problematic notion of the architect native Modernities’ in architectural expression” that “blurred
social experience would transform and modernity remains unresolved, as a mere instrument or agent of historical forces, ideologies the boundaries between the modern and contemporary”
society. The new forms of social expe- figure 13 Palácio do Planalto, Brasilia, and the inversion of the how shall we solve this conundrum? and politics”. 45 in the diverse but fragmented landscape of post-economic-
rience were, in turn, supposed to be traditional igure-ground relationship (Courtesy of Seier+Seier, At the risk of gross simpliication Larson proposes instead, an approach that attends to the liberalization India. Mehrotra discerns at least four distinct
induced by modernism’s techniques www.lickr.com/photos/seier/) (which we will make more complex constructed professional and disciplinary autonomy on the approaches—which he calls “Global Modernity, New Indian
of shock and de-familiarization that later), let us tentatively call the irst one hand, and the heteronomous conditions of architectural Modern, Alternate Modernity and Counter Modern”. At the
would lead to the radical re-conceptualization of traditional— framework that emphasizes modernism as a style and as a prod- production on the other. She seeks to understand “struc- two polarities of the approaches are Global Modernity, which
i.e. pre-modernist—architectural and urban elements. These uct of a modern profession, the discourse of autonomy, and tural changes as lived through and perceived by strategically is associated with the type of hermetically sealed curtain wall
include not just a new aesthetic that was later canonized as call the second framework that privileges the socio-political located groups of people”—that is, the architects, critics and architecture seen in shopping malls, corporate headquarters
the International Style, but also new building typologies and contexts in the understanding of modernism, the discourse of developers. She argues that architectural changes “should not and gated communities that economic globalization produces
urban planning conventions that subvert existing urban condi- heteronomy. This framework is adopted from the sociologist be prejudged but always explored empirically”. 46 While the indiscriminately everywhere, and Counter Modern, which is
tions. Such subversive moves included the inversion of the Magali Larson’s seminal book Behind the Postmodern Façade. 40 subject matter is different, the history of modernism in non- associated with emerging religious fundamentalism and chau-
igure-ground relationship, the reorganization of private and By autonomy, Larson refers to the architectural profession’s Western contexts can perhaps draw from Larson’s sophisti- vinism and its selective revival of ancient Indian building tradi-
public spaces, the abolition of streets, and the use of the glass seeing itself as possessing a specialized body of knowledge cated theory and nuanced study by not privileging modernism tions. Sandwiched between these two extremes are the New
curtain wall to expose the domestic private realm to public and set of practices. This professional autonomy tends to be either as an autonomous or heteronomous discourse, and Indian Modern, the regionalist approach that, according to
gaze. conlated with disciplinary autonomy, produced and repro- not resorting to historical generalization or meta-theoretical Mehrotra, resists Global Modernity by modifying modernism
Obviously, our point here is not that such an environmental duced by discourses of autonomy in institutions such as archi- abstraction. Instead, close attention should be paid to how to “respond to the locale”, and Alternate Modernity, which
determinist idea would turn out as planned and bring about tectural societies and schools. They reinforce what Larson calls

19 20
J I AT- H W E E C H A N G & W I L L I A M S .W. L I M
offers even greater resistance to globalization that marginal-
izes indigenous traditions and people. Somewhat akin to what
Low calls situated modernism in the African context, Alternate
Modernity is associated with a mode of practice where archi-
tect activists see themselves as craftsmen and work directly
with builders in a participatory process that produces build-
ings that Mehrotra notes are “characterized by a vigorous use
of local materials and vernacular construction techniques”.
Two other contributions to this volume provide situated
studies of oft-ignored aspects of the history of modernism.
Eunice Seng in Chapter 11 provides us with a rich historical
account of the various colonial and postcolonial socio-political
constructions of the open space in singapore’s public housing
from the early twentieth century to the present. In an over-
view that uses many previously unexamined historical materi-
als, Seng discusses the wide-ranging discourses on open space
in Singapore by various agencies and planning experts. She
then relates them to a range of housing projects from differ-
ent historical moments—from obscure ones such as Wah
Garden City by a private developer in the 1920s, to the well-
known Toa Payoh, the irst comprehensively planned satel-
lite new town in Singapore by the post-independence Housing
Development Board in the 1960s and 1970s. In what could be
considered a genealogical account of open space in singapore’s
public housing, Seng argues:
Open space was an active agent from the modern and colonial
to the national enterprise: conigured to embody the socialist and
modernist ideals of the historic Garden City, it was reconigured
for colonialist persuasion for improvement and then deployed as a
nationalist persuasion for urban redevelopment.
What is especially valuable in Seng’s contribution is not her
theoretical insights as such, but her grounded and detailed
historical account. Much as we need historiographical and theo-
retical revisions in the re-scripting of the history of modern
architecture beyond the West, we also need solid historical
research that excavates primary materials in order to avoid
the pitfalls of over-generalization based on ungrounded theo-
retical accounts. Some of these pitfalls are perhaps explored
in Chapter 13, where Ruth Verde Zein examines the unap-
preciated Brutalist architecture in Sao Paolo from the 1950s
to the 1970s and argues that they are signiicant works which
21
constitute an important missing link in the broader history of
modern Brazilian architecture and beyond. It is interesting to
note that Brutalist architecture in Brazil was developed at the
same time as, and independently of its British counterpart.
ConCLuding notes
Hetero-modernisms now
While we have used the title of the original conference as a
starting point in the above discussion on the historiographical
and theoretical issues surrounding modernism outside europe
and North America, we now turn our attention to one
keyword in the conference title—“past” which we may seem
to have hitherto ignored. Now that we have argued for an
understanding of non-West modernism in terms of the heter-
ogeneous and heteronomous, so much so that we feel that
hetero-modernisms is an appropriate shorthand to describe
the diverse modernisms in complex relationships with the
uneven processes of modernization and varied modernities
around the world beyond Euro-America, we shall take a step
back and relect in conclusion, upon the signiicance of the
word “past”.
“Past” in the original conference title “non West Modernist
Past” suggests a distinction between the non-West modern-
ism of the past, or the recent past, from the modernism of
the present, urging participants to relect critically on the
histories of non-West modernism. Many of the contributors
to this volume have done that by grounding and situating non-
West modernisms in speciic historical contexts. A few of the
contributors also explicitly distinguish between the differ-
ent phases of modernism. For example, Kusno differentiates
between the “state modernism” of the nation-building era of
Indonesia and the “market modernism” driven by the liber-
alized economy of contemporary Indonesia. Low also distin-
guishes between the oppressive “colonial modern” of the past
and the emancipatory “situated modern” that is beginning to
emerge in today’s Africa. If Kusno suggests an elegiac reminis-
cence of the revolutionary past, Low’s tone is more of a hope-
ful one for a better future. These different perceptions of the
shifting ideological contents of modernism and the changing
social conditions behind their production, emphasize not only
the heterogeneous and heteronomous nature of non-West
i n t rO d u c t i O n
modernism, but they also hint at some of the complex entan- conception of the buildings. Furthermore, the social condi-
glements between the past and the present. tions that gave rise to many of these modernist buildings could
How would our proposed notion of hetero-modernism, have altered so much over the years that even if the material
with its attendant historiographical and theoretical implica- artefacts remain intact, their meanings and social signiicance
tions, shape our understanding of modernism in the present would have changed or been irretrievably lost.
context? Or conversely, how would the present context that It is also not our intention to excavate the past to provide
we are writing inluence our critical re-evaluation of the non- more exemplary precedents for today’s “ikea modernism” or
West modernist past? In any discussion of modernism today, it shroud today’s “Ikea modernism” in historical mystique and
is impossible to ignore the recent global trend that re-valorizes endow it with more symbolic capital. 52 By emphasizing the
modernism. This is especially evident in the emergence of a heterogeneity and heteronomy of modernism outside the
kind of modernist chic that has also been called “ikea modern- West, the contributors to this volume do not present any
ism”, 48 a modernist aesthetic that is tasteful, comfortable, and formulaic prescription for understanding and reproducing
pleasing, but also insidiously embedded within today’s capital- these hetero-modernisms. Instead of an essentialized under-
ist culture. The re-valorization of modernism is also evident in standing of modernism that reduces it to mere aesthetic or
the newly found enthusiasm for preserving modernist heritage style, we argue for a more socially and politically situated
globally. The phenomenal growth of DOCOMOMO International, understanding of modernism. If the “radical relics”53 of hetero-
an international organization dedicated to the documentation modernisms from the past provide any lesson for today’s
and conservation of buildings and sites of the modern move- practices, it is that they were, and still are, aesthetics embed-
ment, since its founding in 1988, 49 and the recent inclusion in ded in, shaped by as well as shaping speciic socio-cultural
the unescO World Heritage List of modernist buildings and and economic political conditions.
cities such as Villa Tugendhat in Brno, The Bauhaus in Dessau,
Brasilia and the White City of Tel-Aviv, are further indica-
tions of this preservationist fervour. This fervour is not limited
to the “West”, as the above list might suggest, but has also
spread to different parts of the world to include, for example,
Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Although our critical re-evaluation of the histories and
theories of hetero-modernisms might lead us to appreciate
and value the modernism outside the West more, we are not
practicing what Manfredo Tafuri calls “operative criticism”50
as we are not historicizing the past for the sake of strengthen-
ing the present preservationist fervour towards modernism.
Rather, we share the view of many scholars that modernist
buildings do not lend themselves to easy “preservation”. 51
Vanguard of an aesthetic movement, many modernist build-
ings were experimental in their use of materials and construc-
tional techniques. As such, many did not weather well and age
gracefully. In many cases, the “preservation” of modern archi-
tecture so that they could become durable artefacts, entailed
extensive changes in the constructional details and substan-
tial reconstruction quite at odds with the original, transitory
22
J I AT- H W E E C H A N G & W I L L I A M S .W. L I M
endnotes
1 Metageography refers to “the set of spatial structures through which people
order their knowledge of the world.” See Martin W. Lewis and Karen Wigen, The Myth
of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997), ix.
2 Donald K. Emmerson, “ ‘Southeast Asia’: What’s in a Name?,” Journal of Southeast
Asian Studies 15, no. 1 (1984): 1.
3 Sibel Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture
in the Early Republic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 8. See also
Sibel Bozdogan, “Architectural History in Professional Education: Relections on
Postcolonial Challenges to the Modern Survey,” Journal of Architectural Education 52,
no. 4 (1999).
4 See, for example, Alan Colquhoun, Modern Architecture (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002); Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 3rd
ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992); William J. R. Curtis, Modern Architecture
since 1900, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996).
5 See, for example, Jyoti Hosagrahar, “South Asia: Looking Back, Moving Ahead—
History and Modernization,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 61, no. 3
(2002).
6 scholars in postcolonial studies would argue that these problems are entrenched
in the broader Western understanding of the non-West evident in different disci-
plinary and cultural productions. See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe:
Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2000); Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994 [1978]).
7 Gülsüm Baydar Nalbantoglu, “Toward Postcolonial Openings: Rereading Sir
Banister Fletcher’s “History of Architecture”,” Assemblage, no. 35 (1998); Sandy
Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi, “Introduction: Modern Architecture and the Middle
East: The Burden of Representation,” in Modernism and the Middle East: Architecture
and Politics in the Twentieth Century, ed. Sandy Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2008).
8 Zeynep Çelik, “Editor’s Concluding Notes,” Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians 62, no. 1 (2003).
9 For example, Anthony King expresses his concern at the implied “totalizing notion
of the West” and “the horror of deining an identity in negative terms, of what it is
not.” Randolf David notes that the non-West appears to be “nothing more than a
residual phenomenon, a space that is only vaguely marked”.
10 Gülsüm Baydar Nalbantoglu, “Limits of (in)Tolerance: The Carved Dwelling in
the Architectural and Urban Discourse of Modern Turkey,” in Postcolonial Space(s),
ed. Gülsüm Baydar Nalbantoglu and Chong Thai Wong (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1997).
11 See, especially, Rejean Legault and Sarah Williams Goldhagen, Anxious Modernisms:
Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture (Montreal: canadian centre for
Architecture, 2000).
12 See for example, Anoma Pieris, Imagining Modernity: The Architecture of Valentine
Gunasekara (Colombo: Stamford Lake & Social Scientists' Association, 2007); Helen
Grant Ross and Darryl Leon Collins, Building Cambodia: New Khmer Architecture 1953-
1970 (Bangkok: The Key Publisher, 2006); Jiat-Hwee Chang, "Deviating Discourse:
Tay Kheng Soon and the Architecture of Postcolonial Development in Tropical Asia,"
Journal of Architectural Education 63, no. 3 (2010); Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre,
"The Suppression and Rethinking of Regionalism and Tropicalism after 1945," in Tropical
Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization, ed. Alexander Tzonis, Bruno
Stagno, and Liane Lefaivre (Chichester: Wiley-Academic, 2001); Panayiota I. Pyla,
"Hassan Fathy Revisited," Journal of Architectural Education 60, no. 3 (2007); Hannah Le
Roux, "Modern Architecture in Post-Colonial Ghana and Nigeria," Architectural History
47(2004).
13 C. Greig Crysler, Writing Spaces: Discourses of Architecture, Urbanism, and the Built
Environment, 1960-2000 (New York: Routledge, 2003).
14 Duanfang Lu, ed. Third World Modernism: Architecture, Development and Identity
(London: Routledge,2010); Hannah Le Roux, “The Networks of Tropical Architecture,”
23
The Journal of Architecture 8(2003); Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, and Marion von
Osten, eds., Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past - Rebellions for the Future (London:
Black Dog Publishing,2010); Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash, eds., Colonial
Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon (London and
New York: Routledge,2007).
15 Anthony D. King, Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World-Economy: Cultural and Spatial
Foundations of the World Urban System (London: Routledge, 1990); Anthony D. King,
The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995 [1984]).
16 Stephen Legg, Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities (Malden:
Blackwell, 2007); Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social
Environment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
17 Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2003); Avermaete, Karakayali, and von Osten, eds., Colonial Modern; Jiat-Hwee Chang,
“Building a (Post)Colonial Technoscientiic Network: Tropical Architecture, Building
Science and the Power-Knowlege of Decolonization,” in Third World Modernism:
Architecture, Development and Identity, ed. Duanfang Lu (London: Routledge, 2010).
18 Lai Chee Kien, Building Merdeka: Independence Architecture in Kuala Lumpur,
1957-1966 (Kuala Lumpur: Gelari Petronas 2007); Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation
Building; Abidin Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space, and Political
Cultures in Indonesia (New York: Routledge, 2000); Vikramaditya Prakash, Chandigarh’s
Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2002). See also the chapters by Abidin Kusno, Eunice Seng and
Zeynep Mennan in this volume.
19 This is especially evident in the design processes employed and the buildings
produced in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries by modern colonial insti-
tutions such as the various Public Works Departments and Improvement Trusts, and
the Royal Engineers in the British colonies. See Peter Scriver, “Empire-Building and
Thinking in the Public Works Department of British India,” in Colonial Modernities:
Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon, ed. Peter Scriver and
Vikramaditya Prakash (London and New York: Routledge, 2007); Wong Yunn Chii,
“Public Works Department Singapore in the Inter-War Years (1919 - 1941): From
Monumental to Instrumental Modernism” (Unpublished Research Report, National
University of Singapore, 2003). Jiat-Hwee Chang and Anthony D. King, “Towards a
Genealogy of “Tropical Architecture”: Excavating Historical Fragments of Power-
Knowledge, Built Environment, and Nature in the British Colonial Territories,”
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography (forthcoming); Jiat-Hwee Chang, “Tropicalising
Technologies of Environment and Government: The Singapore General Hospital
and the Circulation of the Pavilion Plan Hospital in the British Empire, 1860-1930,”
in Re-Shaping Cities: How Global Mobility Transforms Architecture and Urban Form, ed.
Michael Guggenheim and Ola Söderström (London: Routledge, 2009); John Weiler,
“colonial connections: royal engineers and Building technology transfer in the
Nineteenth Century,” Construction History 12(1996).
20 A. Gordon, “The Old Order Changeth,” Journal of the Singapore Society of Architects
Incorporated 3, no. 6 (1930).
21 Thomas R. Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (new
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002 [1989]).
22 Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial, 25-48. See also ibid; Helen Jessup, “Four Dutch
Buildings in Indonesia I: Henri Maclaine Pont’s Institute of Technology of Bandung,”
Orientation 13(1982); Helen Jessup, “Dutch Architectural Visions of the Indonesian
Tradition,” Muqarnas 3(1985); Jiat-Hwee Chang, “Hybrid (Asian) Modernities and
Tropical Architecture in Southeast Asia,” DOCOMOMO International Journal 29(2003).
23 Zeynep Çelik, “New Approaches to the “Non-Western” City,” Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians 58, no. 3 (1999); Rabinow, French Modern; Anthony
D. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power, and Environment (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976).
24 Cited in Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 85.
25 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 3–23.
i n t rO d u c t i O n
26 Jennifer Robinson, Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (London: and the heteronomy of the conditions of production is similar to Goldhagen’s "situ-
Routledge, 2006), 65-66. ated modernism". Notably, another contributor to this volume, Iain Low, has appro-
27 Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony: priated the same phase in his contribution. Sarah Williams Goldhagen, Louis Kahn's
Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois Situated Modernism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
World, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley: University of California 48 Owen Hatherley, Militant Modernism (London: Zero Books, 2009).
Press, 1997), 4. Anthony King has reminded me that this is not a new idea at all. It has 49 DOCOMOMO International currently has chapters in 58 countries worldwide,
been discussed as early as the 1960s. King also developed and discussed that in rela- including many non-Western ones. See its oficial website http://www.docomomo.
tion to the built environment in his Colonial Urban Development. com/mission, (accessed 6 June 2011).
28 Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism, 12. 50 Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development
29 Rabinow, French Modern; Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism; (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976).
Avermaete, Karakayali, and von Osten, eds., Colonial Modern; Timothy Mitchell, 51 Allen Cunningham, ed. Modern Movement Heritage (London: Taylor and
Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). Francis,1998); Hubert-Jan Henket and Hilde Heynen, eds., Back from Utopia: The
30 Felipe Hernández, “Introduction: Transcultural Architectures in Latin America,” Challenge of the Modern Movement (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers,2002)
in Transculturation: Cities, Spaces and Architectures in Latin America, ed. Felipe Hernández, 52 For the relationship between art, architecture and symbolic capital, see Pierre
Mark Millington, and Iain Borden (New York: Rodopi, 2005); Nezar AlSayyad, “Hybrid Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford: Stanford University
Culture/Hybrid Urbanism: Pandora’s Box of the “Third Space”,” in Hybrid Urbanism: Press, 1998); Garry Stevens, The Favored Circle: The Social Foundations of Architectural
On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment, ed. Nezar AlSayyad (Westport, CO: Distinction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).
Praeger, 2001). 53 Jean Louis Cohen’s term for socialist avant garde buildings in the former Soviet
31 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization Union, designed with radical agendas to reconstruct daily life by architects such as
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 3. Konstantin Melnikov, Vladimir Tatlin, El Lissitsky and Moisei Ginzburg. Here we use
32 See, for example, S. N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus 129, no. 1 the term “radical relics” to refer to other modernist architecture with radical social
(2000); Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, ed. Alternative Modernities (durham: duke agendas. See Jean-Louis Cohen, “Radical Relics: Architecture and the Politics of
University Press,2001). Modernization in Soviet Russia,” in The Lost Vanguard: Russian Modernist Architecture,
33 For one of the most trenchant criticisms of the scholarship on multiple moderni- 1922–1932, ed. Richard Pare (New York: Monacelli Press, 2007).
ties, see Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2005), 113-149.
34 For a nuanced understanding of european modernism and its complex relationship
with modernity, see Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity: A Critique (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1999). See also Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The
Experience of Modernity (New York: Viking Penguin, 1988).
35 Cooper gives the example of James Scott’s notion of “high modernism”. James C.
Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
36 Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation Building, 19-20.
37 Prakash, Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier; Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial; Helen Grant
Ross and Darryl Leon Collins, Building Cambodia: New Khmer Architecture 1953-1970
(Bangkok: The Key Publisher, 2006); Lai, Building Merdeka.
38 James Holston, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia (chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989).
39 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
40 Magali Sarfatti Larson, Behind the Postmodern Facade: Architectural Change in Late
Twentieth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
41 Ibid., 5.
42 Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).
43 Donald McNeill, The Global Architect: Firms, Fame and Urban Form (London:
Routledge, 2009); David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the
Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
44 Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Chamboredon, and Jean-Claude Passeron, The
Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries, trans. Richard Nice (Berlin; New York:
Walter de Gruyter, 1991), 252.
45 Bozdogan, “Architectural History in Professional Education.”
46 Larson, Behind the Postmodern Facade, 6.
47 drawing from Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion of how a subject
or agent is inevitably constrained by the discourse or ield in which he or she is
located, Sarah Goldhagen irst used “situated modernism” in her study of Louis Kahn
to describe an approach that attended to how Kahn’s works interacted with contem-
porary works and debates. We would argue that Larson’s idea of understanding archi-
tectural production as an interaction between the autonomy of architectural discourse
24