---
[1] Architectural Heritage and National Discourse. Appropriating the Historic Monuments into the National Narratives in the 'Long' 19th Century (ca. 1789-1914)

From: Dragan Damjanovic <dragan.damjanovicgmail.com>
Date: Sep 19, 2017

Dalmatian cities for Croats, Prague for Czechs, Cracow for Poles and Vilnius for Lithuanians and Poles. This topic is in line with the contemporary fields of new research over the history of science, and national entanglements of the scientists, in this case, the architectural and art historians. It also draws inspiration from the scholarly research over deconstructing the 19-century national process and the so-called 'spatial turn'.
We would like to address issues such as the process of building national myths around certain architectural objects; the history of their examination, evaluation and propagation; the debates accompanying their preservation and restructuring, as well as the issue of holding national ceremonies within their walls. Of particular interest are the objects, and cities that were deemed crucial for more than one ethnicity or state, and the struggles waged over their national ‘identity’. The questions which we would like to address include the issue of to what extent these debates were based on scientific arguments and evidence, and how much they were entangled into the national discourses? What tools were used to define nationally these edifices, or cities, and to mark them unambiguously? Can we describe the historic-artistic classification of architectural objects in Europe as a sort of appropriation, or splitting them between rising nations (a kind of ‘inner colonization’ of architectural objects)? And, what role was played by architectural heritage in the process of national revivals, and ethnic conflicts in the empires of the Central and Eastern Europe?

---
[2] The Long Afterlife of the Wonders of Ancient World: the Paradigm of Marvel Architecture in European Towns, XVI-XVIII Centuries

From: Marco Folin <mafolinlibero.it>
Date: Sep 19, 2017

Chairs: Marco Folin (University of Genua); Monica Preti (Musée du Louvre)

In 1572, the Antwerp printer Philips Galle published a series of engravings drawn by Maarten van Heemskerck, representing the Wonders of the Ancient word (Octo mundi miracula). It was the first attempt to depict organically all the seven canonical monuments, to which Heemskerck added an eighth (the Colosseum), as an emblem of the great achievements of Roman architecture.
The plates printed by Philips Galle met with an extraordinary success. Within a few years after their release, the image of the Wonders spread in a wide variety of contexts: we can trace its echoes in engravings and paintings, tapestries and ‘memory theatres’, world maps and atlases, architectural treatises and encyclopedic compilations. The session aims to focus on this broad dissemination, in order to explore its cultural reasons, as well as its artistic, architectural and urban consequences.
Indeed, in the early modern age it’s not rare to come across building projects of different scale and character which refer to the Wonders, and which seek legitimacy in through the aura of legend they evoke. Seen as monuments of a mythic past as well as fictive inventions, as examples of timeless perfection as well as emblems of Vanity, as allegories of mankind’s creativity as well as symbols of the transience of any human construction, the Wonders continued for centuries to evoke the architecture of power par excellence – or rather the power of architecture to give tangible substance to the ambitions of sovereigns. From that point of view the Wonders − in their dual dimension of relics of the ancient world and benchmarks of the modern imagination – can be considered as one of the most protean and long-lasting political metaphors of Western civilization, and as a ghost which continued to linger for a long time in European towns.
Topics could include, but are not limited to:
- Projects of urban renewal inspired by the image/rethoric of Wonders
- The Wonders and architectural theory (the reception of Pliny’s and Vitruvius’ descriptions; the Wonders in architectural treaties and historiography…)
- The Wonders as source of inspiration for ‘new’ architectures (funerary monuments, ephemeral structures, architectural fantasies…)
- The Wonders’ imagery in the visual arts
- The Wonders and geographical imagination (atlases, maps, travel journals…)
- The Wonders and antiquarian scholarship
- The Wonders as means of political ‘propaganda’
- Classical VS Christian Wonders (architectural metaphors in religious texts; biblical Wonders…)
- New Wonders VS Ancient Wonders (modern lists of Wonders; eighth Wonders…)

Paper proposals can only be submitted online, via the EAUH2018 website
Deadline for paper proposals submission: October 5th, 2017
Notification of acceptance: December 1st, 2017

---
[3] Vulnerability and Resilience in the City Landscape: Domes, Bell Towers and 'Emerging' Architecture as Visual Poles and Signs of Urban Memory from 15th to 19th Century

From: Valentina Russo <valrussounina.it>
Date: Sep 19, 2017

Coordinators: Alfredo Buccaro (buccarounina.it), Valentina Russo (valrussounina.it)

The Session aims at bringing to the attention of scholars issues concerning the vulnerability - aesthetic, functional and structural - of the 'emerging' elements of the historical buildings, as tangible signs of urban identity and of landscape of European historic centers expecially since Modern Age.
As some recent Italian earthquakes have evidenced (L’Aquila, 2009; Emilia Romagna, 2012; Abruzzo and Umbria, 2016-2017), many historical buildings or parts of them, although having a significant role in the formation and expression of urban image, are highly vulnerable, posing risks not only to physical safety but also to collective memory. In fact around such visual poles, as authentic topoi of the city skyline, social values, shared by centuries, aggregate themselves and they are translated into landscape signs from different cultures during the community history: these are important key-elements in the urban formation process, a long life collective project in which - as pointed out by Michael Jakob – “citizens perpetually redefine their relationship with nature and territory”.
By the response these symbols of urban history are able to offer to seismic or hydrological events it largely depends the preservation of urban landscape image in the context of identity and community cultural values.
The proposed session wants to encourage the widest possible debate on sources and on methodologies of historiographical and iconographic analysis, of traditional building techniques, of restoration over the centuries useful to pursue the most appropriate contemporary strategies to preserve and to enhance these signs of urban memory.
Among the main topics that can be addressed in the papers, we identify the following ones:
- Historiographic and iconographic sources for identification and study of urban aggregation poles;
- Design and structure of the 'emerging architectures' in the formation of the historic urban landscape;
- Historical methodologies for domes’ building interpretation;
- The meaning of the spiers and of bell towers in the urban image;
- Theoretical and technical contributions for conservation and protection of the 'invariant' signs of urban identity.