Plenary

In the final session in our ARCH/TECTURES ARCH/VES symposium series we sum up our exploration of the multivalent relationships between architecture and archives, with a series of papers that delve deeply into, and cut across, the themes previously explored in the three sessions held through the summer.

Archives and the process of archiving form a primary interface between architectural history and practice. This interface, however, has been little explored by either discipline, despite growing interest in and theorization of the archive in contemporary art and the wider discipline of history, let alone in archival studies itself. The record response to our call for participation and the attendance at our summer sessions, illustrates a broad desire amongst architectural historians, heritage practitioners, architects, archivists and curators to look critically at the role archives place in bounding the practices of architectural history, architectural pedagogy and architectural practice itself. There is clearly a need to bring together the practical with the theoretical and epistemological.

Image: Intermediate Unit 9, 2012–13

Programme

9:30 Opening Remarks

9:50 The University Architectural Archive and User-Led Activism, Harriet Edquist (RMIT University, Melbourne)

10:10 Keeping Meaning: The Cosmic House Museum Archive In the Making, Lily Jencks (Lily Jencks Studio)

10:30 Sir John Soane’s Museum Library as an Instrument of Legacy? Fran Sands (Sir John Soane Museum)

10:50 Questions / Break

11:30 A Journey Through the Archives of Zaha Hadid Architects (Manon Janssens, ZHA)

11:50 The Provocative Role of the Everyday Archive in an Age of Digital Retrieval, Tom Coward (AOC)

12:10 The archive in contemporary architectural design practice- buildings as repositories? Charlott Greub (University of North Dakota)

12:30 Mine the Gap: Archiving is Not Enough, Emilie Banville (Eindhoven University of Technology & University of Quebec in Montreal)

12:50 Questions / Break

13:30 Pride of Place: Towards an Archive of Queer Buildings? Alison Oram (Institute of Historical Research)

13:50 “We Are What We Keep:” Archives, Women and Architectural Histories, Elizabeth Darling (Oxford Brookes)

14:10 Archive as Project: Recovering Colonial Histories of the Built Environment, Yasmina El Chami (University of Cambridge)

14:30 Peripheral Archives: Instances from Colonial India, Tania Sengupta (Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London)

14:50 Questions / Break

15:20 Questo è a Mantova di mano di meser giovann battista alberti.” “This is in Mantua, of the hand of Sir Giovann Battista Alberti” Elizabeth Merrill (The Warburg Institute)

15:40 Mind the Gap: Exploring the gaps at Avery Drawings & Archives, Pamely Casey (Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York)

16:00 Questions / Break

16:20 The Legacy of Sub-Basement 8: The itinerant and diminishing archives of the LCC Architect’s Department, Ruth Lang (Central St Martins)

16:40 The formation of the Computer Research Group and the state-academic-industrial complex in Britain in the late 1960, Eleni Axioti (The Architectural Association)

17:00 Classified: Architecture Archives in the Age of Secrecy, Aaron Cayer (University of New Mexico)

17:20 Questions / Break

18:00 Plenary Discussion

18:30 Finish

For further details and to register to attend please visit https://www.sahgb.org.uk/whatson/symposium4