scholarly journals Transcultured Architecture: Mudéjar’s Epic Journey Reinterpreted

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 137-151
Author(s):  
Ila Nicole Sheren
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
New World ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Architectural Style ◽  
Medieval Spain ◽  
Fernando Ortiz ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Architecture ◽  
Art And Architecture

The Mudéjar phenomenon is unparalleled in the history of architecture. This style of architecture and ornamentation originated with Arab craftsmen living in reconquered medieval Spain. Embraced by Spanish Christians, Mudéjar traveled over the course of the next four centuries, becoming part of the architectural history of Latin America, especially present-day Mexico and Peru. The style’s transmission across different religions and cultures attests to its ability to unify disparate groups of people under a common visual language. How, then, did mudejar managto gain popularity across reconquered Spain, so much so that it spread to the New World colonies? In this article, I argue that art and architecture move more fluidly than ideologies across boundaries, physical and political. The theory of transculturation makes it possible to understand how an architectural style such as Mudéjar can be generated from a cultural clash and move to an entirely different context. Developed in 1947 by Cuban scholar and theorist Fernando Ortíz, transculturation posited means by which cultures mix to create something entirely new. This process is often violent, the result of intense conflict and persecution, and one culture is almost always defeated in the process. The contributions of both societies, however, coexist in the final product, whether technological, artistic, or even agricultural. I argue that mudejar in Latin America is a product of two separate transculturations: the adoption of Arab design and ornamentation by Spanish Christians, and the subsequent transference of these forms to the New World through the work of indigenous laborers.

Language as a Key to Latin American Historiography

1955 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-539
Author(s):  
Richard M. Morse
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
New World ◽  
Old World ◽  
History Of

Latin americanists have in recent years become increasingly concerned with constructing the basis for a unified history of Latin America. Frequently this enterprise leads them to contemplate the even larger design of a history of the Americas. While the New World may still be, in Hegel’s words, “a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of old Europe,” it is now recognized as having an independent heritage; its history is no longer experienced as “only an echo of the Old World.”

Afro-Latin Soul and Hip-Hop

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Nava
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
New World ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores the history of African and Spanish musical fusions. In terms of race relations in the New World specifically, music has frequently been the occasion for an exchange of ideas and sounds that has brought together various cultures, transforming conflicting and clashing relations into harmonious streams of sound. Hence, lingering affinities from medieval Al-Andalus have been the inspiration for African and Spanish conjunctions and collaborations in modern times and have resulted in novel, hybrid inventions, everything from salsa and samba to funk and hip-hop. This chapter focuses on hip-hop within this context, though it also takes a look at the cultural soil of Latin America to appreciate the roots and branches of African and Spanish blends in the New World.

Geometric approach to the revitalization process of medieval Serbian monasteries

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Slavko Dragović ◽  
Aleksandar Čučaković ◽  
Milesa Srećković
Keyword(s):  
Geometric Approach ◽  
Geometric Design ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Architectural Style ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Architecture ◽  
Cultural Heritage Preservation

Among the standard approaches concerning cultural heritage preservation, the architectural point of view deserves particular attention. The special place in medieval Serbian history of architecture belongs to the world famous monastery complexes Studenica, Dečani and Gračanica. Beside them numerous significant monuments (churches and monasteries) exist as witnesses of the national testimony, currently in the state of ruins, archaeological sites, or damaged ones. A lot of them have adequate needs for revitalisation, where the start point is engineering documentation. The focus of the research is on the role of specific geometric and engineering graphics tasks when these areas are concerning. Monastery church devoted to Introduction of Holy Theotokos in village Slavkovica (near town Ljig), with three old sarcophaguses, dated back to 15th century, is presented and analysed from several aspects:measuring, architectural style characteristics - geometric design, 3D modelling (classical-CAD and terrestrial photogrammetric) with visualization and presentation.The attention was paid on preservation of authentic architectural style and medieval building techniques, which allow imperfections in realization.The opinion of experienced scientists and specialists involved in all the phases of monument's revitalisation has been followed as a guideline to the final result – a proposed geometric design of the revitalised church in Slavkovica.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
Yarí Pérez Marín
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
New World ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
Global Knowledge ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Garcilaso De La Vega ◽  
Anatomy And Physiology ◽  
History Of

This section reflects on the cross-fertilisation between science, medicine, literature and art in the consolidation of New World identity and discourse, beyond the sixteenth century. It invites readers to consider towering figures in the cultural history of colonial Latin America, such as writer Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, polymath Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and painter Miguel Cabrera, discussing some of their connections to earlier texts on anatomy and physiology. The epilogue makes a case for redefining the medical texts studied in Marvels of Medicine as early matrixes of colonial rhetoric, scientific and literary objects that charted a course for future colonial subjects’ sense of identity in relation to the larger context of global knowledge production.

scholarly journals Architecture and Steel. Reflection and Analysis on the Use of Steel Structures (in Sight) as a Concept in the History of Architecture

Designs ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Inês D. D. Campos ◽  
Luís F. A. Bernardo
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Steel Structures ◽  
Structural Systems ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Architecture ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Huge Variety ◽  
Modern Movement

This is the first of two companion articles which aim to address the research on Architecture and Steel. In this article, some architectural projects are analyzed to show the potentiality to conjugate architectural conception and steel structures, as well as to show the contribution and influence from architectural history. This article also aims to contribute to the reflection of the knowledge and legacy left to us by several architects throughout the history of architecture in using aesthetic, visual and structurally safe profiled steel structures in architectural conception. The presented analysis and reflection are based on the characteristics and influences of the Industrial Revolution and, mainly, the Modern Movement, where the first housing projects came up with this constructive system, combined with the “simplistic” ways of living in architecture, highlighting the relationship with the place, cultural, spatial and typological references, the structural systems and associated materiality. In view of the diversity of alternatives allowed by the use of steel “Skeletons”, modular and standardized, combined with a huge variety of existing materials and constructive complexity, well combined and interconnected, it is possible to obtain a final product whose characteristics seduce by their beauty and elegance. Moreover, the practical and functional comfort which allows the safeguarding of the architectural integration of such product, with the necessary serenity in space and nature, in full environmental integration, is also emphasized.

‘The Professor’s Dream’: Cockerell’s Hypnerotomachia Architectura?

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 117-145
Author(s):  
Anne Bordeleau
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Royal Academy ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Architectural Theory ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Architecture

In 1849, after teaching architectural history at the Royal Academy in London for just under a decade, the architect Charles Robert Cockerell (1788-1863) exhibited ‘The Professor’s Dream’, a graphic synopsis of the history of architecture (Fig. 1). Produced in an era dominated by historicism, the drawing operates between the two poles of historical relativism, negotiating the line between accumulation and rationalization. Some nineteenth-century architects, indiscriminately collecting, understood each style to have emerged from the particular conditions of their times, considering them distinct and yet equally valid. Other architects, critically ordering, privileged one style over another, variously justifying themselves on religious, technical, moral or structural imperatives. Cockerell’s ‘Dream’ is ambiguously positioned as a place of showing and a means of knowing, speaking both of an homage to the past and a vision of progress, apparently flattening a thousand years of history but inherently offering the depth of historical experience. David Watkin, Peter Kohane and, more recently, in the context of an exhibition at the Royal Academy, Nick Savage, have interrogated the drawing, the first two paralleling it with Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), the latter framing it within a tradition of systematic charting of history, and suggesting a possible link to geological charts. While all these interpretations certainly stand, it is essential to recast them within a larger discussion of Cockerell’s understanding of history. Substantiating the different readings of the drawing — against Cockerell’s earlier drawings and surveys, within his architectural theory as expounded in his Royal Academy lectures, and in the larger perspective of the interests he cultivated since the 1820s — this essay brings to the fore the tension between ordering and experiencing, revealing how the architect was interested in the latent interstices between history and time.

Geometry in the Architectural Design of Rafael Moneo

2019 ◽  
pp. 334-363
Author(s):  
José Antonio Franco Taboada
Keyword(s):  
Architectural Design ◽  
Architectural Style ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Architecture

In the architectural work of Rafael Moneo, winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1996, geometry is a fundamental element, as he has confirmed through his writings and the very reality of his work. This chapter contains an analysis of the geometric component of his work, through his writings and interviews, but also through the drawings and models of his works that are most paradigmatic or most representative of his architectural style. Also analyzed are the possible influences from other architects and important works from the history of architecture. The conclusion is that the geometric component underlying his works has its roots in Platonic thought and that for Moneo, architectural ideas have an ontological nature, transcending the imperfection inherent in nature and approaching the perfection of Platonic order.

Architectural History and the Colonial Question: Casablanca, Algiers and Beyond

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 349-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Louis Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Built Heritage ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Architecture ◽  
The Subject

The last decade has seen an explosion of scholarly works dealing with colonial architecture and town planning, a domain previously marginal in the historiography. In any case it has aroused the attention of ever more numerous researchers, a fact that has stimulated this attempt to take stock of it, by drawing on cases studied by this author in his own work. The exploration of colonialism now constitutes a significant field of doctoral research, of studies associated with the identification and protection of built heritage, and tends to mould new images in the history of architecture from the last few centuries. In actual fact, the innumerable works on the twentieth century – the subject here – comprise only a fraction of all the studies concerning nearly five centuries of colonization, if the beginning of the colonial era is identified with the discovery of America and the establishment of the first European trading posts in Africa.

scholarly journals The Structural Rationalism and the sources of Brazilian Modern Architecture: method, de nitions and research potential

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Puppi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Organic Unity ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Architecture ◽  
Xix Century

The research has two main objectives: rst, expand the knowled- ge of the sources of the theory and practice of Brazilian modern architecture and, second, contribute to the consolidation of the cultural history of architecture in Brazil. Studying the structural rationalism as source of the Brazilian modern architecture does not only mean to deepen the knowledge already in progress on the latter, but also to apply the cultural history method to the stu- dy of the history of architecture in Brazil. For the recent research about the structural rationalism bene ted from the cultural history method and is part of the new architectural history of the XIX century, elaborated since 1990, approximately. In this context, the very de nition of structural rationalism is ampli ed and dee- pened. Instead of simply meaning a relation of cause and e ect between structure and architecture in which the structure is one of the architecture’s purposes, the structural rationalism is now understood as part of the new dynamic and organic conception of the architecture that emerges in the XIX century, for which, particularly, the structure is the means capable to fully generate the organic unity of the form. In this perspective, demonstrate that the structural rationalism is one of the sources, and more precisely one of the greatest sources of Brazilian modern architec- ture, not only permit to deepen the knowledge of the theoretical assumptions, but also the formal qualities of this architecture. As well as, consequently, the more general matters as the composi- tion method and the architecture’s cultural role that are relevant today and ever to the theory and the practice of the architecture. 

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