Preliminary Programme

Over the last years, historiography has found many ways to refer to the 1970s: long, short, global, ambiguous. Although such frames consider many variables, they all seem to point out toward the paradoxical character of the decade. On the one hand, the "death of modernism" (Harvey) and the replacement of Fordism with flexible production patterns outlined the premises for shaping a built environment that was very much about individuality, subjective experiences and stylistic peculiarities of different kinds. On the other hand, the interconnection of economies globally has increased the international visibility of the second and third world countries, while the social problems they faced - housing, transport, consumption, education - became part of some mass projects of development conducted by the UN, UNESCO or other transnational bodies. At the junction of these two paths, countries like Romania offer valuable lessons about multiple ways in which global and regional changes take shape locally, and place the architects' professional practice in conversation with transnational dynamics of modernist principles in urban design.

This article proposes to analyze the architectural practice in Romania in the 1970s regarding the territorialisation of the industry and its social infrastructure - dwellings, schools, hospitals, etc. It looks at the formation of expertise as part of a trans-national agenda to finding solutions to social shifts emerged from the crisis of the industrial society worldwide; focusing on international professional meetings, the work of Romanian practitioners in various commissions and urban development initiatives, my contribution problematizes about the type of public policy programs mobilized by the Romanian experts in their dialogue with foreign colleagues. It also tests the validity of these models locally. By mobilizing professional texts (the Architecture Magazine), documents from the National Archives and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives, the article analyzes how central modernist principles such as rationality, functionality, or utility were integrated into a discourse of transnational development mobilized by the Romanian experts abroad and questions the geo-strategic function of these architectural models. (Show less)

This contribution investigates the arrival of British developers on Dutch soil from a transnational perspective. Doing so will not only reveal how British expertise and financial strength led to a maturation of the Dutch property market, but will also shed a new light on the economic, cultural and political ties between two European trading partners. There is much academic and public debate today about the ‘invasion’ of global cities by foreign property investors, yet empirical investigations of historical predecessors to the current situation are virtually non-existent. This contribution argues that already during the 1970s British and Dutch property markets became heavily intertwined through the overseas development and financialization of real estate projects, office buildings in particular. The focus lies on attitudes and mindsets, as these ultimately facilitated the transnational flows of capital and knowledge exchange. (Show less)